The Formalist Poetics of Narrative in Selected Stories by Alia Ataei and Humaira Qaderi: A Comparative Analysis of Narrative Organization and the System of Literary Devices

Abstract

This study presents a comparative analysis of the formalist poetics of narrative in four selected stories by Alia Ataei and Humaira Qaderi. From an initial corpus comprising six works and 30 narrative units, “Thirty Kilometers” and “The Balkhi Elephant” by Ataei, and “The Roads Smell of Crows” and “Anis’s Earring” by Qaderi were selected through criterion-based purposive sampling. The study employs a descriptive-analytical method grounded in formalist textual criticism. The analyses focus on fabula/syuzhet, temporality, focalization, information distribution, defamiliarization, repetition, contrast, the motif network, and the dominant. The findings indicate that, in Ataei’s stories, the problem of access to reality and the validity of knowledge is more prominently foregrounded: “Thirty Kilometers” organizes mediated perception, whereas “The Balkhi Elephant” structures a plurality of competing narratives and epistemic instability. In contrast, Qaderi configures absence and deprivation through material and sensory elements; the crow, clothing, and road in the first story, and the well, eye, earring, and the lost prospect of education in the second, perform organizing functions. Accordingly, the distinction between the two authors becomes evident in the manner in which the dominant is established and in the functional interaction among literary devices. These findings also demonstrate the capacity of Russian Formalism for the systematic analysis of contemporary Persian narrative prose.