Abstract

Fantasy is a new terminology in literary criticism characterized by escape from the world and its familiar frameworks, which means flouting logic and natural laws. Fantasy sometimes features in Arabic novels go beyond the standard limits and criteria. The novel Imrat Al-Gharoorah by Salim Matar (1956), the prominent Iraqi novelist, falls in the realm of fantasy literature as its narrative elements such as plot, characterization, time and setting have imaginary nature. This study is a descriptive-analytic effort to investigate the levels of imagination in this novel and discover the role of fantasy in the structure of the novel. The results of the investigation indicate that Salim Matar employs narrative elements to offer a colorful fantasy atmosphere. To achieve this goal, the novelist has bestowed the title, characters, time and events in the novel the elements of change and metamorphosis and has used journey as a narrative technique. Thus, all these elements have contributed to an extraordinary atmosphere in which usual rules are violated and an imaginary world is portrayed