Narrative memory Representations: a study of the novel (G)" by Abdullah Al-Zamai

Abstract

This paper examines the representations of memory in the novel as a reconstructed past, reanimated through the narrative structure. The intentionality of remembering the past, or the affective connection with memory, as a struggle against forgetting, in the sense that memory forms a fundamental aspect of human existence, comes into focus. Using the technique of temporal analepsis, one of the most powerful devices of the modern novel's temporality, the human meanings come to be articulated through the individual's and/or the collective's memory and contribute to the narrative construction of a shared self. The novel (Jeem) by the Saudi novelist Abdullah Al-Zamay presents a profound model of Saudi fiction that is deeply concerned with remembering through narrative strategies, and this novel echoes the near and distant past through the narrative. The novel had been investigated through the phenomenological approach, aiming to reveal the intentionality of the act of remembering in the narrative and, in due course, resorting to insights from other critical approaches.