An Intertextual Reading of Myth in the Novel of Haras by Nasim Marashi

The fertility myth is one of the universal myths that has been reflected in various narratives in the literature of different nations. This myth has been recreated in modern Iranian novels with transformations in structure and content. In this research, using a analytical method and based on Gérard Genette’s theory of transtextuality, this myth in the Haras novel by Nasim Marashi has been examined. A transtextual relationship can be identified between this novel, (hypertext), and its mythic hypotext. The novel’s title, and a passage from Eliot’s The Waste Land, serves as a threshold of entry into the text are intratextual elements. Palm trees, buffaloes, water, journey, birds, and wind are elements that fall under implicit intertextuality. Hypertextuality and the type of transgenesis constitute the most prominent intertextual relationship. The author has combined fertility myth narratives and transformed their structures to express her perspective on war and patriarchal culture; the narrative of the death or martyrdom of the pant deity and the narrative of the sacrifice of the fertility goddess. In this novel, which falls within the realm of antiwar literature, war causes family disintegration, city destruction, and dead. Naval’s is similar to fertility goddess. In the myth, the woman bring the plant deity and nature, but in the novel, Naval is victimized within the cycle of dead and patriarchal discourses. However, in Daraltal’eah, she attains awareness and tranquility and experiences rebirth. In the end, she becomes an active who by tending restores the plant deity to life within the tress.