Transformations of Narrative Discourse in the Modern Arabic Short Story

Abstract

This research addresses the central problem of transformations in the narrative discourse of the modern Arabic short story, aiming to trace its evolutionary path and highlight the most significant artistic and aesthetic shifts that have shaped its features from its inception to the era of experimentation and postmodernism. It proceeds from the hypothesis that these transformations were not merely formal developments but were an expression of the profound intellectual and social changes experienced by the Arab reality, and a manifestation of new visions of the world, humanity, and the nature of knowledge.

Using a descriptive-analytical methodology, the research observes the main stages of this evolution. The first chapter examines the stage of emergence and foundation in the first half of the twentieth century, dominated by a realist discourse with a linear structure and an omniscient narrator, influenced by translation, journalism, and an aspiration to depict social reality. The second chapter transitions to the modernist transformation stage, where the linear structure fragmented in favor of techniques like flashback and stream of consciousness, the authority of the omniscient narrator receded to give way to multiple voices and relative perspectives, and setting and character transformed into complex semantic and psychological spaces. The research concludes with the third chapter, focusing on the stage of experimentation and postmodernism. It analyzes the phenomenon of the "very short story" as the culmination of the tendency toward condensation, explores the mechanism of "intertextuality" as a dialogue with religious, historical, and literary heritage, and sheds light on "metafiction," which turns the writing process itself into a subject for contemplation, casting doubt on the illusion of realism.

The study concludes that the Arabic short story has successfully developed, through these successive transformations, a flexible and complex narrative discourse that transcends the simple function of storytelling to become a space for philosophical and critical reflection. This shift has been embodied in the movement of focus from structure and plot to reception and interpretation, from absolute truth to a plurality of relative truths, and from portraying reality to questioning the mechanisms of its representation.