While Arfa‘ od-Dowleh had always fulfilled his functions as a representative by staging himself in a ‘theatrical representation of international life’, to employ Erving Goffman’s conceptual formula, his Memoirs constitute the ultimate platform for a theatricalization of both, himself and the diplomatic world: the world is constructed as the stage for the performance of the play, in which the author plays the main role. This is the perspective, in which this paper proposes analysing Arfa‘ od-Dowleh’ Memoirs.
