Stratification of Karbala space in poems of Mohtasham Kashani, Mousavi Garmaroudi, and George Shakkour: Based on the Geocriticism of Westphal

Karbala has been a multiple and dynamic space and so the writers’ perspective on it was multiple and dynamic as well. Geocriticism is one of the new interdisciplinary approaches that focuses on space in postmodern era. Geocriticism investigates the relation between subject and space and studies the geographical space and the imaginary space of literary texts. The current study was aimed at investigating the effect of space stratification on readers in a selected number of poems. Such stratification was influenced by time as well, creating different layers of texts in space. The researchers tried to unfold the space-time layers in these poems that shaped the space of Karbala, based on the spatiotemporality principle of Westphal theory. The results indicated that poets would identify themselves with these layers of space, as they unveil the dialectic between the self and the other. Moreover, in this study the viewpoint of the Christian poet (exogenous) was studied against the Muslim poet (endogenous), by applying multifocalization principle of Westphalian theory. The principle focuses on different points of views being endogenous, exogenous and allogenous. The study reveals the convergence of selected poets’ perspectives.