JOURNAL OF NARRATIVE STUDIES
Year:2018 | Volume:1 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:7

Narratology is a methodical approach of studying narrative structure. In literary criticism, this approach tries to investigate the semantic system beyond the text by analyzing the form in the literary work. Narratology reveals the common, sometimes recurrent, narrative structures, as well as its major, sometimes hidden, components in a text. One of the important elements in the narrative structure is “ Time ". In most narrative texts, the narrative time is a real time. This paper applied Genette's theory of time on a novel called Jayeh Khalieh Soloch written by Mahmoud Dowlatâ bâ di. The main aim of this article is to analyze and discuss the three levels of the narrative time: order, duration, and frequency in the novel. The results suggested that the function of different times, namely, the calendar time, the emotional time of the characters, and the overall time of the narrative have been expanded throughout the novel. The significance of the study is to clarify the advantages of using new approaches of criticism and literary interpretation as well as recognizing the application of narratology in the study of modern and classic texts.

Since narrative plays a significant role in cinema, its detailed structural study is a promising area of investigation. In this line of inquiry, two Iranian movies, namely, About Eli and The Past by Asghar Farhadi were selected to be analyzed based on a structural approach. Gerard Genette's theory of chronological relations between story and narrative was applied to these movies; the concepts of "order", "duration" and "frequency" were detected in both narratives in order to explain the complexities of the movies. According to Genette, "order" is the relation between the time of the story and that of the text or discourse. This comparative study revealed that due to its allegiance to the realist cinema, About Eli potentially has a linear "order", being in correspondence with the events of the story. In addition, there are a few anachronisms in the text. However, in The Past, as the title implies, flashback has a crucial role, but all the flashbacks are speech-based not visual which is in line with the world of the realist cinema. The scene type of "duration" were employed in both movies whenever there was a need to introduce some characters or to attract the attentions to some particularities. Moreover, the ellipsis type of "duration" were used in order to create the suspension and dilemma of the plot. "Frequency" is mostly singulative in both works in order to keep the movies loyal to the realist cinema.

Narratology is an area of study investigating the overall system governing the narrative and plot. It is a modern field emerging from the developments in structuralism in the 20th century. Although narratologist have a common understanding regarding the nature of narrative, each has constructed a distinctive theory. The French scholar, Gerard Genette, one of the prominent figures in narratology, has put forth his theory of narrative inspired by the works of Bart and Todorov. Dividing story into three levels of story, narrative, and narrator, he tries to reveal the relationship among these levels using time mood, and narrative tone. Analyzing these levels, one can put forth a coherent analysis of the narrative text, and examine the narrative competence of the narrator. Using a descriptive-analytical method, this study attempts to investigate one of the short stories of Najibe Killany (a prominent Egyptian author) called Abo-Moazza (having a patriotic and anti-colonial theme) based on the Genette's theory focusing on the narrative mood and tone. The aim of the study is to measure the author's use of the narratology's principles to convey his thoughts. The results indicated that the author tries to bridge the gap between the levels of the story by using quotation and direct speech. Furthermore, he increases his control over the events of the story by enjoying the top position and omniscient viewpoint.

Myth is defined as a story, rooted in the identity of every culture and based on the human beliefs and individual or plural identity which have national, social, and universal traits. Myth illustrates wishes, beliefs, and values, stories of struggles between Good and Evil, Self and Others, and so on. In this regard, myth has an ontological interest. Hence, researchers analyze myth to study the evolution of the human's way of thinking and its "being in the world". The study of myth, consequently, can be understood as a concept of evolution and continuation, which focuses on the concerns of the ancient and contemporary man. If the creation of myth is a potential of the human’ s mind creating new myths, it could be argued that the study of myths can open up the mysteries of the ancient myths. Literature has an important role in transferring myth because both are rooted in human imagination and creativity. Myths are common in various epic and lyric genres, or in theater and novel. This study is a comparative analysis of the current manifestation of the ancient myths in two of Michel Tournier’ s novels titled Friday and Robinson and Friday. Moreover, the myth of Oedipus in two of Robbe-Grillet's novels titled Repetition and The Erasers are compared with Sophocles’ s original work based on the Genette’ s approach.

Based on James Phelan's Triple Component Theory of Character, this article aims to reveal which of these triple components are more significant in the change of narratives from pre-modern to modern era. Since some of the significant differences between pre-modern and modern narratives is the priority change in plot and characterization, i. e, the latter becoming prior to the former, the narratology of the characters in these two genres of story can partly explain the reasons of such a change. The result of this study showed that in the modern characters, the Synthetic component becomes prior to the other two components i. e mimetic and Thematic; while the pre-modern characters – specially the characters in Realistic narratives-try to get as close as possible to their real human models in the real society. Thus, the most significant component in their being would be the Mimetic component. This is in contrast with the characters in modern narrative. Since the authors, here, are disappointed with the society, their characters deviate from the real characters of life and thus, their synthetic component becomes more prominent. The narratological case study of the present article is Malakout, a modern novel written by Bahram Sadeghi.

Self-disclosure and eclecticism are two main features of the postmodern literature. All other features are either categorized within the domain of these two or influenced by them. The macro-level of eclecticism is an interwoven representation of the real world and fiction that causes the prevalent delineation to be suspended. One of the main aspects of the suspense in the boundary between reality and fiction is documentation, based on which the narrator tries to cite the real events in different ways or include them within the content of the story to increase the ambiguity of the text. Using a descriptive-analytic method, this study classifies and explains all types of documentations in one of the most outstanding Persian post-modern narratives-the novel Miss Azadeh and its writer. The results showed that the narrator has interwoven the characters, events, times, places and other issues and concepts of the two real and fictional worlds at the verbal-lexical level in different ways. Moreover, at the visual-imagery level of the text, and based on genres and media such as handwriting, design or plot, painting and picture whose intensity and credence of documentation seem more prominent, the narrator represents the concepts at the verbal-lexical level. These types of narrative aligned with the epistemological context and the principles of genre rules not only suspend the boundary between the reality and fiction, but also add a state of ambiguity to the narrative.

Narrative interpretation is a process of transferring meaning from the researcher to the reader. This study aims to discuss the functions of the narrative interpretation in social studies in general and urban studies in particular. Narrative analysis moves beyond the linguistic analysis, investigating perspectives and presuppositions emerging from stories to understand the ways human experiences are formed. Although it seems that only the narrator evaluates the event, in fact, the narrator and the reader construct the meaning through interaction. An example of these narrations can be found in the representation of urban gentrification from the viewpoint of the benefactors. These representations, which are based on the life experience of the social agents, are realized and narrated in the form of open interviews. Then, they are interpreted from a hermeneutic approach. The main theme of the constructed narrative of the agents of gentrification can be understood as a "pretentious loss".