Abstract
Abstract: While the title is a question, the text is its answer. The title is the light that illuminates the passageways of the text or at least a part of it. In this article, I briefly introduce the title and its theory that emerged in France as well as its definitions, functions and importance. Then I examine the titles of the contemporary Iranian novel introducing a quick view and how it develops starting from the titles of the early historical-social novels to the pre-modernist, modernist and post-modernist ones. I study one title as a sample for each era. The approach here is the views of Gerard Genette, founder of the title theory, in this regard and Jacques Derrida’s concepts of différance and decentring. Différance defers meaning, which has importance for the delayed connotations of the title until reading the text at least. Decentring gives to title in the margins better connotations than the general concept concerned with text/centre.