جواد یعقوبی درابی

Repetition in fiction is a very common device that many authors employ to bring forth motifs and themes into their works or as a means of creating emphasis. Therefore, it is quite expectable to observe many works with repeated sentences, phrases, and even words in various periods, which either are repetitions of a character’s own words or the repetitions of a character’s utterances by another character in the narrative in a small scale and the repetition of the whole work in larger scale. Through the use of Genettian repeating frequency type (nN/1S), authors are able to stress particular events, provide themes and motifs, and make use of prior narration, simultaneously. By means of scrutiny of repetitions in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, and Charles Dickens’ Hard Times as three canonical works of British literature through Genettian nN/1S frequency type, this study could elaborate on the crucial emphatic role this frequency type plays in emergence of specific effects in these narratives.

The purpose of the present study is to employ René Girard’s concept of “metaphysical desire” in a comparative study of Pinter’s The Lover and Stoppard’s The Real Thing. René Girard has investigated the idea of imitative desire in a rather distinguished way. He contends that the nature of desires is neither innate nor autonomous, but rather we borrow them from the others. He argues for the idea that human beings are always looking for stronger mediators to gratify their desires. The imitative desire itself, once satisfied, is not gratified and the search for stronger impulses or mediators always continues in a never-ending process that Gerard refers to as “metaphysical desire”. The present research intends to look for metaphysical desire in the lives of the characters, wherewith they can examine the role of the mediator in the characters’ lives as well. Since metaphysical desire, as Gerard argues, leads individuals either to perfection or destruction and alienation, the characters are shown to imitate their metaphysical desire leading them to experience destructive consequences and family corruption. Consequently, the characters who have pursued their metaphysical desire on the verge of a negative sideline all fail to enjoy a life they long for, and are subject to alienation and misfortunes within which they constantly experience great pains. The characters also turn into obstacle-addicts who, metamorphosed into masochists and losing their lives for good, find no chances to change life as they long for.