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|b By being present and in place, man reshapes and employs the place in different literary forms according to his life needs and within his culture, if it is historically older. Therefore, the place is a key element to the building of the novel and a pivotal component in the structure of the narration, although the way it is structured and presented varies from one novelist to another and from one method to another. Moreover, no story can be imagined without a place and no events can exist outside the boundaries of the place as it is a network of relationships and visions that cooperate with each other to cover the narrative space. This led Arab critics and aesthetic scientists to study it, until a particular feature of the place was displayed; (Topology), which examines the characteristics of the place and its relationship to the rest of the literary work. However, the study of the place is still rare in Arab literary criticism. Although a series of foundational theoretical studies have been published, they do not keep pace with the significant artistic development, the trend towards renewal and the abundance of narrative production, especially, if we want to link these studies to the identity in an attempt to clarify the role of the place in showing and defining this identity. The problem of identity is then reflected in narrative through the disparity in perceptions related to its narrative reproduction. Hence, the study intended to be an aesthetic step to address the manifestations of the identity of place in the modern novel within a comparative applied study of two novels (Omarat Yacoubian) by Alaa Al Aswany and (La Scala) by Nour Abdul Majid. Probably, the most important reasons for choosing these two novels are: First: The two novels are consistent in referring to real places like (Omarat Yacoubian), the most famous building in central Cairo and (La Scala), the most famous Italian theatre. Second: Publication date, (Omarat Yacoubian) was published in 2003 and (La Scala) in 2014. This indicates a relative convergence; however, ten years may constitute a new vision of the place and its identity. Third: The classification of the two novelists in terms of their interest: Al Al-Aswany as a realist political writer and Nour Abdul Majid as a pioneer of female literature leaning towards social romance, may affect the significance of the place for both of them. Thus, the researcher believes that by comparing the manifestations of the place in these two models, the spatial identity and how it is reproduced in the narration becomes clear based on varying perceptions and ideology. The researcher has benefited from previous studies, whether they are related to the novelistic place, or the two novelists Alaa Al Al-Aswany and Nour Abdul Majid and their narrative works; especially, these two novels. The researcher also relied on the analytical descriptive approach to represent the manifestations of the closed and open place and try to discover the vision of the writer about them. As for the aesthetic approach, the researcher employed it to study the social dimensions of the place and their relationship to the structure of the novel, such as the dialectic of the place, personality and other elements of the novel, up to the technical dimensions of the place in the two novels. Moreover, the researcher benefitted from (the Identity Theory) with its two common aspects: "First, in terms of being a fixed and complete essence exists in the past and the present, which means the core of the thing and its fixed truth that is not renewed or changed. Second, as a dynamic perception believes that identity is acquired and modified continuously, it is an entity that develops with the enrichment of the experiences of its owners, their suffering and their victories, and its contact, negatively and positively, with other cultural identities." This is to answer the main question of the research: "To what extent did the novelistic place function in the two novels? Did it merely serve as a background to the events, or did it go beyond that to play a more distinctive role as an actor in the evolution and construction of events? Accordingly, research was conducted in light of the following steps: - Introduction to the place- its definition, function and significance. - The significance of the title in the two novels. - The identity of the place and its role in developing events and characters in the two novels. - Comparison of formations and spatial dimensions in the two novels. - A conclusion, through which the researcher reached several results, the most important of which are:- The place, which is the key element to the narrative work for its strong association with other structural elements, should be seen as a way of clarifying the concept of identity and the struggle for it. This struggle is the main theme or motive of the two novels. All events in the two novels are regarded as a mask through which the author expresses his confusion about the attitudes that should be taken towards the change and even the obliteration of the identity; namely, by presenting the social fracture at its different levels and making the individuals feel the responsibility for preserving or developing the identity. While feeling (the allusion) to the loss of identity through the fall of values that constitute the dominant image in the novel of "Omarat Yacoubian; this building, which is, at different times, a witness to liberalism and beauty, and the beginning of the era of false religiosity, ugliness and rudeness that became the features of the age, we saw a self-seeking effort to explain the reasons for this fall by attributing it to the social moral decadence and being driven by cravings. The building remains a symbol of the struggle between good and evil, morality and corruption, and even ugliness and beauty, which always forces us to reconsider what we have done and what we have to do in our society." La Scala (declares) the issue of losing identity throughout the first pages of the novel. Consequently, it remains on a long journey through the events of the novel to search for the self, the identity and the determining turning points that man faces in his journey to achieve his ambition. Here question about identity remains thus present in Nour Abdul Majid's novel, which some consider to contain hints to her autobiography. Therefore, by presenting the problem of identity, she intends to introduce a new concept of ego and the other, exceeding the traditional concept of identity. Finally, we can say that although both novels resorted to many narrative techniques to represent the identity (social) by Alaa Al- Aswany and (feminist) by Nour Abdul Majid depending on multiple cultural references, and then reconfiguring them, which gave their novels a new artistic value, the identity of the place in the two novels suffers from the lack of reference point that ensures its continuity in time. Therefore, identity remains, according to its social reference, a complex cultural and problematic issue. Writers also remain on a long and continuous search in the hope of getting to it.
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