Mechanisms for forming metafiction in Saud Alsanousi's trilogy " Asfar Madinat Altiyn "

Abstract

The research was concerned with studying the mechanisms of forming metafiction in the " Asfar Madinat Altiyn" trilogy, identifying the critical issues and problematics it raised through it, and clarifying its narrative significance, based on a descriptive-analytical approach with an interpretive perspective, and accordingly, after the introduction which addressed the metafictional novel and the novelistic trilogy "Asfar of the City of Clay", the research was divided into three sections: the first on the metafiction of reception: recipient patterns and the problematic of stereotypical reception, the second on the metafiction of writing: sources of the tale and the creation of imagination, and the third on the metafiction of narrative structure, and the conclusion summarized the most prominent findings of the study, including: that the multiplicity of recipient patterns in the novel, which included the stereotypical recipient, the conscious reader, and the reader as a novelistic character, contributed to highlighting problematics and issues that deepen the critical dimension and reflect the novel's awareness of the cultural and intellectual dimensions in its reception, just as reviewing all possible sources of the novel and questioning them by rewriting, embellishing, and falsifying some of them contributed to shaking the reader's confidence in the authenticity of their transmission, and in addition, the narrative structure contributed to destabilizing the relationship with reality and reinforcing the fictional structure of the novel, through embedding a novel within a novel, character traits, the event of time travel, linguistic overlap, the typographical layout of the novel, and the paratexts that directed the text towards fictionalization, confirming the idea that the text is a constructed, fictional work.