Metanarrative and Focalisation in Omaima Al-Khamis's Short Stories

(A Narrative Study)

Abstract

This research aims to uncover the relationship between metanarrative and focalisation in the short stories of Omaima Al-Khamis, where metanarrative is considered a postmodern literary phenomenon that emphasizes self-awareness in narrative writing and self-reflection. This study examines the relationship between metanarrative and focalisation in short stories, using the structural narrative approach. The research was divided into an introduction, three sections, and a conclusion. The introduction addresses the importance of the topic and its objectives, in addition to the research problem and questions. The first section studies the concept of metanarrative and its interests in the narrative text. The second section addresses classifications of narrative perspective, while the third section, thru application, examines meta-narrative and focalisation in the short stories of Omaima Al-Khamis. The study reached several conclusions, the most prominent of which are: meta-narrative appeared in the short stories thru focalisation where the narrator, whether thru zero focalisation, internal focalisation, or external focalisation, can use meta-narrative in the narrative text by restricting their information and understanding of the story they are telling with its characters and events, and the way the events of the story are conveyed to the reader; thus, self-reflection and reference to the narrative text's procedures become clear in the story. The short stories of Omaima Al-Khamis are also characterized by the openness of the narrative text to other narrative texts and the conscious reference to narrative writing procedures thru focus. The emergence of the deconstruction of the illusion of reality in Omaima Al-Khamis's short stories thru different types of focalisation.