القصة الإطار والجواب السردي في كليلة ودمنة

Frame Story and Narrative Response in "Kalīla and Dimna"

Abstract

The inception of frame stories in the literary Arabic tradition, I argue, originates in, first, what I call “assembly narrative” (al-sard al-majlisī), which ensued during the oral phase of the Arabic language in evening gatherings in the desert’s open space, and second, in a specific discursive type (nawʿ khiṭābī), “questions and answers” (al-suʾālāt wa-l-ajwiba), which dominated Arabic literary writings around the tradition of the prophet Muḥammad (ḥadīth) during the phase of writings and then expanded to encompass multiple topics. I argue that the roots of the latter can be found in the Accounts of ʿUbayd b. Shariyya al-Jurhumī, in which Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān quizzes ʿUbayd on pre-Islamic Arab history.

With the “assembly narrative,” the phenomenon of exchanging stories (taḥākī) appears in which an assembly participant is granted the opportunity to present an account (khabar), a tale (ḥikāya) or a story (qiṣṣa) through alternation, based on resembling or opposing themes; thus, stories and accounts generate other stories and accounts, producing knowledge and entertainment. As for the other type, “questions and answers,” with it emerged the need to inquire about historical, cultural, religious, and ethical issues from a known personality because of his/her knowledge of or familiarity with a specific topic and the trust toward what s/he offers regarding informative or narrative responses to the raised issues.

The questions took several forms like “What happened (to the character that will dominate in the narrative framing)?,” “How did that happen?”, etc., while the taḥākī (exchange of stories) produced all the embedded stories (qiṣaṣ muḍammana) that materialize as a narrative response (jawāb sardī) to questions of a narrative or documentary nature. In light of this concept I will finally analyze the structures, relations, and functions that characterize Kalīla wa-Dimna from a postclassical narratological perspective.

Key words:    Framing, embedding, taḥākī, narrative response, structures, relations, functions, Kalīla wa-Dimna