فصلنامه لسان مبین (پژوهش ادب عرب)
پیاپی 26 (زمستان 1395)

The way the element of time is used in some modern stories, has turned them into a far-fetched process for the recipient. Today the dominant chronology in classical stories are substituted by chaos in modern stories. Some of the fiction writers have used memories, dreams, human nightmares, as new kind of techniques which destroys the boundaries of time. This in turn, alters the pace of the stories and the repetition of some of the events. Gérard Genette, a French famous critic, has suggested three important sides of time, order, speed, and iteration, as the famous theory of order, duration, and frequency. It is considered as the most comprehensive theory in the area of analyzing time in narrative. This paper aims to shed light on the way this element has been employed in the short story of “A Handful of Dates” by Tayeb Salih, a famous Sudanese novelist; and “Love on the Pavement” by Mostafa Mastoor, an Iranian novelist based on Genette’ narrative theories. Both writers are similar in terms of applying the games of narrative. The findings show the order of events narrated is chaotic to signify the chaos in human’s spirit in a modern society. Among the techniques of pace-increasing and pace-decreasing factors, both the writers use descriptive pause which causes longer fractions and suspense in the story; and though repetitive narrative, they highlight the events.

Ghassasn Kanfani, a Palestinian committed contemporary fiction writer, in one of his most famous works Returns to Haifa argues armed struggle, resistance and sustainability are the sole path to free Palestine. Exploring the elements of characterization in this novel to highlight Kanfani’s art of writing is of great significance. This paper aims at investigating the character types and the various methods used in characterization by the author. Accordingly, characters are analyzed in terms major and minor, static and dynamic, positive and negative, direct and indirect (action and speech) characterization. The findings show the author’s intention is in creating heroic characters who are often static and symbolic; representative of the oppressed Palestinians who are displaced by force from their home. Through unconventional means, the novel presents Mariam a Jewish woman as fair and positive character than an enemy or a negative person. The novel shows how one’s patriarchy outweighs the love towards one’s parents; Khaldun, a Palestinian who has joined the Israeli army, turns against them.

Children’s literature needs to be criticized as the other literary genres; a criticism that takes the child into account and helps him to precept the story better. Aidan Chambers has presented a criticism method that takes the child into account as the reader and places him in the story. In fact, when writing the story, the author addresses someone, the implied reader. This method notes that the writer or the author, makes a relation with the reader in the text, and consciously and sometimes unconsciously creates a picture of himself and of the reader. Hence, the meaning of the text could be understood. This article wants to analyze different components of implied reader like style, point of view, favoritism and talking gaps, in some of the short stories from “Why the River Fell Silent?” and “The Flower Spoke to the Bird” story collections by Zakaria Tamer, the contemporary Syrian author, with descriptive-analytic and statistic approaches. The results show considering the components of implied reader, Tamer has paid lots of attention to use simple words and short sentences appropriate for children. Choosing appropriate point of view, siding with children and right interaction with them, are some of the other characteristics of these stories. In addition, Tamer transfer the stories’ messages like friendship and helping fellows, contentment, responsibility, protection of privacy and etc. by focusing on the moment of change in the life of the characters and choosing appropriate pictures for it.

Every text plays a significant role in recreating hegemony and power in society to access the legitimized discourses of the political rulers in public opinion. Laclau and Mouffe's critical discourse analysis is one of the methods which investigates the latent layers of language in written and oral texts and shows power influence in the reproduction of hegemony; that is to reveal how power discourses are formed. letters Mohammed Ben Abdellah (718-762 A.D), a Shia leader, and Al-Mansur al-'Abbasi (713-774 A.D), the Abbasid Caliph, are among works which can be analyzed to explore the political condition and power relations in Abbasid Era. The present study aims at analyzing the discourse of these two letters relying on an analytical-descriptive approach and in relation toLaclau and Mouffe's theories. The results indicate that both discourses are related to a single source of power; thus, none of them is neutral and impartial; being produced in particular situations. Moreover, the leaders’ claims are based on “leadership of the Islamic Natin”; therefore, both writers sought to explain their points through techniques such as “prevention”, “contrast”, “otherness”, “deconstruction”. Their difference lies in Mansur’s use of significant argumentative skills and has performed better in “highlighting”, “marginalizing”, and “deconstructing” the points.

Evidentiality as a grammatical category takes responsibility for the knowledge of the source of information for supporting the proposition, and it contains two types of information sources and effect on the audience. Grammatical elements differ in the evidentiality explanation in every language on the basis of language features. In such a case, wherethere is no possibilityof Evidentiality explanation in Grammar, lexical elements could be analyzed. In this paper, specific issues related to this phenomenon in Qasia Sermon are examined to understand Imam Ali's (AS) speech influence on the basis of the evidence, and information source and it has been demonstrated that how grammatical and non-grammatical makers are able to transfer the evidentiality in the Imam Ali's (AS) speech by descriptive analysis method. As a result, we confirm that lexical elements and Evidentiality strategies represent the maximum intuition and evidentiality referring to the Quran verses and logical argument.

Scientometricsis involves the measurement of quantitative influential indicators in scientific publication. Scientific-research journals play an important role in transferring scientific concepts. “Lesan-E- Mobin” is one of the scientific-research journals in Arabic language and literature. In this study, fifteen issues of this journal have been studied over a period of four years. In this paper, some criteria such as language, writer's cooperation, institution and cross- institution cooperation, the number of authors in terms of gender, author's educational degree in terms of gender, the most productive authors and institutions, the most frequent topics and the amount of utilizing their resources are evaluated. The results of the study show that, out of 161 articles, 31 articles were written in Arabic. The greatest cooperation was related to articles written by two authors (n=89). In 97 articles, the authors were affiliated by institutions. Two hundred-fifty-nine authors have worked with this journal of which 173 authors were men. Authors who were assistant professor at universities have been the most cooperative ones. Comparative literature with 34 articles has been the most productive field. The authors of International University of Imam Khomeini, Qazvin, with 22 articles have had the highest scientific contribution. Moreover, referencing has been 26.3% and 56.6% of the articles have used the resources below the average percentage.

Magic realism is one of the new methods of writing and a literary style in contemporary stories in which authors make wonderful, fantasy, and magical events and elements reliable and have readers to travel in the mysterious and believable space of stories. Using magic realism, particularly in developing countries, is becoming a common practice because of their political, historical, and social situations in recent time. Some of the features of magic realism in some of Naguib Mahfouz’s short stories can be investigated. In the present study, through a descriptive-analytical method, is to investigate Naguib Mahfouz’s short stories based on components of magic realism. The aim of the study is to show that Naguib Mahfouz links magic symbols and elements with Arabs’ contemporary history, especially Egypt on the one hand, and with the psychological profile of characters. The present study is significant because in the selected stories, psychological aspects of fictional characters and Arabs’ contemporary history have been significantly paid attention to using elements such as symbols, surprise ending, sudden events, the wonderful and strange beliefs, as well as dreams and visions. Arabs defeat by Israel, the political repression of the Arab communities, as well as national ignorance of the Arabs (especially Egypt), the inner conflicts of the characters, and their efforts to escape punishment were among cases carefully considered by Mahfouz through elements of magic realism.