Examining the Elements of Reality and Time in Modern Narrative with a Focus on the Novel

Moradi, Ayoob; Jafari, Raha; Nemati, Faroogh

doi:10.30465/copl.2026.51529.4258

Examining the Elements of Reality and Time in Modern Narrative with a Focus on the Novel "Goethe Street Cafe" by Hamidreza Shahabadi

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Ayoob Moradi ¹

Raha Jafari ²

Faroogh Nemati ³

¹ Associate Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran

² Graduated from the Master's degree program in Persian Language and Literature, Payam Noor University, Tehran, Iran.

³ Associate Professor, Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Payam Noor University, Tehran, Iran

10.30465/copl.2026.51529.4258

Abstract

The change in perception towards reality and time is one of the main influences of modernism on the novel. Given that modernism in the novel immediately followed realism, the issue of "reality" remained important for modern novelists. But reality in the modern novel was completely different from reality in realism. Modernists believed in a higher reality that was formed in the mind. This type of reality was not expressed directly and required techniques such as monologue and the fluid flow of the mind. Another important issue was the connection between the new view of reality and the concept of time. Modernists argued that even if events in the external world were linear in nature, our subjective experience of them was never linear. This issue created important changes in the field of epistemology and historiography. Interestingly, attention to these issues in the modern novel sometimes led to the creation of novels whose main theme was these issues. The novel "Goethe Street Cafe" by Hamidreza Shahabadi is one of the Iranian examples of these efforts. Therefore, this article attempts to examine and analyze the author's representation of reality and time using an analytical-descriptive method. The results show that Shahabadi has chosen topics such as the effect of narrative in shaping perception, the effect of relativity on the perception of time and reality, and the narrative nature of historical reports as the main themes of his novel.

Keywords

Modernism

modern novel

reality

time

novel "Goethe Street Cafe"

Subjects