العجائبية في قصص الأطفال الشعبية لعبد الكريم الجهيمان مقاربة سيميائية

Abstract

Abstract

This paper studies an example of Saudi children’s literature (Abdul Karim Al-Juhaiman’s popular children’s stories) by highlighting the fantastic elements that created its artistic value and raised the degree of its literariness. It employs the semiotic approach to analyze the most prominent fantastic signs in its narrative structure from the cover to the deep level of the linguistic structures. The research aimed to present an analysis of the most prominent linguistic and visual fantastic signs employed by the storyteller in creating the literary surprise; to identify the most notable elements of the fantastic narrative structure of the stories (characters, place, and time); and to reveal his ability to merge the fictive and the real. It also tried to analyze the level of fantasy in these stories and how the writer created popular fantastic stories using classical Arabic language with a Saudi identity that suits the child's consciousness and opens their imagination. The outcomes proved that the fantastic in these stories is an aim and a goal announced by the storyteller at the threshold of his stories. The fantastic visual discourse was deployed along with the linguistic discourse to create fantasy. The fantastic in these stories came from various sources, suitable for the child's imagination and peculiarly manifested in the embodiment of the distinct Saudi identity.

Keywords: the fantastic, the fictive, semiotics, folk literature, narrative.