Scent of the Acacia: Sensory Protagonists of Parviz Davai’s Fiction

Conducting research on the topic of sensory readings in literature, especially Persian literature, and verbalizing the results of such projects is a fairly new phenomenon. This means that we do not possess a set of collectively concurred assumptions about the context of such projects and at this early stage, therefore, there is a need to develop models through which such readings could be constructed. The model discussed in this presentation is informed by an ensemble of theoretical concepts such as “landscape”, “touchscape”, “smellscape”, “soundscape” and “tastescape”, developed by anthropologists of sensory studies. The model is further defined by the application of these concepts in a close reading and examination of a few short stories by Parviz Davai. I argue that in order to relate to these stories one should rely on sensory perceptions, and one should consider the invoked senses in the stories as their main protagonists. This presentation demonstrates how these protagonists succeed, with surprising facility, to accomplish the traditional literary tasks such as defining characters, creating a narrative and moving it forward, developing gradually climatic points, achieving a plausible dénouement, and so forth. From a theoretical point of view this model rejects “the imaginary divide between thinking and feeling” and leans on David Howes’ famous statement that “[such] a focus on perceptual life is not a matter of losing our mind but of coming to our senses”.