Canonizing Shahnameh in Early Modern Iran: A Historical-Semiotic Approach

This essay examines the process of canonizing Shahnameh as an emergent discursive and material site of cultural memory in early twentieth century in Iran. Of particular significance in this regard is the first Ferdowsi millenary celebrations and the concomitant Ferdowsi millennial conference held in 1934 as a turning point in modern discourses revolving around Shahnameh. There is a power-fraught dialectic of domestication and foreignization in appropriating Shahnameh as a mnemonic sign in this period. The authors closely read the signs of this emerging semiosphere in order to bring to the fore the problematic of monologizing cultural memory by means of ideological entextualization.