Investigation of the Narrative Time Discourse in Terms of the Structure and Semantics in the Novel ‘Al-zaman al-Mouhesh’ by Haidar Haidar

Time is a fundamental issue in the formation of narrative discourse because the discourse is considered to be one of the temporal arts and the form of the narrative structure is determined based on its temporal structure. Time is no longer a sequential concept in the modern world novel, in general, and in the modern Arabic novel, in particular. The structure of the narrative no longer depends on the logic of causality, so we see a shift in the time of the novelists’ works. Haidar Haidar, a Syrian novelist, is one of the novelists who uses time structurally and semantically to break the time continuity and create an anachronism between the story time and discourse. Using the descriptive-analytical method and Gerard Genet’s theory, this study examines the narrative time in the novel Al-zaman al-Mouhesh by Haidar Haidar. Its purpose is to examine the structure and function of narrative time and its implications. The results of the present study showed that the structure of time in this novel is circular or rotatory, serving the dialectical notions of the novel. In addition, the mismatch between the structure of the narrative and the story creates analepsis and prolepsis, and this is done by accelerating techniques such as summarizing, deleting, and showing the scene. Therefore, at the structural level, the monotony breaks the rhythm of the novel and diversifies it, and at the semantic level, it manages to convey its psychological and social concepts and implications.