Forma de citar este artículo en APA:

Alharthi, H. J. (2021). The semiotics of the untold story in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” by Yahya Amqasem. Perseitas, 9, pp. 31-54.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21501/23461780.3937

The semiotics of the untold story in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” by Yahya Amqasem

La semiótica de la historia no contada en la novela «The Crow’s Leg» de Yahya Amqasem

Artículo de reflexión no derivado de investigación

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21501/23461780.3937

Recibido: 11 de agosto de 2020 / Aceptado: 24 de noviembre de 2020 / Publicado: 13 de abril de 2021

Hanan J. Alharthi

Resumen

A través de nuestro estudio sobre el argumento de la semiótica de la historia no contada en la novela «The Crow’s Leg», pretendíamos mostrar la imagen de las prohibiciones religiosas, morales y políticas mediante la interacción de discursos con los niveles sociales y culturales destacados por el contexto semántico en el discurso. El estudio utilizó el planteamiento semiótico que señala los mecanismos del discurso narrativo que intervienen en las dimensiones semióticas y el significado de la historia no contada a través de la estrategia de los temas planteados (religión–política–ética). Al finalizar nuestro estudio concluimos la importancia que tienen las dimensiones semióticas que se extienden desde el significante al significado centrándonos de manera más profunda en el tema de la historia no contada a través de la significación de la prohibición religiosa, en la que enfocamos la centralidad de la mujer y la interactuación con hombres en muchos dominios que son considerados por el principado como vetados por la Sharía, que abordamos como una prohibición religiosa. En este estudio también nos referimos a la esencia de los conceptos semióticos y a la definición de contenido mediante herramientas metodológicas que estudian el mundo semántico de la novela y sus unidades morales menores y fundamentales que solo se alcanzan en su relación con los demás elementos y que se basan en un eje semántico común en la historia no contada y sus interpretaciones en el cuerpo de la novela.

Palabras clave

Semiótica; Historia No Contada; Discurso; Significación; Sentido.

Abstract

Through our study of the subject of the semiotics of the untold story in the novel “The Crow’s Leg”, we aimed to show the image of the religious, moral and political prohibitions through the intersection of discourses with the social and cultural levels highlighted by the semantic context in the discourse. The study used the semiotic approach that highlights the mechanisms of the narrative discourse operating on the semiotic dimensions and the significance of the untold story through the strategy of the raised issues (religion–politics–ethics).At the end of our study we get to the importance of the semiotic dimensions that extend from the signifier to the signified by devoting the untold story theme more deeply through the significance of the religious prohibition , in which we focus on the centrality of women and the mixing with men in many domains that are considered by the principality as forbidden by Sharia, which we dealt with as a religious prohibition. Also in this study we came to the essence of the semiotic concepts and what is content through methodological tools that study the semantic world of the novel and its basic minor moral units that are only achieved in its relation with the other elements and which are based on a common semantic axis in the untold story and its interpretations in the body of the novel.

Keywords

Semiotics; The Untold Story; Discourse; Signification; Meaning.

Introduction

There are many critical theories that concern with criticizing the literary text and its directives and procedural mechanisms, after being related at a certain stage to the circumstances in which the text is created and its general contexts such as historical and social circumstances, and this is known as contextual criticism, until the categorical criticism emerged, which concerned the text as an independent unit not influenced by external circumstances and not made by contexts.

These theories represented one of the most important concerns of Western criticism, among them the semiotic theory that was strongly related to the structural approach who established its linguistic foundations, Ferdinand de Saussure, who considered linguistics as a comprehensive science that other knowledge benefit from it such as literary criticism and its methods, stylistics, psychoanalysis and sociology. The semiotics, as a newly emerging science, found in the linguistic research an anchor based on it, and it derives techniques, mechanisms and analytical concepts from it, especially the significance that resort to apply semiotic duet to non-linguistic topics with a social nature, such as the social, cultural, and civilized historical context. Among these duets are: tongue and speech, signifier and signified, the sign.

In the context of this critical interaction, there are many theories that seek to study the text from all its aspects and answer all the questions searching for the mysteries of the text and its secrets, until the literary criticism achieved a quantitative and qualitative accumulation in this regard by virtue of what these theories achieved in terms of knowledge and procedural mechanisms for semiotics as a science that has many interactions with multiple sciences and other fields. But it is systematically related to the study of literature and narrative discourse because of its temporal and spatial articulations and semantic formations and as it is one of these vital phenomena that the semiotic theory operates, but in the beginning, we will discuss the concept of the semiotic theory and its most important general characteristics.

Semiotics in the western criticism scene occupied a distinctive position, because it is the cognitive activity that has its origins and cognitive extensions, where this theory derives its foundations and origins from cognitive fields such as linguistics, logic, psycho- analysis, and anthropology. Therefore, these fields had a major role in establishing their concepts and procedural and analytical methods. Where the linguist, de Saussure foretold the birth of an independent science, which is “semiology” as he said: “Language is a system of signs that express ideas. And from this aspect it is similar to writing, the alphabet of deaf and dumb, symbolic rituals, the formal shapes, and military signs. Despite this similarity, language remains the most important systems. Therefore, we can establish a science that studies the life of signs within social life. So, this science forms a part of social psychology. We will call it the science of signs or semiology in Greek means sign. And Linguistique will be a part of the semiology that makes this theory generate the dynamism of the literary text and its openness to reality” (De Saussure, 1995, p. 38). This is confirmed by Bernard Toussaint by saying: “The term Sémiologie comes from the Greek origin which means the sign Logos, which means the discourse, and with more extension the word Logos means science. Then Semiology is the science of signs or science that analyzes meanings by signs” (Al-Ahmar, 2010, pp. 11-12).

The semiotic analysis of the narrative path in the novel is mainly based on the semiotic mechanisms of the semiotic reading of semantic elements formed inside the structure of the text. What concerns us in this study is the semiotic narration, which means monitoring deep structures that aim to symbolic interpretations. The narration from the point of view of Grimas exceeds the literary boundaries what makes it happen in many forms, “This stream is interested in narrating the story without caring for the device that carries it. This is because a narrative work like novel, film, or drawing, studies narrative contents with the aim of highlighting its deep structure without regard to the dimension of the linguistics (Sharshar, 2015, pp. 35-36). Grimas relies in his treatment of the story on the immanent analysis to the meaning elements that is evident in deep structures then surface structures.

The approaches of semiotics theory have varied and their models and reference frameworks differed in narration in general and novels narration in particular. And what we care about in this study is research in the semiotics of the untold story in the novel and specifically in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” written by Yahya Amqasem through studying the form of signification in all the discourses searching for the meaning and symbolism that appears in all human actions and speeches, whether related to the story or the novel or the image. Accordingly, we will address a procedural and seminal analysis in the untold story and the prohibitions that have always been difficult topics to discuss and address in Arabic researches in particular, and looking into the untold story by comparing the narrative text with its historical sequence which related to, or with the biography of its writer or in a relationship with him.

If the critical discourse in its various forms confirmed the existence of mysterious and silent sites in the text, but our research penetrate to interrogate the silent and clarify the hidden and forbidden through the mechanisms of the Semiotic theory, by diving into the ideological implications in the narrative text and examining its narrative and graphic contents, in the historical and the ideology context in which the narrative text and the problematic presented by the novel are revealed, based on the provided answers. Also, investing the concept of the untold story sends a new breath and provides vitality to a difficult problem as long as it is occupied with reflection, which is the problem of deviating from the familiar issues and refraining from them by presenting new untold problems .The narrative text is not related to ideology by what it states, but through what it does not say. The reader does not feel the existence of ideology in the narrative text except through its hidden, silent and indicative aspects and feels it through the gaps in the text, the absent dimensions, and symbolic significations. These silent aspects are which the reader must stop to decode its ciphers and symbols.

“The text may be deprived–ideologically–from saying certain things, and the author finds himself obliged to reveal the limits of the ideology from which he writes, obliged to reveal its gaps and implications, means, reveal what is not allowed to be said. And as long as the text contains these gaps and implications, it remains incomplete. Rather than revealing a comprehensive and homogeneous unity, it reveals the struggle of meanings and their contradictions inside it. Therefore, the significance of the work lies in the difference between its meanings, rather than in the unity between these meanings (Macherey, 1980, p174). But the social criticism cared about the concept of the untold in the meaning of the social prohibited of the text, which Claude Duchet expressed in his talk about this criticism and its horizons, “With in literary work and within language, social criticism asks about what is implied, and the priorities, the untold or unthinkable, silence, and it formulates the hypothesis of social unconsciousness of the text, and it tends this way to enter into the problematic of the imagined (Duchet, 1979, p4).

The Semiotic of Place

The place represents an important narrative component of the narrative space components, and it is one of the most important spaces that modern semiotics cared about, because it occupies an important position in the narrative world. It represents the space within which time, events, and characters lay down, and it is the space that contains the perceptions and feelings of the characters as it has an intellectual and symbolic significance. Also, it is the geographical, sensory space for aesthetic symbolic significance that give it artistic specificity that makes it the focus of narrative narration. This is what we will show through the semiotic of place in our research, where it embodies one of the most important formative elements of the narrative space in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” because of what it has of psychological ,ideological social , and historical dimensions, which is what we will show by shaping the image of place by controlling the implications involved in the internal structure of the text content and its relationship to the distribution of spaces and their dimensions.

The place Semiotic in “The Crow’s Leg” appear through its existence and represent it as a semantic space that exceeds the geographical geometric figure to have a symbolic significance that passes the geographical space with limited dimensions, to open up to many horizons, such as its relation to history, revolution, customs, traditions and politics. As the place constitutes an essential theme and an important element of narration in the narrative text because of its narrative functions in its relation to the rest of the narration elements. The places in the “The Crow’s Leg” are various, including public places of transition and are in relation to the movement of people, most of which were open, such as villages, mountains, plains, the valleys and the village’s yards and other closed places such as optional accommodations such as homes, tents, and wheat stores as the land features of “Wadi Al-Husseini” were determined through the strong relation with the authenticity of the Saudi tribal heritage, which we have touched in the personality of the writer Yahya Amqasem, who shared the reader in a special historical journey.

Where the domination of the place appears in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” through the domination of the village “Asira” Al-Husseini Valley “Wadi Al-Husseini”, which is the original residence of the people in southwestern Saudi Arabia, which represents an important narrative focus because of the concerns of the characters, their memories, their birthplace and their identity address until they traveled to the mountains of Crow’s Leg (Saq Al-Ghurab), the second space, which embraces the incident events that happened to the people of “Asira” in Al-Husseini Valley, after their escape from war and enemy.The place, Wadi Al-Husseini, the crow’s leg, Al-Qayyim and Qunaydah ... represents the most important focus of the story in the narrative work as it embodies the evocation of history and collective memory. Especially this spot in earth has its own worlds that are characterized with the naivety and simplicity of life. The place in the novel, “The Crow’s Leg” carries the glories of the people of “Asira”.

The writer Amqasem in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” through the place semiotic renovated the tribal heritage of the people of “Asira” in southwestern Saudi Arabia, which is characterized with its special rituals, customs and traditions, until the emergence of the principality, which came to impose a new style of living and radically changing for all typical forms of life at that time in a village “Asira”.

The writer sheds light on the tribe “Asira”, historically ancient and geographically forgotten. The place is a narrative element that has its significance and symbolism inside the narrative context. The place has contributed to reveal the meanings and indications that the writer aims through the implications of the text, and from these indications, the acquisition of space for the epic character because of the struggle the tribe and its people had against the new principality and facing it with many ways. The other indication is represented in the generated traditions of the people of Asira and their relationship with the land and the nature that gives them the identity and existence, it represents his livelihood and his sustenance. The place is influential in the characters and it has a symbolic significance, as it is an indicative and signified entity at the same time, and with it the other narrative elements is completed and interact such as personality, time, events, narration, ... an indication that weaves the writer’s visions into the narrative context.

The writer mentioned the element of place as a space that has its semantic roles by presenting the nature of the place and describing it a functional description through the multiplicity of the elements of the place such as (valleys, mountains, hills, plains ...)then the place has been composed with its many elements and symbols so the place appears as a frame around the event, that is the semiotic reading of the structure of places seeks to it through the disclosure of the physical and psychological controls that govern its signs. Inside the spatial structure, which establishes spatial space in general, the place has multiple implications, like it is the geometric space and it is the historical geographical space and the narrative space.

The semiotic of time

The writer enters his narrative text by invoking the glorious history through the past time of the village of “Asira” in Wadi Al-Husseini and the tribes of “Mikhlaf” and other neighbor villages, by recalling a period of time nearly two centuries through a plot in the construction, making time an important fundamental feature in building the narrative text for the novel “The crow’s leg”. Amqasem was inspired, by the history full of grandparents’ glories, their rituals of living, and their strong relation with land and nature, many periods of time describing the lifestyle of a territory in southwestern Saudi Arabia. Amqasem excelled in weaving the timeline of the novel through the plot of the events system, as he gives the reader some leads to identify and conclude the future events.

The time for the novelist, which inspired from history, embodies the coherence of the story and the stability of its course as it was seen in the past, as time in the novel is clear most of times but it lacks some mystery some other times. As Amqasem opens the novel with an epic time, matching with the nature of the narrative content, before transforming to predict the tragic time, followed by an irreversible change in the system of living. The first time embodies the relation between man and the nature and its laws, as it is his identity and the pulse of his life and his extension. The characters in its relationship with nature are an intimate and strong relationship that gives people their existence and the secret of their happiness, and this made the love of the land inherited among the generations of those tribes.

The writer, Amqasem, devoted an entire chapter for two times, the time of the story generated from history, and the time of fictional narration. The storytelling time is based on reproduction from the womb of history, generating narrative time. The first time, which revolves around man and nature, and the unity relation between them without change through time, while the second time refers to a certain historical era that has ended, and which tells the story of a collective life for the people of “Asira” going towards the end and decay, then the transition takes place from the past time to the present time based on the dualism of destruction and construction, and from a free time to a closed authoritarian time loaded with the darkness of the future.

The narrative time was based on an alternating relationship of two functions in the narration, as it derives its external reference from the conditions of the people of “Asira”. But its internal reference in the fictional narration comes from generating stories transmitted by time, as the story reveals the relation between man and his land, and his relation with the tribe. The external time recalls the ancestors and grandparents’ glories and their tribal heritage, and dissolving of the present in standing on their glories and heroism. And it’s necessary for the tribal man to continue his grandparents’ heritage and preserving all the details of life and its laws without affecting any of these rituals by reproducing their values, and any violation of one of these tribal conditions is considered a threat to its continuation and existence. Time in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” is a mercurial time based on reproduction and development, and weaving a narrative text generated from the womb of current history in southwestern Saudi Arabia, by focusing on reproducing the tribes ’traditions and values by adhering to the tribe’s unity and coherence.

About the importance of time in the narration, Edwin Moen confirms that there is nothing more difficult to be secured in the novel than the presentation of time in a formula that allows to determine its extent and determine the pace it requires and refer it to the heart of the subject of the story. The time of the narration of events was mentioned with many techniques such as deletion, speed, anticipation and description. Also, the time came as a historical time that tells a story rooted in history, but it is a time of aesthetic artistic indications that gives the course of events interesting narrative intents and reveal meanings that are implicit and silent.

The narrative functions of characters

The characters are an important element of the narrative text because of its position in the narrative text, where the characters in the narrative space constitute their relationships and communication and the issues that they adopt and the functions that they undertake. All characters had their structural and artistic value in its symbolic level and the semiotic significance in the narrative text through studying its implications, the elements that contribute to its construction, and the cultural and social context in which it descends.

The characters in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” raised characters which have their symbolism and characterization because of the universal values they have that the writer embodied through his narrative text, where “the character stands as a projection of an indented behavioral image inside a special cultural type” (Bin Karrad, 1995, p102). The characters in the novel “The Crow’s Leg “are a symbol for resistance ,like the grandmother “ Sadiqiya “is a symbol of the struggling leader woman who has her authority and position in the tribe and judging along with her son, the sheikh of the tribe, and she is the mother and priestess who predicts future events like what is told about her relationship with the jinn, where the characteristics of old mothers are embodied in her and she is a symbol of revolution and originality.

Society in the village of Asira, which is governed by the mother “Sadiqiya” and her son Sheikh, is the society of customs and traditions and the preservation of cultural and social heritage, in which women share with men in the service of the land and the seasons of harvest, also in the rituals of the ceremonies that take place in the village and its arrangements. The character “Mother” represents the leadership of women in society, who sacrificed her eyesight for the sake of the people of her village. Sheikh of the tribe says, “Oh Sadiqiya, you are our first in the miserable day and the happy day” (Amqasem, 2009, p118). Also the character “ Sharifa “ represents the strong girl with the will and determination who is responsible for the village’s work despite being still young .Therefore, the daughter of the brave warrior “ Beshebish”, becomes a symbol of the strength and tribalism and the daughter of the land bedside them appears the character of “ Hadiya “ the appointed , obedient, and supportive wife to her husband, the sheikh of the tribe, despite the age difference between them.

The writer, Amqasem, achieved a victory to women through the position she obtained in his novel. He emphasized the importance of her value in the tribe and society, and emphasized this through the main role she plays in the affairs of the tribe, the importance of her role and her support to men in all measures of life and the interest of the tribe “Asira”. We can notice through the common path of the symbolism of the characters and their significance in the novel “The Crow’s Leg “ an embodiment of Bedouin , the son of the tribe, issues , traditions , and customs .The symbol of the character doesn’t represent an individual isolated from the community, but it personalizes a human pattern for the tribal man who keeps his grandparents’ heritage .All the characters in the novel form networks of interacting relationships among themselves and these individuals form a strong cooperation to the life experience of the individual and the community and to be a symbol of resistance against the principality that threatens the entity of the tribe.

The emergence of the role of women was distinguished in the novel as it is a moral , artistic and anthropological role that reveals a heritage of the tribe “Asira” in the southwest of Saudi Arabia, which distinguishes this text from others because of the sovereignty and leadership it gives to women and makes them a leader and director between the people of the tribe and a participant in the social and political life , side by side with the man. The writer says, “When the night comes to cover the village and the valley with its darkness , the party overturned to be an exhibition for all the women of the village who brought grain from their homes in the mill , and they come with tools and flour supplies to share in the burdens of the host house. And Alia Adi used to lead them in this special party for women, and when the time for the dance of the dinner comes, the girls come out to participate with men” (Amqasem, 2009, p120). The essence of the characters in “The Crow’s Leg” is based on the features it carries as it is a producer of ideas and situations and these alive situations have been embodied by history and reality for a period of time, the writer gives them life through his narrative text and this descends within the narrative and symbolic strategy of the writer based on individual discrimination and the personality of the tribal person.

The Semiotic of events

The fictional narration of events in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” constitutes a qualitative leap in the Arab narration, as it raises many questions and issues about its semantic indications and mechanisms of its operation in shaping events and their semiotics by diving into the corridors of text, history and chronology of events. The Saudi writer Yahya Amqasem exhumed the individual and collective memory of the tribe “Asira” in Wadi Al-Husseini, in the southwestern of Saudi Arabia. This area is characterized by the simplicity, specificity and variety of life, whereby Amqasem describes the story of the people of “Asira” with a distinctive, narrative , and artistic recording, which reveals the historical significance because of what this novel has of a suggestive and symbolic implications certitude in the history of the Saudi novel which makes it open , as reading generally rises to an interpretative doing that governs analytical procedures with the aim of rebuilding meanings and related them to each other and showing their general and specific impact based on the choice of a specific level (Greimas and Courtés, 1979, p206).

Amqasem describes the special nature of the customs and traditions of the tribe “Asira” , the rituals of their ceremonies and dances, and their songs ,also focusing on the nature of the environment and its laws, such as recounting their customs in circumcision and marriage and the seasons of harvest and planting and the relationship between women of the tribe and men who are proud of the heritage of their grandparents and attached to it through the ages until the unexpected event by the authority of the new northern principality came to impose their domination. Then the events begin to move to the Crow’s Leg mountains then return to the tribe in Wadi al-Husayni governed by the heroic mother Sadiqiya who represents the originality and strength of association, and to preserve the ancient inherited origins , and her son Sheikh But the matter did not succeed, as the people in the village resisted all the new laws and rules of the principality with many ways such as killing the cattle and burning the mosque and expelling the religious teachers until the principality thought about finding new ways to subject them to their domination by sending clerics and canceling some wrong customs practiced by the people of the village, such as separating between women and men and exempting women from work on the land. At the end, the new principality succeeds in possessing the land. These events are based on the beauty of the narration and its association and the mixing of the artistic with the historical in the text, with the aesthetic blending of the formal and the common accent of the people of “Asira”, which gave the novel a special and distinguished position in the Arab critical field.

The novel came in support of the tribal identity of the tribe Asira against the principality that wanted to expand its territory and spread its new identity at the expense of another identity without making any effort for a clear development other than killing the previous identity (tribal) and giving them an identity (Desert) befitting their expanded political project with an ideological goal, which made this work tends to consolidate the Arab tribal identity. That is what Amqasem wanted to communicate to all the sons of Saudi Arabia society, in defense of his and his grandparents identity, which he revived in a textual narrative work rich in history, customs, traditions and revolution mixed with a tribal language which was a problem to be accepted from the Arab reader “because of the identity of the language.”

The Symbolism covers the events of the narrative work in harmony with the artistic structure of the novel, making realistic historical events far from the fictional imagination. There is no doubt that the novel with its events discussed a fierce war between the inherited and the belief and the tribe against the principality and holiness of religion, trying to raise the ideological political project. The text overflows with history and the epic, here in the crow’s leg. Amqasem forms his narrative world with a narrative texture in the correlation of events, which gave the layout of events new aesthetic dimensions preserving the historical and traditional identity of the land of Wadi al-Husayni. Thus, the presentation of events in the novel is subject to the principle of causation, so events take a chain path according to a specific and special logic. The narrative textual material is only achieved within time, where the narration time matches with the time of the story and according to the logic of events, also the storytelling time and narration time are subject to signs and indications which appears to be a time subject to regular narrative plan and give the story logical semiotic dimensions.

The narration was correlated, and the artistic structure was coherent, and the dialogues added a special feature to the novel, although it looks indefinite sometimes, because of the interference of common Saudi language of the original people of this region. The events of the novel also included many meanings and details that made it distinct like the historical aspect. The narrative context has many tragic rituals that the writer narrates with sorrow over what the original people for Asira suffered, in return the writer gives an enthusiastic attitude to the events through the spirit of resistance of the characters and their confrontation with difficulties from the beginning of the novel to the end . The novel seems enjoyable in general, the sequence of events and its reality and its mixing with history, made it distinguished on the literary and critical level.

Semantic polarities of the untold

The Moral prohibition

The untold story represented one of the concerns of the Arabic novel in recent times due to the variables that took place in the modern Arabic narrative field , and one of the most important of these variables is the entrance of the novel world into the world of the untold story, by the inspiration of the historical material and monitoring the most untold important prohibitions, from these issues is the moral prohibition. History has recorded in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” the issues of the untold story and the revival of what the historical researcher overlooked, or the inability of the intellectuals to get these issues out of their silence. The untold issues represented a basic theme in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” that is revealed through this research in uncovering hidden secrets and behaviors of individuals. As the crow’s leg is considered the wide space in which all the civilized contradictions of the people of Asira intersect, and it responds to this disclosure by expressing the untold story.

This leads Amqasem to detonate the significance of the narrative text by transferring the issue from the untold to the announced, where the prohibited has become allowed and the untold has become announced, which clear the semantic indication of the sign, and intensifies its significance, which makes it loaded with a distinct charge that makes it amazing and bold. The behavior of the tribe “Asira” is considered an anti-religious behavior from the point of view of the new principality, this is because of the great mixture between women and men and the participation of women in ruling and interference in the tribe’s affairs and economy. The new principality envoy in his speech that “women should be separated from plowing, grazing, and wedding activities, and he raised the anger of the Mother, who did not keep silent when he insisted on the relation between devil and women” (Amqasem, 2009, p127).

Amqasem also revealed the “Asira” people’s ritual celebrations, in which a clear mixture between men and women, dancing, singing and celebrating without any religious or moral controls. The author says, “The Mother ordered a number of girls to go up the hill of the village, behind the ceremony, and to give their hair to the wind, swaying, and showing their beauty for the distant viewer, and little by little people ,old and young , came from their valley to the villages of Sabya valley (Wadi Sabya), to watch this ceremony, which is full of girls up Wadi Al-Husseini hills” (Amqasem, 2009, p120). Yahya Amqasem also focused on celebrations and weddings, and sharing of people and other tribes to these ceremonies and rituals. He said, “At the time of dinner dance, the girls came to participate with men, and there is no fire shooting in this dance regarding to the tenderness of the virgins existed in the field appreciating to their tender souls. The girls had stood in front of men, and each one of them chose a man who likes to join, making a glorious row with their wonderful clothes” (Amqasem, 2009, p120). And there were aromatic plants coming from the heads of girls and men, mixing with the breath of pride and vanity, and all have at the same moment, a smile that cannot be shown in any happy circumstance, as if it is the smile of eternity of this beauty that the girls ’fingers share with the fingers of men which are intertwined as a victorious one body with one soul” (Amqasem, 2009, p120). The new principality is trying to confront the people of “Asira” and considers that these behaviors are contrary to the ethics of society and religion, trying to change these rituals and customs inherited throughout the ages by changing the image of concepts and habits of life that must be changed to bear a positive significance consistent with the new intellectual and moral principles of the principality. We notice, from the foregoing, a semantic pluralism for the untold semiotic from the prohibited moral. According to the principality’s opinion, there are bad behaviors in the balance of morals that would affect religion.

These inherited customs and morals would contribute losing men and people to their morals more and more so that all their behaviors will deviate which carries its meanings on untold, inherited and fundamental indications. The tribe “Asira” represented a semiotic space in which there are multiple signs and indications through the detection of many prohibitions and the penetration of the hidden secrets, which was always prohibited in Arabic narration writing in general. The writer in the novel “The Crow’s Leg “talked about the sexual prohibition using very daring words and terms like talking about the rituals of circumcision and marriage ... “He didn’t stop waving with a part of his wrap in front of the servant, until he approached with his shaking body more, aroused to the sound of her groaning, when he becomes about to pull her she ran away towards Mother’s shelter with one leg, fearing of touch her back , as he always do , and the boy “Hamouda” followed him in this act, who does not hesitate to raise her clothes, revealing her private parts” (Amqasem, 2009, p67).

The novel is overflowing with the southern heritage, of tribe customs and traditions such as the ritual circumcision that belongs to the tribe for males and females with a great celebrations and publicity.” the joke of Al Habbash with the boy telling him that his circumcision will be till the pubis but he has to ask the aggressor to be away otherwise his genital will go inside the mother of the aggressor, Hamouda responded firmly, saying: (Hey Al Habbash, I am the son of Asira) It also shows his endurance and his patience with pain, Al-Habbash accepted his manly response, saying Take it easy son of Asira, i swear i know that you are a man .. and you see me waiting for your circumcision” (Amqasem, 2009, p123). The ritual circumcision is characterized by its potency nature and showing the boy’s tolerance to the pain of circumcision, in which he persists in showing his descent and his tribe and talking proudly about his uncles without shedding a single tear. Here the features of pride, potency, and manliness begin to be embedded inside the little boy, one day he becomes a man who defends the land, the tribe and his people.

Through this context, the significance of the sexual prohibition and the audacity of the phrase, which gives a strong expressive indication and brings us closer to the indications that the people of tribe Asira live with. Also, the writer talked about potency, wedding night, honor, and chastity, that deepen the strength of the semiotic significance of the untold issues in the novel. The language of the novel in this context revealed the excellence of the novel writing style by the author Yahya Amqasem, who gave an epic feature to the novel and earned it great audacity that printed its issues that penetrated the untold story without hesitation.

Religious prohibition

The semiotic of the religious prohibition appears in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” when the writer revealed the space the tribe “Asira”, which is governed by the inherited tribal laws without appealing to the religious instructions. “However, the preacher felt that this method is useless with these people, and preferred to end his talk by saying: (O Sheikh of goodness ... you have returned safely to your country nothing wrong happened. So, let us inform you of what God has taught us and ...), the Mother blew up in his face and she stood up with her majestic figure and cried: (We know the faith before you, principality’s followers ... you are lying here in the name of God, Hey disloyal) (Amqasem, 2009, p128). The religious side represented one of the most important pillars of the new principality, which seeks to expand its influence, according to intellectual and religious conceptions consistent with its own laws, where the principality’s men employ religion to serve the political and extensive side of it. It also seeks to spread intellectual and authoritarian ideologies to the people of the tribe, so it tries to take the hand of many of them in their favor, on the other side, the Mother Sadiqiya tries to preserve the principles and customs of the tribe and to resist the influence of the new principality. Yahya Amqasem says, “As the principality recently started to spread a rumor that people believed and settled in their homes admitting the modern principality. Some people were announcing that they (believed), means, they gained safety, then they returned to their previous way of life without any change, but the clerics, strangers, see that the doctrine of the people of this district, the crow’s leg in general, got rid of heresies and polytheism, they became believers in their first reference method by following” (Amqasem, 2009, p128). In return, the tribesmen tried to resist the new laws of the principality and to face the clerics and preachers in various ways, such as refusing to join the army, expelling the preacher and burning the principality’s mosque and refused to exploit in favor of policy.

The narrative discourse in our research was based on the productivity of the meaning by monitoring the semiotic of the narrative space and cultural phenomena with all the indications they have for the abandonment of the prevailing and rebellion on what is familiar, where the author Amqasem portrayed at the level of the untold accomplished text in the religious prohibition by highlighting the semiotic significant of the civilized, intellectual and historical phenomena of the people of Asira.

The political prohibition

The narrative discourse intends to reveal the untold story by presenting the seminal ingredients and its significance in the narrative text of the prohibitions and the untold story , including the political prohibition through a narrative format that carries the productive significance of the meaning of its semiotic significance, granted to it by the intellectual and cultural context covered in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” . The writer focuses on the political prohibition that the new principality tried to place under the leadership of preachers on the people of “Asira” and the authority of the sheikdom , which represented in changing the social life and ways of living and deprivation of freedoms and to eliminate equality between men and women in tasks and to cancel the authority of women who interfere in political affairs for the tribe and to interfere in the decisions regarding the policy of the tribe, as well as to interfere in economic life, such as agriculture, seasons of the harvest, the course of dams, and the relations of the people with the rest of the neighboring tribes. The preacher wondering:” Hey sheikh of goodness i think women ruled than you?” (Amqasem, 2009, pp129-130).

The Mother Sadiqiya represents the authority in the tribe “Asira”, as she is the mother of the tribe sheikh, but he doesn’t take any decision without referring to her and to her approval. The Mother, Sadiqiya, is a symbol of power, and influence and she is a model for the free woman with an important position in the tribe’s politics and affairs. “She, the Mother, used to arrange every matter unless convening a special council, her orders manage indirectly the mechanism of work of each group among the families ruled by her son. As her knowledge of the positions of the stars as she was known, as well as the weather and earth conditions, gave her a prominent position and to be an obedient person” (Amqasem, 2009, p43).

The writer describes the untold in the political prohibition of the multiple significance of this phenomenon, then there is a sign indicating prohibited topics in dealing with and discussing morally, politically and socially, and to open codes of inspirations and symbol of the semiotic evidence that highlights the details of the story in the crow’s leg as follows:

Each of the elements of the untold story carries semiotic semantic values, as each of the poles enters into a polar opposite relationship, and each of the two parties, people of Asira and the new principality, sees the other is fallen in the prohibition. The policy of the new principality from the point of view of the people of Wadi Al-Husseini is a policy of sabotage, injustice, enslavement, and on the other side, the principality sees it as a policy of reform, cultivation, and elimination of prevailing customs and traditions contrary to religion. Every indication emerging from one of these elements is necessarily different with the other prohibited. These Prohibitions are semantic signs with multiple meanings and the text in “The Crow’s Leg” is a text that is full of the semiotic indications for the untold story, through the interfere of discourses and its dialectic in the textual narrative, which made it open to more than one interpretation of the semiotic approach.

We can notice that the semantic poles of the untold story represented in religion, policy, sex and morals in an opposite and polarized relation because of its generated relations under the name of each of the elements placed in the semiotic square. We have shown during our analysis of the semiotics of the untold, the semantic field for each of the prohibitions, so each of religion and policy theoretically contradicts with his counterpart. The relationship between them is a contrasting relationship as religion for the people of Asira contradicts with policy and there is no relation between them and refuses to exploit the people in the name of the Lord. But the new principality uses religion to extend its political influence. Otherwise the moral and sexual prohibition in the novel is contrasted with the religious prohibition for the people of Asira. For them, there is no difference between a woman and a man, and a woman has the same duties as a man, she has authority and opinion as well and she shares a man in any field while the new principality definitely rejects this moral behavior and considers it contrary to religion. Thus, the indications are intersected and contradicted which makes an excellent contrasted relation. Thus, the tribe Asira (Wadi Al-Husseini) turns into a followed region to the new principality and the old identity changes according to a new ideology to settle its colonial purpose according to religious rules. This authority firstly is a political religious activity, apparently it is a religious thinking but in real it is a perfect political thinking,this was by force, and by abolition of all previous rituals in the tribe “Asira” , which is one of the excuses used in the name of religion, practiced by all the principality against these tribes in order to be able to impose its culture, new identity and control over its entire system, which was united hand in hand until it achieved its goal.

The previous issues are differentiated distinctly, but the figure of their unity is based specifically on clarification and disclosure, as it puts the concept of the untold story face to face in front of its crisis resulting from the difficulty of discussing it in modern narrative texts in a coherent and consistent theoretical framework. Where the penetration of the prohibitions and the untold represent a base in modern Epistemology in the narrative text through access to the preview of the untold and the implicit, which distinguishes a novel from the other. The Crow’s Leg is a revival of heritage and a mixture of legend with history. From it Amqasem detonates the features of the untold to give the novel a boldness and excitement in the course of the modern Saudi novel, which contributed to legalizing the narrative text and its legends, and through the concept of the untold, he again establishes for a different literary critical path in the novel in a different way. The untold in the narrative text, is the axis of the effectiveness of the narrative elements employed by the writer Amqasem and his key to the semiotics, through the discourse of the novel, which abounds with women, body, history and cultural heritage. The untold is also considered as a basis in modern Epistemology by researching in the reference origins of the text and reviving the hidden roots of the text which he doesn’t reveal directly but rather by reviving it and referring to it through the symbol and the allusion. They are open roots in the effectiveness of critical reading of literary texts through its philosophical and cultural savings. Yahya Amqasem uses all this in his narrative text, but he chooses from the concepts of untold, the most daring and sensitive meaning, to highlight the concept of prohibition, repressed and neglected. He blended the social and political history and transformed it into a crystallized narrative plot in a coherent unity that has its position in the Saudi narrative writing and its aesthetic artistic specialty.

Conclusion

The untold represented a fundamental issue of the subject of our research, we focused on the semiotic of the untold because the narrative text in the novel “The Crow’s Leg” is full of semiotic indications, which makes it distinct from other narrative texts. The writer succeeded in forming a narrative world radiating with a narrative and historical duality and how to deal with the historical substance to become a text loaded with semantics and signs and diving into prohibited topics that it is difficult for the Arab writer and intellectual to dive into or write about them due to the religious and political controls.

What we come to in our research is that the writer discusses the issues of the untold in the novel through a specific cultural system also through the semiotic textual executor with a new strategy in the narrative writing due to the strength in the significance and the expression and the boldness of the raised issues and the penetration and incursion in the paths of the civilized cultural pattern of the tribe Asira and its intellectual heritage . We find the writer revives these concepts and indications in the modern semiotic field. The semiotic of the untold was also revealed in the narrative text of our research through a creative description of phenomena and states to be embodied, and the models and images to be transferred, and the displacement, and deviation from the contents and meanings that emerged from routine and familiar forms of writing and what they have of signs. These forms have been breached at that time in the novel of our research and going away from the custom with detonating the significance by reproducing it in a new way and in new molds, which was named untold in the novel.

The narrative language of the Saudi writer Yahya Amqasem in his novel “The Crow’s Leg” was distinguished by giving the narrative substance a semantic charge that highlights its details in the form of significations, signs, and meanings, and thus becomes semiotic structures within the narrative structure of the text through these renewed significations, then departing from the structural concept to the semiotic concept open to the civilized and Intellectual cultural context . The writer also drafted his narrative text in a distinct language, including the local language of the people of “Asira”, mixing it with the classical language and using bold and old terms that distinguish that period of time from others, which helped narrative and linguistic tools to weave a distinct narrative text.

Conflicto de interés

El autor declara la inexistencia de conflicto de interés con institución o asociación de cualquier índole.

References

Amqasem, Y. (2009). The Crow’s Leg, Tuwa for culture and publishing, Algamal Publications Beirut.

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De Saussure, F. (1995). Lessons in Public Linguistics, Translated by : Saleh Al-Qarmadi, Muhammad Al-Shawish, and Muhammad Ajinah, The Arab Book House, Tunis

Bin Karad, S. (1995). Personalities of the Narrative Text, Cultural Building Publications of the Faculty of Arts in Meknes, first edition.

Duchet, C. (1979). “Positions et Pesrpectives” in Sociocritique, NATHAN, Paris.

Greimas, A.J. and Courtés, J. (1979). Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage, Hachette, Université, Paris.

Macherey, P. (1980). Pour une théorie de la Production Littéraire, Maspéro, Paris.

Sharshar A. (2015). An Introduction to Narrative Semiotics (Models and Applications), Algerian Publishing House, Edition 1.

Notas de autor

Hanan J. Alharthi

Assistant Professor of modern literature and criticism Arabic Department, College Of Arts. Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University hjalharthy@iau.edu.sa, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6125-8297