The Semantics of Hannibal Alkhas’ Narrative of “Tablet” Tableau from the Perspective of Roland Barthes’ Narrative Codes

Semantics refers to searching for a final signified behind a text or exploring a semantic layer in each text in a process-oriented (rather than a product-oriented) framework. From a process-oriented point of view, a text is not limited to some deterministic meaning(s); instead, it involves a situation in which a reader can, during the reading, contribute to the production of meaning(s). Thus, in a process-oriented approach to the text, the reader is, on one hand, regarded as the subject of meaning, and the text is, on the other hand, as the context for the meaning only if there is a processed narrative. For this, a text is based on a narrative, which involves functional units governing systematic narrative functions of signs.Throughout history, various definitions were introduced about narratives, the most important of which relates to twentieth-century structuralists and Roland Barthes in particular.To Barthes, the narrative is characterized by exchange, i.e., narrative as the subject is the basis of communication; thus, a receiver and a sender are required. As a result, a narrative cannot exist without a narrator or a hearer. Although the narrator’s motives or narrative effects on the reader are not the main issues, an explanation of codes that give meaning to the narrative is the main object of a literary theory on narrative. For this, Barthes argues that narrative is a narrative code such as language which is recognized through a system of signs (semiotics). The system of signs first comes together at the level of functions and actions to finally establish a meaningful semantic communication at the narrative level between the narrator and the reader.The identification of the textual system of signs and foundations of the narrative was mainly performed by structuralist theorists in the second half of the twentieth century. Among the structuralists, Roland Barthes’ narrative codes theory was used as the basis for the semantics of Hannibal Alkhas’ work “Tablet” due to its comprehensive attitude to narratives compared to other structuralists’ semiotic theories.Hannibal Alkhas (1930-2010) was a modernist Iranian painter and the pioneer of figurative design in modernist painting. He has numerous works, and his work of art, “Tablet,” has been selected to be investigated for highlighting his distinctive and personal language compared to other modernist artists and characterizing his artistic features. Tablet is a two-part work of art involving symbolic motifs, attention to mythological motifs, and cultural elements, resulting from particular attention to formal elements, especially the element of “shape.” The goal of the present study is to gain the visual form of the work “Tablet” and realize possible meaning(s) of the text under investigation through Roland Barthes’ narrative codes theory. Narrative codes include five codes of hermeneutic, connotative, symbolic, proairetic, and cultural, which Barthes found while analyzing the story “Sarrasine” by Honoré de Balzac in 1970.Narrative codes refer to measures for our narrative. In other words, a narrative is realized through the narrative codes approach (based on a signifier and signified system), resulting in a process-oriented re-writing of the text under investigation. Therefore, it is critical to define Barthes’ five narrative codes, which include hermeneutic, connotative, symbolic, proairetic, and cultural. However, before defining them, it is essential to say that by codes, “it is meant a system of signs that generates a certain meaning and includes a set of signs and rules that govern their combination.”

Hermeneutic Codes: 

They refer to the codes formed out of differentiating different expressions that form a code to become axial, organized, and finally revealed. These codes seek to express and explain what it means to be a text in totality; thus, such codes are interpretive, and in other words, meanings arising from these codes result from interpreting texts. For example, the letter Z in the name Zambinella has a mirror relationship with the letter S in the name Sarrasine, with the two letters being graphically reversed. A relationship of this kind does exist not only in the apparent form of the two words but also in the direct reference of the two story characters, with Sarrasine’s behavior mirroring Zambinella’s moral attitudes. Here, Barthes classifies this relationship within the hermeneutic code.

Connotative (semantic) Codes:

 These codes include all the connotations that express the implicit forms of actions. This category of codes refers to distant textual meanings. For example, in a part of de Balzac’s story, “Sarrasine portrays the image of a holy father at school, instead of learning the primary element of the Greek language.” For Barthes, this image of the text connotes the meaning that Sarrasine is interested in drawing.

Symbolic Codes: 

These codes link special creatures and events to abstract and general concepts because “there is also the tendency that a symbol is no more than the private realm of imagination.” For this, a form or an event represents a general or expanded meaning in the realm of imagination.

Proairetic Codes: 

Proairetic codes include various actions integrated into the form of sequences together. The summarized form of these codes is explicit and clear significations expressed by a text in its simplest terms and readers can generally perceive it. In the meantime, these codes are the most stable meanings unless society’s perspective changes proportionate to the culture in which it arises; for example, the color red is, from an Islamic point of view, a symbolic expression of martyrdom, while this color is usually a symbolic indication of labor revolutions in western social systems.

Cultural Codes: 

Cultural codes suggest that the meaning arising from the text under investigation depends on understanding a reference to which the text has referred because “Cultural codes refer to a set of cultural significations”. In sum, this class of codes involves various codes of knowledge or philosophy to which the text continuously refers, i.e. they are references of philosophy and wisdom whose identification depends on determining a kind of body of knowledge”.In parallel with other Barthes’ views on the text, this theory views painting like a text because the quality of each narrative code as a basis for processing the meaning of the text is not limited to literature; instead, each work that its symbolic nature is perceivable, imaginable, and believable is a text. In sum, this paper aims to study a visual domain from a linguistic perspective. Therefore, the study answers two following questions: 1) What is the formal equivalence of Roland Barthes’ narrative codes in the text under investigation? 2) What are the meaning(s) of the visual forms of Roland Barthes’ narrative codes in “The Tablet”?Therefore, using library sources and Roland Barthes’ narrative codes, the present study aims to use analytical, reasoning, and inferential methods to investigate the semantics of Hannibal Alkhas’ “The Tablet”. To do this, the totality of the text is first analyzed to extract the functional units of its narrative. The identification of functional units of a narrative is decoupage (Lexie). For Barthes, lexie refers to differentiating text signification layers into readable units. Then, proportionate to the quality of each of the narrative codes (hermeneutic, connotative, symbolic, proairetic, and cultural), the formal-visual equivalence of the artwork “The Tablet” was inferentially determined to finally extract a meaning based on the processed form of the text and to direct the reader to understand the semantic themes. Semantic themes were determined within the equivalence process of formal states of narrative codes. For this, the formal-visual equivalence of hermeneutic codes, i.e. texture; the formal-visual equivalence of connotative codes, i.e. level; the formal-visual equivalence of symbolic codes, i.e. point; the formal-visual equivalence of proairetic codes, i.e. lines; and the formal- visual equivalence of cultural codes, i.e. shapes were determined to answer the second research question. As a result, hermeneutic codes represented the meanings of cohesion, order, and unity; connotative codes represented the meanings of connection, linking, marriage and fertility, plurality in unity, and life expectancy; symbolic codes represented the meanings of perfection and purification; proairetic codes represented the meanings of fertility and promotion of Christian teachings, perfection and sanctity, and cultural codes represented the meanings of attention to religious affairs, fertility, marriage, and prophethood of Jesus.