The Narrative Position of the Narratee in Radwa Ashour’s A l-Tantouria

A person or character to whom a narrative is addressed is called narratee. The narratee of a story can have a key role in molding the narrative structure of a story, and the sequence of events in it. The narratee also manages the ways audiences/readers are going to be affected by a particular story. Radwa Ashour’s Al-Tantouria is a contemporary Egyptian literary work which has unique narratological features. The narrative structure of the novel has multiple narrators, narratees and narratological focal points. Both the main narrator and narratee of the novel are internal. Having the internal nature of the narratee emphasized, one should keep in mind that readers will always be the inevitable external narratees of any narrative. One of the most important narratees of the novel is Hassan, who is one of the key characters of the novel. He offered his mother – the key narrator of the novel – to start narrating her story about Egyptian bravery, valor and national values. In doing this, the mother as the frame narrator of the novel considers Hassan to be her immediate narratee to whom she is narrating the story. It should be mentioned that the world views of both the narrator and the narratee of the novel are similar to each other. They are similar to the extent that at times the narratological positions of the mother and Hasaan as the key framework narrator and the internal narratee can be interchanged. Without Hssan - as the key narratee of the novel - one can claim that Al- T a ntou ria could not have been weaved in the Egyptian literary realm. Considering all the aforementioned facts, this descriptiveanalytical research examines the characteristics of the narrators and narratees of Ashour’s Al- T a ntou r ia . The study believes that such narratological analysis of the story can facilitate one’s understanding of the novel’s semantic rapports.