A Study of the Timeliness of Narrative in the Exir al-Tavarikh Based on Gerard Genet's Theory

Abstract

Time is one of the essential and important elements in historical narratives, which together with components such as historical places and characters, form the consistency of an object and a historical event. Historians have used the element of time in various ways to narrate historical narratives. Gerard Genet proposed the theory of "narrative timeliness" and examined the indicators for measuring narrative time to better understand the function of time in narrations by considering the element of time in narration. The present study intends to use Genet's timing theory to evaluate a historical book's narrative form, namely the Exir Al-Tavarikh, and the relationships between the narrative components that make up this structure and explain the general pattern of levels and narrative components of the book. Given the importance of the time element in historical texts, it is clear that in addition to chronological order dominance over the author's narrative, time irregularities such as the historian's retrospective or futurism have led his narrative to "untimely or timeless." Simultaneously, the singular frequency of events as the dominant frequency is one of the most crucial time techniques that the historian has used in the category of narrative timeliness.

Keywords

• new criticism
• narrative timing
• exir al-tavarikh
• gerard genet
• narratometry