The Components of Nouveau Roman in Sādeghi’s “The Sleep of Blood”

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Abstract

The arising of Nouveau Roman in France was in fact a kind of deconstructing the traditional forms and principles of writing. Following this trend, a group of Iranian novelists in 1960s and 1970s stopped using the classical realistic and naturalistic representations in their works and adopted the conventions of nouveau roman. Some of these works are no more than imitations of the new conventions, but some other such as “The Sleep of Blood”, a short story by Bahrām Sādeghi, due to the features like ambiguity and complexity, the important role of language, new forms of characterization, lack of any political and social commitment, incoherent and dreamful plot, and the presence of the reader in the text, are among the elevated examples of nouveau roman in Iran. This article, after introducing the major elements of this French trend, traces their manifestations in the work of Sādeghi

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