Mojahed Gholami

The technical and artistic research of Europeans on fictional literature, their attention to various storytelling techniques, and their identification of story elements in a systematic and coherent manner, have provided the basis for examining the tradition of Iranian storytelling and story writing to find ideas and opinions on these issues. They have also provided the basis for evaluating our poetic and prose narrative texts from the perspective of the art of story writing and the function of story elements in them. In relation to this issue, the present study, which is structured using a descriptive-analytical method and relying on library sources, aims to investigate the fictional element of "suspension" and examines its function in one of the most famous stories in the Shahnameh of Hakim Abul-Qasim Ferdowsi (239-416 AH), which is the highest peak of epic verse storytelling in Persian literature. First, the story element of "suspense" (state of expectation) is introduced, and ideas and theories about it. Then, its origins in the Islamic-Iranian storytelling and story-writing tradition are examined. Next, the way in which suspense is reflected in the story of Rostam and Sohrab from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh has been technically analyzed because this story has emerged as a very strong story due to possessing this story element. It has reflected some of the dimensions of the vastness and grandeur of Ferdowsi's storytelling art.