From Space to Culture: The Sociopoetics of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar’s Court in Jean-Baptiste Feuvrier’s “Three Years at Iran’s Court”

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Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 French department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran

2 French department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran; french and comprative literature department, Sorbonne Nouvelle University-Paris 3, France

10.22059/jor.2024.376324.2530

Abstract

Itineraries form an important literary genre in getting familiar with the society of “other”. An effective factor in the creation of itinerary narratives is the “space” that undergoes sociocultural changes at various times. As space is a topic that includes humans and their surrounding environments, thinking about and in it leads to social representations. Out of the 19th-century French explorers, Jean-Baptiste Feuvrier began his career in Iran’s court as the official physical of the Shah close to the end of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar’s reign. Feuvrier specifically tried to illustrate various aspects of the court and compiled his experiences in an itinerary titled “Three Years at Iran’s Court” (1899). As the court played a significant in the itinerary as its social space, a question that arises is how the social representations of the court acted as dynamic elements in the literary creation of the itinerary and brought about an understanding of the “other’s” society. Thus, Feuvrier’s narrative was investigated using Alain Montandon’s Sociopoetics in two main axes: “introvert architecture, a stage for the confrontation of tradition and modernity” and “the court and visit: gender-based atmospheres and the recognition of the “other”. The findings of the study showed that the social representations of the court’s atmosphere illustrated the veiled culture of Iran, which resulted in the literary creation of the narrative using the figures of speech like repetition, simile, and particularly description.

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Research in Contemporary World Literature

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 04 October 2025

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