Passion and Narration in the Contemporary Arab Novel

Abstract

Abstract In this article, we propose to explore an aspect of semiotics that has been slow to emerge as a central issue in narrative semiotics. A substantive debate has recently begun today on the achievements and prospects of Greimas’ semiotics of inspiration. Without claiming to have a theoretical range, this article proposes to cast a semiotic light on one of these questions to show the transition from passion to modal. For instance, it demonstrates that the “terror” that is the subject of our analysis can be translated as an additional state between “wanting” and “not-able-to-not-do,” going beyond “the competence to do,” as related by its dictionary definition, to defining other states of passion as a “disposition” or a “feeling that leads to.” What occurs when this passionate state is embedded into a definite narrative? To approach this practical aspect of the question, we have chosen the contemporary Arab novel al-Hayy al-Latini (Latin Quarter) by Suhayl Idris, focusing on a sequence entitled “manipulation and terror.”