The Image of Neighbor Enemy in Armenian Fiction Geopolitics: An Imagological Study of Poyachyan's Stories
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes1137Keywords:
Armenian exile, imagology, stereotype, symbol, the self and the other, toposAbstract
The article examines the image of the Turk as a foreign neighbor enemy in the collection Tomar Taragri (The Calendar-Chronology of the Exile) by Lebanese-Armenian writer Eduard Poyatchyan. The article reveals the genealogy of the foreign enemy figure in Armenian literature and, for the first time, examines the dehumanized image of the enemy neighbor in Poyatchyan's text through various imagological dimensions. Poyatchyan reconstructs the image of the foreign Turk through the traumatic memories of Armenian male characters and symbolic representations of the natural world, such as flies, mosquitoes, mud, and hunger. The purposeful presence of specific toposes in the works associated with the image of the foreigner serves as literary testimony to historical reality. The article considers the Armenian's abandoned house, grave, church, and garden as mythologized symbols - material embodiments of identity and historical memory - that signify lost land and homeland. The analysis concludes that the characters are literary witnesses bearing historical trauma, and in their imagination, the image of the Turk foreigner continues to be perceived as an enemy neighbor. Not believing in a peaceful coexistence with the Turk, not returning to their homeland, and choosing freedom in Lebanon or Soviet Armenia, the characters reject the path for a dialogue with the foreign Turk in the future.
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