السرد العجائبيّ في رواية المدينة المسحورة لسيد قطب

Abstract

This study aims to clarify the embodiment of fantastic narration in Saȳid Quṭub’s novel “The Enchanted City” (1946), which is a short novel that has not been dealt with before from the perspective of ‘fantastic literature’. In its general atmosphere, the novel can be classified under the genre of fantastic literature because it fathoms the depths of hidden worlds that are full of imaginary events and mythological atmospheres. The study thus seeks to point out the mechanisms of fantastic narration in this novel as well as the implications of its title. The study also highlights the causes behind Quṭub’s departure from realism, preferring to deal with a modernist experience and establish a net of relationships between heritage texts and other modernist texts. The questions that this study tries to find answers to are: Is Quṭub’s employment of fantastic narrative considered an escape from a bitter reality, a political projection and criticism of a social condition through symbolism and association, or a tradition of preceding writers such as Tawfīq al- Ḥakīm, Ṭāha Ḥussayn, and ꜥAlī ʾAḥmad Bākathīr? What does the fantastic element add to the novel? How are Qutub’s skills reflected in his employment of the technique of fantastic narration? To answer these questions, the study monitors the fantastic nature of the novel’s characters and events as well as its structure of ‘place’ and ‘time’ and the characteristics of the narrative discourse, including the aesthetics of language, description and dialogue, the degree of the writer’s success in expressing the atmosphere of the enchanted and fantastic, how the writer differs from other writers, and the knowledge about what the fantastic element adds to the novel from artistic, aesthetic, objective, and semantic aspects. Besides this, the study investigates the heritage sources from which Quṭub derives the events of his novel, the method of his writing, the role of the fateful paranormal, supernatural phenomena in the formulation of the events, and the structure of the characters and their roles.