Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• ahmad khalili ¹
• ahmad ghanipour ²

¹ Department of Persian Language and Literature Education, Farhangian University, P.O. Box 14665-889, Tehran, Iran

² university of mazandaran

Abstract

Mircea Eliade’s theory of the sacred is grounded in the distinction between the sacred and the profane and explains such concepts as hierophany, sacred space, and sacred time as modes through which the transcendent manifests itself in the human world. Based on this framework, the present study examines the representation of the sacred in children’s literature, with particular emphasis on Razavi narratives, and analyzes how children’s texts can represent the sanctity attributed to Imam Reza, despite their defining features such as linguistic simplicity, concreteness, and experiential accessibility, without reducing it to mere didacticism or to a wholly profane experience. The research adopts a descriptive-analytical method and is based on the qualitative analysis of children’s narrative texts about Imam Reza. The findings show that, in these narratives, the sacred is reproduced less through mythical structures and complex religious symbolism than through the emotionalization of the pilgrimage experience, the foregrounding of sacred space, and the simplification of miracles for the child reader. In these texts, the shrine of Imam Reza functions as the central locus of hierophany and plays a pivotal role in transforming the transcendent into a tangible and comprehensible experience. Accordingly, Razavi children’s literature can be understood as a site for the child-oriented rendering of the sacred, a process in which sanctity is transferred from the mysterious metaphysical realm to an affective, lived, and cognitively accessible level for the child, without being entirely emptied of its sacred semantic and spiritual force.

Keywords

• Razavi narrative literature
• children and young adults
• the sacred
• Mircea Eliade

Main Subjects

• children's Literature Studies