Alzahra university , f.akbarizadeh@alzahra.ac.ir
Abstract: (157 Views)
The study of places and environmental sites in human societies is not limited to topographical studies or geographical studies only, but we can study the place from a cultural and intellectual perspective from the standpoint of literary studies from literary criticism. The novel, as a socio-literary work, narrates events and, perhaps following the perspectives of Paul Ricœur and Hayden White, engages in emplotment or the structuring of scattered facts into a coherent narrative. This involves weaving together places and their related events, vividly depicting their features as their voice rises alongside the characters to represent life in all its diversity as a means of strengthening and enriching identity and as a non-historical document. The novel "The Baghdad Clock" by Shahad al-Rawi, one of the most famous contemporary Iraqi novels, recounts the conditions of Iraqi society amidst the atmosphere of war and focuses on Baghdad and its various places as the epicenter of events to form the novel's plot. Through this, it portrays the intellectual, civilizational, and cultural image as the identity of the nation's people. This article aims to study the semantic features of place in the novel "The Baghdad Clock" using the descriptive-analytical method. It concludes that the novel attempts to emplot history by linking reality and imagination to delineate the identity of Iraqi society, particularly in Baghdad, across time from the past to the future. It narrates the civilizational, intellectual, and cultural landmarks of the place according to lived experience, where the identity of the place is inseparable from the identity of the individual. The novel presents Baghdad as an imaginative realm pulsating with life, where places transform into significant symbols of collective memory and belonging, contributing to the construction of characters and the formation of collective consciousness. The research shows that the novel blends the real and the imagined to offer a resistant literary image that narrates Baghdad and its places, and formulates its narrative identity from the depths of pain, nostalgia, and hope. Place in the novel, from the neighborhood to the Ma'mun Tower, from the grandmother's house to Al-Zawraa Park and the Baghdad Clock, is reshaped through the narrator's personal memory, becoming a vessel for cultural, historical, and emotional connotations that reflect the depth of the collective experience of its inhabitants.
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