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Personage is one of the main elements of literary works; as a result, it has entered the field of literary studies and research. The semantic-semiotic analysis, which seeks to study the process of meaning formation, considers personage as an evoked sign indicated by several physical and psychological features such as a specific noun. Mahmoud Dowlatabadi is an Iranian realist author that certain features of his works, like the creation of the characters, are comparable with some great realists such as Balzac. In addition, despite his poetic language and pompous text, silence has a remarkable status in his works. Most of Dowlatabadi’s characters are silent, even dumb, due to the inability to speak, the refusal to communicate, the suffering, the panic, etc. Based on the character semiotics, the present study aims to investigate the silence in the characters of Solouk, written by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi. To this end, we seek to refer to the principles of tensive semiotics and the theories that consider the character as a sign. This study, therefore, shows how the character/sign contributes to the formation of silence/sign in Dowlatabadi. As a result, we see how Dowlatabadi’s silence is linked to dysphoric affects and to various small units (semes), and then in profound generative ways, it is linked to the isotopic base of life/death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reflection on research theories concerning the analysis and interpretation of French-Canadian indigenous literary works. The particularities of indigenous literature from North America are examined. The questions of how to situate and understand a literary work in terms of its content, narrative structure and aesthetic aspect, and what are the challenges of indigenous literary studies, are addressed. Authors Yves Sioui Durand, Jean Sioui and Joséphine Bacon are mentioned.