Analysis of the Function of Narrative Time in the Novel "The City that Died Under the Cedar Trees" Based on Gerard Genette's Theory

Khosro Hamzavi, known as one of the contemporary Persian writers, has generated a multifaceted work in the novel "The City that Died Under the Cedar Trees" by addressing the two concepts of time and space. Time and space (context) in Khosro Hamzavi's works, especially in this novel, have played an important role in the process of creating meaning in the narrative. Now, the basic issue that constitutes the body of the present research is, what are the techniques for creating, cultivating, and responding to the concept of time in this novel? Accordingly, to analyze this issue, the researchers adhered to the theory of time in narrative and, using a descriptive-analytical method and library resources, applied Gerard Genette's ideas to analyze the temporal techniques of narrative in this novel. The findings of the present study have indicated that the author has created a symbolic-philosophical work by obscuring the two elements of time and space, and most of its temporal techniques are "descriptive pauses and retrospections." Besides, its narrative type in terms of time is of the type of consecutive narratives.
Introduction
The notion of "time" and its concept have long been one of the most controversial issues and mental concerns of thinkers, and analyzing its quality and nature is of significance in the criticism and study of the story. The current study examines the pace and time of narration in the novel "The City that Died Under the Cedar Trees" by Khosrow Hamzavi. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that there is no indication in the text of this narrative about the age of the character, so that we can comment on the amount and scope of narrative time in the novel based on evidence. The narrator enters a place called "the lower years" as a teacher to teach at a certain time period.
As the sequence of events in the story indicate, he talks to different characters, hears and depicts their sufferings, expresses their ideas and thoughts, speaks of their poverty, misery and backwardness, and at the end of the narrative, gets lost in the solitude of the desert among his dreams and dies. Therefore, this course of his efforts in the story, although it occurs chronologically in a sequential chronological order (from the moment of entry to death) and this order of events is maintained throughout the novel until the end, so that no signs of "stream of mind" and "future-looking" are observed in the chronological order of the narrative, looking back is abundant in the text. In the longitudinal narrative type, the narrator continues a pattern of events from the beginning to the end of the novel without interruption, while in the layered narrative type, the narrator emphasizes the two elements of character and event and, at the same time, slowly expands the narrative loop of the story by shifting episodes of the story and flashbacks to the past.
Research Method and Theoretical Basis
A descriptive-analytical method was conducted in this study, which was based on library sources, and the researchers analyzed the "narrative volume of time" using Gerard Genette’s viewpoint in different parts of the story. In Gerard Genette's divisions, there are two types of time; 1- Extratextual time 2- Intratextual time. Extratextual time is the time we spend reading a text, or in other words, it is the time the narrator spends explaining a scene or describing an event. However, intratextual time or narrative time is the time in which the events of the story occur and is actually not a temporal dimension, but rather the volumetric dimension of the story in the mind and expression of the narrator. Genette calls the relationship between volume and time in narrative “dynamism or speed.” In his opinion, the relationship between volume and time in narrative manifests itself in three ways: a) constant or standard dynamics, in which there is a balance between the volume of content and the time allocated to it in the narrative; b) positive acceleration, i.e. when a short part of the text is allocated to a long part of the event; c) negative acceleration, or when a large part of the text is allocated to a short part of the event.
Conclusion
In the current study, narrative techniques were examined and analyzed based on the category of time in the novel “The City that Died Under the Cedar Trees” and the following results were achieved. The first achievement of the present study is that there is a correspondence between the author’s perspective and worldview with the elements of time and space in the novel. Due to his philosophical view of creation and a kind of philosophical solitude raised in his works, Hamzavi has created the time and place of the narratives as unknown lands with galactic and long times. In this narrative, the influential factor in "past-viewing" as the narrative time and also the descriptive pauses is, above all, the author's worldview: because he seeks to create a text full of codes and symbols with abundant descriptions and details, and to make the reader think. Another achievement of the present study is that in terms of narrative type, this novel is placed in the category of narratives with temporal continuity, because the author creates a detailed and elaborate narrative for three reasons: 1- Interpreting the characters' mentality and what is going on inside them. 2: The presence of an omniscient narrator in the narrative who seeks to interpret events and incidents. 3- The connection of the old place with the narrative stopping in place for a long time. In his narration, Khosrow Hamzavi actually plays with "time"; although the narrator writes most of his narrative in the present tense, he occasionally talks about his past. The narrative verbs are usually in the present continuous tense, but the narrator suddenly brings the audience into the past by introducing explanatory sentences in parentheses. This technique is, of course, one of the advantages of first-person narration. Hamzavi subtly changes tense and slips from one time to another. In this novel, Hamzavi pays special attention to the element of time and tries to place the reader in the moment and time when the adventures of the novel take place. For this purpose, he easily uses the past tense in many of his stories. Since the use of the past verb is common and simple in fiction writing, his technique and manner of using the past tense are remarkable and outstanding in their own way. He easily goes to the past tense and describes a memory that happened in the past, but he writes this same past in the “present tense” and places the reader in an uncertain space. According to Hamzawi, time is part of the dimensions of human existence. He considers the separation of the three tenses of past, present, and future to be unrealistic and artificial, saying: “Every moment of the present is a future that becomes the past.”