A Study of the Reception of the Persian Translation of The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan Before and After the Islamic Revolution in Iran

The Persian translation of The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by James Morier is undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of Persian literature.Mirza Habib Esfahani translated this work into Persian from the French translation of the book.The fact that a translated work, through an intermediary translation, can meet such a reception by the readers in the literature of a language is considered one of the rare and exceptional cases.Since the publication of this work, researchers of language and literature, translation, and other fields of humanities have studied its various aspects.However, so far, no research has studied the reception of this translation by Persian readers from a historical perspective.In this article, based on Jauss's concept of "Horizon of Expectations" and using the descriptiveanalytical method, the researcher has tried to investigate various aspects of the reception of this translation by the Persian readers before and after the Islamic Revolution through reviewing the works and examining the existing texts.To do so, from among the studies available on this work, which comprised about 50 Persian articles and books published since 1942, ten significant works (5 published before and 5 after the Islamic Revolution) were selected, and the expectations within them were examined and analyzed using the qualitative content analysis method.Next, the various themes of the Persian translation receptions discussed in these ten works were extracted and compared.The findings of the study indicated that during both periods, the Persian translation of The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan was of interest to the literary taste and in line with the expectations of the readers, including those of writers, critics, and researchers.It continues to be widely received by the readers, which has made this work enduring and popular.