Journal of Literary Criticism

Journal of Literary Criticism

The study of unnatural narrative in Abu Torab Khosravi’s surrealistic short stories

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Ghodrat Ghasemipour 1
Manoochehr Joukar 1
Nasrin Sohrabi 2
1 Department of Persian Language and Literature, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz-Iran
2 Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Department of Persian Language and Literature
10.22034/jlc.2023.380810.1538
Abstract
Most of Abu Tarab Khosravi's short stories have a surrealistic style, and in them, events and other story elements exceed the boundaries of conventional realism. This research aims to examine five short stories from Divan Somnath, Hawieh and Kitab Wiran in the light of the theory of unnatural narrative. The theory of unnatural narrative, as one of the branches of post-classical narratology, examines the types of non- and antimimetic narratives. The stories discussed in this article depict unnatural storyworlds through the unnatural elements of Dead", "Half-human and Half-animal" and " "Metafictional Characters and Geographical impossibility", "Unfixed" and The External Materialization of Internal States. The issue that arises is how these worlds are formed, with what arrangements they make the readers believable, and finally what they say about us and our world. In other words, the aim of this study is to discuss the ways of unnatural world-building and the ways of making believable in five surrealist stories by Abu Torab Khosravi; Then, Jan Alber's natural reading strategies are used to naturalize the unnatural. The results show that these stories with measures such as citing religious beliefs, internal focalization and the dialectic of the natural and the unnatural make the readers believable, and finally their natural reading shows that these narratives are the basic concerns of contemporary human life such as the importance of speech and understanding. It depicts the idea of death in human relationships in the postmodern era and cultural and historical determinism in the form of unnatural things.
Keywords
Surrealistic short story
unnatural narratology
postclassical narratology
Abu Torab Khosravi

Subjects

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Journal of Literary Criticism
Volume 8, Issue 16
December 2024
Pages 390-339

  • Receive Date 10 January 2023
  • Revise Date 20 March 2023
  • Accept Date 09 April 2023