Dystopian narrative: Concept, Vision, and Stages of development

Abstract

This study seeks to examine the concept of the dystopian narrative in order to establish a clearer vision of its meaning, and subsequently to explore the historical framework of the global dystopian novel, along with its intellectual, social, and political backgrounds and the most Prominent Arabic dystopian novels and stages of development. The researcher assumes that a set of political, social, and economic factors—such as poverty, class stratification, discrimination, the erosion of the middle classes, totalitarian regimes, moral and ethical decline, as well as the technological boom—are crucial elements that contributed to the emergence of this type of dystopian narrative, or the dystopian novel, which has functioned as a tool of provocation, stimulation, and perhaps enlightenment aimed at changing this reality, or at least destabilizing and challenging it.

The study may also require a brief theoretical overview of narrative in general, in order to link the dystopian narrative to earlier forms of narration, thereby highlighting the qualitative difference between this relatively new form and the narratives that preceded those that were predominantly governed by realism. This necessitates, first, an exploration of the concept of narrative both linguistically and technically, along with its elements and components, before moving on to trace the stages of the development of dystopian narrative.