Secondary Semiotics of the Myths of Naguib Mahfouz’s The Search

Nowadays, the literary genre of fiction has taken over the place of myth. Thus, novel, like myth, may have latent semantic layers and, sometimes, the main purpose of the author is to convey these layers to the reader. Semiotics is a science that examines signs to receive the inner meaning of the text. The sign consists of the signifier and the signified and their relation is called signification. There are two types of signification, explicit and implicit. Examining the significations leads us to a variety of meanings that are not seen at the narrative level. These meanings can be reexamined with the method of secondary semiotics that Roland Barthes uses in examining mythical systems. In this method, the signs derived from the preliminary semiotics are reduced to signifiers and again go through a semiotic study. Every text or system that can be studied by secondary semiotics is called myth, as Barthes put it. Accordingly, this article, first, attempts to examine the mythical system of Naguib Mahfouz’s novel The Search by extracting the signs that have the capacity of being studied by secondary semiotics. Through preliminary semiotics, we come to its three central signs (or its three myths): search for Father, love, and wandering. These are the most important concepts in the novel, leading the narrative to the struggle between good and evil and the confusion of man about this struggle. Next, in order to discover the hidden semantic layers and the implied meanings of the novel, the three signs are reduced to signifiers and again go through a semiotic study. The attempt to find the signified for these three signifiers leads us to a variety of concepts which Barth calls myth. These concepts open new avenues of text and connect the reader to underlying semantic worlds not seen in the narration.