پژوهشنامه ادبیات داستانی
سال یازدهم شماره 3 (پاییز 1401)

Narratology examines the structure of the narrative with a specific approach. Gérard Genette, the French structuralist critic, in his theory of time in narrative, has examined the different types of time from the three aspects of order, continuity and frequency. The order is the order of narration and the continuity of the duration of the narration, and the frequency refers to the repeated narration of events. In this research, an attempt is made to first explain Genette's theory with the analytical-descriptive method, and then apply this theory to the novel "The Way of Becoming Besmel" by Mahmoud Dovlatabadi. Dovlatabadi, a famous Persian storyteller, has presented a picture of the Iran-Iraq war in this novel. The time used in this work is in the form of a labyrinth and twists and turns, in such a way that this way of narrating time has caused the reader to often get confused and disturbed in understanding the time of various events in the story. In fact, in this novel, one can observe the performance of time theory techniques such as frequency and continuity with many repetitions. The type of narration of time in the novel turns the reader into an active element in the story. The results of the research show that techniques such as internal monologue and hindsight are more effective than other narrative techniques in this work. The factor that caused the expansion of time and delay in the narrative in this novel is the continuous internal conversations of the main character of the story, and detailed descriptions, and dealing with matters that are not strictly related to the main events of the story. The frequency in this novel has caused time to slow down.

The current study has investigated the narrative time and the relationship with the suspension element by library research method and analytically based on Gérard Genette's theory. The novel “Freydoun had three sons” is mainly narrated by a psychotic character and the events are unfolded in an irregular, complicated and vague way. This novel somehow begins at the end and the reader perceives the fate of many characters and events from the very beginning. Such components leads to and expands suspension in the characters, time, place and events of the novel in a way that the overall interpretation of the plot requires an examination of its timeliness. The present study based on Genet’s theory concerns the narrative time and its relationship with the suspension element. The results show that in the order section, “retrospective” is of high frequency. This retrospective gradually eliminates the use of suspension. The foreshadowing in the first pages of the book also encourages the author to pursue the reason of the happenings with more motivation. The pace of the narration of this novel is greatly reduced due to the use of repeated descriptions that include characters, atmospheres, and the narrator's illusions. Descriptive pauses are aimed at expanding suspense and in some cases creating artistic and poetic pleasure. By omitting and summarizing some events, Abbas Maaroofi has avoided marginalization and accelerated the pace of the narration. Regarding the frequency, it can be said that the repetition of some incidents and events was due to the importance of the topic and attracting the reader's attention. The most important of these repetitions is the feeling of sadness, loneliness and psychosis of the central character of the story.

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), one of the philosophers and theorists of Russian literature of the 20th century, proposed his theory of carnivalism, inspired by carnival celebrations. In these celebrations, people break the chains of fear, away from the domineering space of dos and don'ts, and behind a critical laugh, they show the issues that have been silenced by the dominating voice of the society. In his theory of Carnivalism, Bakhtin examines the actions of the carnival by using the principles of satire, which is based on dialogue genres and is one of the most important tools for understanding the world of the carnival, in order to examine the works of humor and presents elements such as conversationalism in the space of chronotope (time-space), architectonics (organization of relations between subjects) and heteroglassia (meaning in the situation) to criticize satirical works. In this article, by examining two hypothetical kings, namely Demoghorazeh from the book of Democracy or Demoghorazeh by Seyyed Mehdi Shojaei and the Qajar King by Ahmed Shamloo in the book of “the travel diary” of Meymant, the series of carnivals and actions such as coronation and de-coronation. Laughter and the logic of conversationalism of carnival have been investigated to show the intermingling of contradictions of human life in the grotesque of power and in the political-social atmosphere in these two works. Carnival standards are expressed in this work inductively and with a critical approach.

Mohammad Hassan Shahsavari's novel "Possible Night" is a met-story that has benefited from postmodernist storytelling techniques. Shahsavari has effectively utilized the element of space in designing this narrative and the story-making process, The atmosphere of the story casts a shadow over the whole narrative and is directly related to the performance of the characters, transformation is the most prominent feature of space in the novel, as the story has a symbolic overall space and several individual spaces; the beginning of the story comes with a verse of Hafez of the whole book. The general setting of the story has moved on to the theme that there is no certainty and reality in life and anything can happen. Each chapter is also shaped by the transformation of space, relying on the description and tone of the characters, the three romantic, logical, and love-hate spaces, each of these spaces interacts with the other space in a general space. The present article examines the question of how space is in the novel and how it affects its narrative, the creation of space in the novel has been investigated.

In the fictional works of Shirzad Hassan, one of the famous contemporary writers of Iraqi Kurdistan, social themes, especially the position of the family institution and the relations between its members, are very prominent. This study seeks to investigate the position of women in Shirzad Hassan's three index novels, and the author has studied descriptive-analytical methods and library tools to examine family and emotional relationships, especially the image of women and common perceptions and beliefs about it in society. In the naturalist novel My Father's Fence and Dogs, he describes the suffering and depiction of the black world of families living under the domination of a patriarchal system, each of whom is struggling in some way with mental health issues. In the realist novel, a woman above the minaret pays attention to the issue of desecration of girls from a psychological and sociological perspective, and the author tries to take a psychological view of this issue and its effects and feedback on the psyche of young girls who are desecrated. In the romantic novel NaturDarreh, he deals with the Platonic love of schoolgirls and boys and examines the influence of the patriarchal and authoritarian system on the formation of personality and the emergence of mental illnesses. The results of this study indicate that Shirzad Hassan considers cultural poverty to be much more dangerous than economic issues and he believes that by highlighting society's misconceptions about emotional relationships between family members, in order to change the views of their people. He take a few steps towards this key issue.

“Binary oppositions” are resulted from Saussure’s doctrines and indicates that the work’s intellectual totality is based on opposite pairs. Pairs including “black/white”, “truth/lie”, and “poor/rich”. Binary oppositions are seen within the substrates of the phenomena such as language, society, thought, behavior, and culture; makes them meaningful and generates communicational gateways, forming sign systems and special patterns. Binaries are effective in code organizing and highlighting the signs. “Ermia” the first novel written by Reza Amirkhani, is the description of a warrior’s mental challenges in matching teachings of the holy defense (Iran-Iraq War) with some facts of Iranian society after the security council resolution 598 that led to ceasefire and the people who were involved. The trace of binary appositions and its practical elegance are appreciated in the configuration of novel’s incidents. The present research applying a descriptive-analytical method, first of all explains three sets of codes associating with novel’s conflicting thoughts in order to access the hidden layers of text, then categorizes, decodes, and analyzes binary oppositions in two categories of “personalities” (Mostafa/Ermia, Ermia’s family/Ermia, Moammar/Ermia, Shahin/Ermia, Mostafa/other friends, the families away from war/the families involved in war, Kavoos/Ermia, Ermia in the past/Ermia of today) and “places” (the front/the city, north of city/south of city, Ermia’s trench/Ermia’s home, front/university, city/rock quarry) and finally explains the consequences of oppositional relations of signs within the formation of three viewpoints: “passive”, “responsible”, and “concerned”.

Image studies is one of the new fields of comparative literature in which the researcher examines the culture and literature of a land in the works of a writer of a period or school. Khaled Hosseini is one of the famous contemporary writers of Afghanestan, who has more or less displayed the cultural elements of Iran in his works. The present research is carried out in the field of comparative literature under the theory of imagery with the help of library study and descriptive-analytical method. How these influences appeared in Iranian characters and cities in the two novels Kite Runner and Thousand Shining Suns are the issues investigated in this essay. The findings of the research show that the source and foundation of many of the author's thoughts are rooted in Iranian culture and literature. In his works, he has been influenced by Iranian culture and literature, and he has illustrated his ideas with the help of these elements. Hosseini has benefited from the art and literary approaches of poets such as Hafez, Movlana, Jami, Nezami, Foroogh Farrokhzad and Khajeh  Abdollah Ansari, and among the cities of Iran, he also mentions Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan frequently. The issue of immigration to Iran, Iranian cinema, the Iranian car Peykan, the Shiite structure of the social fabric of the Iranian people, Iranian proverbs, and the customs of the Iranian people are among the other issues that are mentioned in the text of the two novels Kite Runner and Thousand Shining Suns.

The present study analyzes the story of the Alchemist Story by Paulo Coelho based on Maslow's theory. The purpose of this article is to achieve a deep understanding of the main character of Santiago's story by analyzing the comparative content and matching the text of the story with Maslow's chain of needs; how Santiago fulfilled Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs starting with the journey to the treasure. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is divided into five categories: Physiology, Security, Love and Belonging, Self-Esteem and Self-Actualization. At the level of physical needs, Santiago could easily meet his needs. When he started his journey towards realizing his need for security, he faced major challenges, but he was able to overcome them with the power of faith. The need for love and self-esteem was satisfied enough to pave his way to self-realization. Spirituality helped him a lot in passing through the sufferings of the path of self-realization. The result of the comparative study of Santiago's personality with Maslow's needs showed that despite all the difficulties, Santiago was able to fulfill the needs from the lowest level to the highest level and achieve the only task of humans, which is to realize the personal legend. A detailed description of how to meet the needs is provided in the article.

A major part of adaptation studies, as an interdisciplinary branch, is devoted to the process of transmitting the written fiction such as novels and short stories to the visual medium of film.  Experts of cinema and literature have spoken about the quality of cinematic adaptation, suitable works for adaptation, types of adaptation, their quality, etc.; Sabouraud has argued that a correct understanding of the style of the original work and the use of cinematic tools to turn the fiction into a film are necessary for successful adaptation, and twentieth-century critics have emphasized the preservation and transmission of the "spirit of literary work" in the adaptation process. In this research, by looking at the theories of adaptation studies, in a descriptive-analytical method, the quality of adaptation in two films adapted from the short story of The People’s Child written by Al-Ahmad has been analyzed. The results show that in the film called A Beautiful Snowy Day, despite being more faithful to the events of the origin story, the choice of melodrama genre is contrary to the realist style of Al-Ahmad story, he has caused the spirit of the work not to be transferred, but in the short film entitled Before Darkness, despite the significant differences, in the plot, characters, time and place, etc. with the original story, the filmmaker adherences to the story style and the use of appropriate cinematic tools have reflected the spirit of the work well.