Voice as Presented in Memoirs of an Iraqi Dog:A Genettian Reading

The theoretical bases of contemporary narratology are arguably rooted in Russian formalism and in Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics. Narratology, accordingly, emerged as an independent field of study in the second half of the 20th century, and narratologists such as Gérard Genette articulated the theoretical foundations of narratology. They propounded five key categories used particularly in the analysis of novel: order, continuity, frequency, mood, and voice. Voice, in the analysis of novel, is coterminous with narration which contains two important aspects: “time” and “place”. This study, adopting a descriptive-analytical framework, examines different aspects of voice in Memoirs of an Iraqi Dog based on Genette’s ideas. The study finds that the form of voice used in novel is an internal one at the level of place and futuristic at temporal level.