STORY OF CINDERELLA AND TAJIK-PERSIAN NARRATIVE OF YUSUF AND ZULAIKHA: RE-INTERPRETING THE “DEEP STRUCTURES” WITH REFERENCE TO CURRENT SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

Abstract

“Rags to riches” as an invariant “deep” structure of many stories about restored dignity and status has been in universal literary use since the eminent version of “Cinderella” in the Grimm brothers’ collection of fairy-tales. So has the “deep” structure of an individual’s moral evolution towards god, as made explicit by many narratives taking after the Quran story of Yusuf. After morphological dissection of Cinderella and Jami’s Yusuf and Zulaikha stories (performed with V. Propp’s original scheme in view) we discovered certain similarities between the respective underlying structures despite the stories’ apparent difference. Taking into consideration a number of later adoptions of Cinderella and Yusuf / Zulaikha plots, the authors put forward a hypothesis about culture-and-society determined reciprocal rapprochement and transformation of interpretation dominants in more recent narratives of the respective traditions. At that, “spiritual growth towards god” stories acquire certain features of the society-bound “rag to riches” progression and, vice versa, “rags to riches” narratives become increasingly suggestive of god’s favour as the highest value. If duly supported by scientific evidence, the hypothesis could assist in further study of causes and outcomes of an on-going “orientalization” of western culture and westernization of that of the Orient.