A Narrative-Structural Analysis of “The Caravan of Lost”

This research discusses the narrative in the poems of the poet “Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab” and in his poem “The Convoy of Loss” in particular. The importance of the research is evident in the fact that it deals with the language of a popular Arab poet, and with narratology as a method available in modern poetry. The goal is not only to highlight the poet, his poetry, or the era but to help the readers reach a perception where they can spot differences and boundaries that distinguish the poetic language from the narrative language. This is done by following the two styles in the same text, despite their overlapping, aimed at serving creativity and meaning. As for the methodology of the study, it adopts the behavioral-distributive linguistic research that was brought by the American linguist Bloomfield and applied it in his narratives. This approach has been capable of achieving the goal of the research, as the distribution was an important factor in forming the title, and the behavioral arrangement was essential in the semantic course presented. In order to achieve the desired goals of the adopted approach, the main titles of the research were: 1 the title, 2 the verbs (behavioral study), 3 religious and historical stories, 4 the dialogue. As for the results, this brief study showed that the poem is based on both the narrative and poetry. On the narrative level, the elements of the fictional genre, which are the events, the spatial time frame, the characters, the dialogue, and the narrative voice, are present in most of them. On the poetic level, the poet was unstinting in his use of symbolism and metaphor. However, the segregation of them lies in the segregation of reality and what’s been imagined, so the expression teeters between the transmission of the reality and the fabrication of a poetic image that speaks the details of the psychological side. This leads to a correlation between the two and an affection and an influence, as the reality pressures the psychological state until the emotion erupts, whereas the emotion directs its force towards the world in order to influence it. One of the two styles may prevail over the other in some aspects of the text, but it seems that both of them are means and ends simultaneously.