Ecological Discourse and Its Narrative Representations in Raqsat Umm al-Ghayth

Abstract

This study explores the narrative representations of ecological discourse in Abdulrahman Al-Akimi’s novel Raqsat Umm al-Ghayth, employing an interdisciplinary framework that combines narratology and ecocriticism. The research examines how the novel constructs the relationship between human beings and the natural environment through interconnected spatial, temporal, and imaginative dimensions. At the spatial level, natural and historical locations -including deserts, wells, roads, rainfall landscapes, and heritage sites-function as narrative spaces that shape movement, survival, and identity. At the temporal level, environmental experience is structured through narrative strategies of order, duration, and frequency, transforming oppositions such as drought and rain or fertility and barrenness into meaningful narrative and symbolic patterns. The analysis reveals that flashback serves as the dominant temporal device, reinforcing both human suffering and the historical depth of the local environment. At the imaginative level, the novel reinterprets nature through myth, symbolism, and folk traditions, enriching ecological concerns with cultural and poetic significance. The study concludes that ecological discourse in the novel emerges through the interaction of narrative form and environmental consciousness, demonstrating how contemporary fiction can transform ecological experience into a multidimensional literary vision that combines environmental, historical, and cultural perspectives.