An Analysis of Narrative Elements Used in Jami's poem Yusouf and Zoleikha

Abstract

Narrative poems use two important structures of narration and description to create a compelling storyline. It is important to recognize that a description is not only a tool used by the author to emphasize a word, but it also represents the timeless element of the narrative text. A narrative is a description of an event or series of events. In terms of speech time and story time, these two dimensions are at odds with each other. Thus, it is important to examine the relationship between these two dimensions within different theories of narration and within narrative texts as well. Description has been studied by scholars such as Tomashevsky, Barthes, and Genette in relation to narrative and narration. All narrative theories hold that description is the static dimension of the narrative text that is added to the context of the word in order for the narrative to be effective. This study examines the relationship between description and narration in Jami's Yusouf and Zoleikha from Tomashevsky, Barthes, and Genette's perspectives. The purpose of the present paper is to answer the following question: what is the relationship between literary descriptions and narration in Yusouf and Zoleikha? Tomashevsky's theory describes description as the free and static basis of the text, and Barthes's theory identifies it as one of the special indices and informants of the poem. Throughout this poem, description serves as a decorative and symbolic function, creating a negative acceleration in the narrative. Moreover, each proposition in the description is a proposition of existence.

Keywords

• description
• narration duration
• tomasheveskey
• barthes
• genette