the notion of time in story genre in the course of time (investigation and analysis of the notion of time in tales and minimalist stories)

abstract the present study is conducted to find various forms of times in two fictional genres “tale” and “minimalist story”, and also to disclose the factors behind the difference of the aforementioned forms in the two mentioned genres. time is represented in the levels of plot, setting, language and the images in various forms. in case of tales, due to the absence or weakness of the plot, the sequence and order of the story elements like action and characters are not important; while in the minimalist story ,because of it strong plot, a special and logical order governs the story elements which becomes the basis for other sorts of time representations in the narrative. in the level of setting, it was shown that the time limit for the tale is day and night; whereas the same notion for the minimalist story was short whiles such as a moment or a day. also, the time situation does not make sense in tales, but in some minimalist stories, time situation exists. furthermore, the ratio of narration speed to story was investigated in the level of language, and it was concluded that in tale, the story speed is more than narration, and in minimalist story, this ratio is inverse; narration exceeds the story in speed. the equality state of narration and story speeds also exists   for both genres. in the last level, the images were analyzed in terms of calendar time of the narration and also the current time in each image, outside the narration; and the result was that if the images are more connected to the outside world in their components, they will be more dynamic, and if they are more inclined to the inside world, they will be static. according to this, the investigated images of tales were dynamic, while minimalist stories had static images. finally, by contemplating on the bases of these differences in the scientific, social and political grounds and fields, which construct the philosophy and world view of the creators of such fictional works, one can have a clearer understanding of the development process of the iranian scholars’ and writers’minds from the tale era to the minimalist story era.