In Historiographical Pursuit of Foucault’s Power/Knowledge Theory in Poetry: Mari Evans’ “When in Rome” and Simin Behbahani’s “The Teacher and the Student”

Enthusiasm in the field of comparative studies, concentrating on similarities, variations and influences enhanced in the early decades of the nineteenth century with the rise of Occidental interest in Oriental advancements. About a century later, Michael Foucault introduced his cutting-edge theory, in which he illustrated how the various discursive institutions in a society are related to the circulation of power/knowledge. Hayden White revolutionized the historical outlook towards narrating events by emphasizing on the relationship between the supremacy and the oppressed, while insisting on the disclosure of cause-effect relationships in historiographical analysis. It is the objective of this study to investigate and trace the key notion of “influence” as proposed by the French School of Comparative Literature in the selected pieces, “When in Rome” by Mari Evans and “The Teacher and the Student” by Simin Behbahani in order to reveal how the texts, under the influence of hyper-contextual links of causality which are present in socio-cultural discourses, lead and contribute to the circulation of power and knowledge. Findings will indicate how the comparison of distinct artistic works demonstrates similitude in the expression of views and intentions while relying on factors which are extrinsically appended to them.