Journal of Literary Criticism

Journal of Literary Criticism

Moving from Hard Narratology to Soft Narratology: Discursive Ecstasy in Surrealist Narrative (Based on Two Persian Surrealist Short Stories)*

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Department of Persian Language and Literature
2 Department of French Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
10.22034/jlc.2025.506837.1713
Abstract
Surrealist narratives transcend structural and classical narrative systems and present phenomenal, unconscious, and miraculous perceptions in a dialectical relationship between dream and reality. One of the important functions of these narratives is the ecstatic function. Ecstasy refers to a state in which literary discourse transcends the structural, action-oriented, program-oriented, and goal-oriented system and enters a sensory-perceptual, abstract, and dream-oriented state. The issue that arises is how the transition from hard narratology to soft narratology takes place. What techniques and factors in this transition cause the production of meaning and ecstasy in the surrealist narrative? This article, using a descriptive-analytical method and a discursive semiotics approach, while examining the grounds for the transition from hard narratology in narrative semiotics to soft narratology, examines the characteristics of surrealist ecstasy in two surrealist short stories, "Nightmares" and "Traces of the Amber Man" by Abu Torab Khosravi. The results show that narratives move from purely action systems, material values, referential aspects, subject-object distance, and rigid and frozen situations to soft, fluid, emotional, and phenomenal discourse systems, internal values, non-referential forms, etc. Syntactically determined structures collapse, and grammatical and rigid subjects and bodies transform into perceptual, eventual, and mythological subjects and bodies. These arrangements create the illusion of surrealist images in the narrator, surrealist shock and jolt, loss of meaning, and the preservation of defamiliarization.
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Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 27 May 2025

  • Receive Date 15 February 2025
  • Revise Date 13 April 2025
  • Accept Date 26 April 2025