A Comparative Analysis of Narrative Time Elements in Alice Munro's Runaway and Zoya Pirzad's Perlashez

Narrative time is highly important in the structure of short story for the conciseness of the genre and the impact on characterization. In the present comparative study, Alice Munro's "Runaway" and Zoya Pirzad's "Perlashez" have been analyzed based on Gerard Genette's narratology theory in order to show that the technique is highly crucial in short story and characterization. This study answers the following questions: To what extent the narratology technique is important in short story? What is the significance of Genette's narratology in characterization? The significance of this comparative study is that the works of both writers have common characteristics in style and content such as focus on women characters and their problems and the their social inclinations. It seems that Prizad has been affected by Munro’s stylistic features due to the contemporaneity of her writing and the heyday of the genre and the translation of Munro’s works into Farsi.