Narrative Discourse Analysis of Two Short Story Collections; Majid’s Tale and Poil de Carotte

This research aims to conduct a comparative study of the narrative discourse in two short story collections: Ghesehaye Majid by Houshang Moradi Kermani and Poil de Carotte by Jules Renard. By employing Dominique Maingueneau’s theories of discourse analysis on literary texts, and by emphasizing the textual components of the two aforementioned collections, instances such as the relationship between the narrator and the narrated, kinds of discourse, and also polyphony in narration have been explored. Dealing with the life of a young adult and including much biographical information from the writers’ own lives, the employment of a humorous and realistic language are instances which make these two collections as good instances of the literature of children and young adults. This study has taken advantage from the theories of critical discourse analysis as an approach which analyzes literary texts and stresses the discursive and interactive aspect of communication. As a result, this research shows how the two writers are in fact very different in their narrative technique, the situation of narration and narrator state, the kind of productive discourse and narrative polyphony, which has resulted in a considerably different kind of literary production of the two authors.