Analysis of Time in the Narrative Systems of Bahram Beyzai’s Afrā: A Discursive Semiotic Study

Semiotics refers to the conditions of receiving and producing meaning in narrative discursive regimes. In the field of narrative, we can mention Greimas and Landowski, two researchers of the Paris School, who have classified various types of narrative and its discourses into four categories: Action, Interaction, Accommodation, and Fusion. “Time” is one of the elements of narrative which plays an important role in the semantic chains of the narrative systems. It appears in the action systems on the basis of physical and temporal conventions, and in the modern narrative systems, it appears as sensible/stative times, such as ecstasy, circular, etc. In this article, by examining the framework of semiotics on the subject of narrative discourse and its various types, and also relying on each of the narrative models and their associated times, we answer the following questions: How do the dominant systems in a literary-dramatic work change, and how do these transformations of discourse systems lead to changes in the types of time in the narrative. According to the Discursive semiotic approach, the main issue is how the narrative systems and their times are able to change and enter the domains of each other. The main purpose of this article is to investigate the various types of narrative systems in the Semio-Semantics discourse and their transfer to each other, and consequently, the types of times that have a narrative function in these regimes. To achieve this goal, the focus is on the narrative in the play Afrā by Bahram Beyzai.