Poetic Tropes for the Writing, Delivery, and Reading of Letters Exchanged Between Dramatis Personae in the Shāhnāma of Ferdowsi

The Shāhnāma (hereafter written Shahnama) of Ferdowsi reveals a well-regulated system of poetic tropes for narrating and dramatizing the sending and receiving of letters as a form of narratological communication between the dramatis personae of the epic work. This presentation analyzes some salient examples, showing that the conventions of communicating what is intended by the sender and what is perceived by the receiver is a vehicle, to use the terminology of I. A. Richards, for the tenor of the overall narrative. The very idea of an epistolary message, then, can be seen as a genre that enhances and even problematizes the intentionality of the master narrator who narrates the writing and the reading, private or public, of the epistolary form.