The Mythical Deep Structure of the Image of Snail in The Snail, The Plaintive Snail (The Last Poetry Collection of Mohammad Reza Kalhor)

As called archetypal criticism interchangeably, mythological criticism focuses on the common, recurrent, and conventional elements in literature that cannot be explained in terms of tradition or historical influences. This kind of criticism studies every literary work as a part of the whole of literature. According to this type of criticism, the archetypes – including images, characters, plot, and theme – are present in all literary works; thus, providing a ground for studying the mutual interactions of the works. By choosing the snail as a linguistic sign, the poet identifies with snails; therefore, they are both unified within a metaphorical monism as the essence of his poetry. By choosing the snail as unified with his being, the poet creates diverse images in his poetry that draw the reader into the depths of text. On the other hand, he describes the snail in his poetry with a narrative tone like a fictional character and makes the reader undecided. The tone of the narrative puts the snail as a fictional character that transcends the poet's work and opens the horizon of the text into a hyperreal and mythical reading. For this reason, the snail as a sign of the poet himself makes this work a proper subject to the archetypal criticism.