Critical Literary Studies

Disability was a ubiquitous image in the fiction of the nineteenth century, an age which witnessed controversial discussions regarding the questions of normalcy and deviance. Considered by many as the most famous writer of the period, Charles Dickens also widely employed disabled characters in his novels. One of the most memorable of these characters is Tiny Tim, a disabled child in Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol, whose pathetic condition greatly moves Scrooge, the narrative’s notorious protagonist, facilitating and expediting his spiritual transformation. This paper aims to analyze the character of Tiny Tim and his influence on the main character in the light of the theory of narrative prosthesis. Introduced by disability critics David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, the theory holds that disabled characters have served as prosthetic devices in many narratives; that is, they have not been appreciated, described, and understood for who they are as physically / mentally different people. Rather, they have only functioned as metaphors and symbols that have been constructed to convey a moral message to “normal” characters and readers. Research findings show that Tiny Tim exemplifies narrative prosthesis as his short presence in the work only reinforces the ableist discourse of the novella.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, masculinity created a tangled network of man-woman connections centered on power and control. Additionally, how a man formed relationships was very significant in enhancing his public persona. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction articulates this complicated and contentious historiography of masculinity and its linkages to the era’s literary tradition. This paper proceeds toward masculinity studies to demonstrate the representation of affective masculinity in Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920). The authors argue that Deleuze’s concept of “affect” and its relation to modern discourses of masculinity would enhance our perception of Fitzgerald’s construction of masculinity in his debut novel. The paper analyzes the affective transformation of Amory Blaine as a new man based on his interactions with the female characters of the story. The results of the research show that in Fitzgerald’s definition of masculinity, man is affected and enhanced by the gentle feminine features, and Amory Blaine too acquires a new identity for himself.

Ever since the publication of Susan Glaspell's play in one act, Trifles, in 1916, it has become a playground for different feminist theories to counterpart, many of which struggle to categorize the play as a reproduction of the traditional gender roles set by patriarchy. Since there seems to be no unity in defining the term 'feminism,' many believe that it would do justice to call its varieties, 'feminisms'. Being one of the most well-known terms in feminism, men's gaze has been viewed and reviewed constantly throughout the years. Yet, what seems to be new to this field is the concept of the 'female gaze'. Unlike anti-essentialists, essentialist feminists believe in embracing the 'essential' differences between men and women. Therefore, this paper analyzes Glaspell's play in the light of these two points of view on feminism, especially the theories of gaze, and looks for a shared ground for reconciliation. So, by delving into these theories, the researcher eventually concludes that although Trifles is criticizing the female status in a patriarchal society, relating all associated with her to 'trifles,' at the same time, it reproduces the traditional gender roles by approving essentially feminine characteristics which need to be celebrated instead of criticized.

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 present article aims to analyze Richard Brautigan’s Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 (1977) in the light of the genre of Metaphysical Detective Story. As a postmodern genre, Metaphysical Detective Story alters the customary features of traditional detective stories in order to go beyond simple murder mysteries and become a literary phenomenon which examines the questions of being. The central questions of the article are: what makes Richard Brautigan’s Dreaming of Babylon a metaphysical detective story? What are the functions and implications of metaphysical elements in the novel? To answer these questions, first the characteristic features of metaphysical detective stories are introduced and then they are contextualized in the novel. Focusing on such concepts as ‘parodic detective,’ ‘dreams,’ and ‘circular narrative,’ the present research examines how the novel subverts the standard tropes of hard-boiled detective stories and becomes a philosophical novel which portrays a bleak world and a failed hero. The article shows that as a postmodern novel, Brautigan’s Dreaming of Babylon deals with life in the postmodern era and explores the questions of being and knowing in the contemporary world instead of becoming another whodunit mystery.

This paper introduces ‘translational narratology’ (TN) as an eclectic conceptual model for studying translated narrative texts. As a source-based theory, TN investigates the status of three planes of the original narratology in translation: ‘story’, ‘text’, and ‘narration’. In fact, as an eclectic model, TN aims to set a theoretical foundation for both the original narrative texts and their corresponding texts in translation. However, the process for the original writer and the translator is a little bit different: the writer usually begins with the elements of the ‘story’ plane, and then comes to the elements of ‘narration’ and ‘text’ planes, simultaneously; the translator, as a reader, begins with the ‘text/narration’, and then comes to the ‘story’ plane. The former is bottom-up; the latter is top-down. The translator may have nothing to do with the ‘story’ plane; however, he/she may deal with this plane in the process of reading, understanding, and, preferably, translating. Some theorists postulate that the original narrative models have made no room for the presence of the translator as the main agent of the translated narrative fiction. This paper sets the theoretical scene for the translator’s discursive presence in the translated narrative texts.

Delving into the narration of Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth (2012), this enquiry unravels the threads of conventional realistic narrative and avant-garde postmodernist one in the tapestry of the novel, arguing that through the miscibility of these two heterogeneous modes of narration McEwan constructs a narrative meta-design that innovatively adds an enigmatic dimension to the spy novel genre. In his dual narrative that depends on verisimilitude as well as self-conscious reflexivity, he once again, a decade after his Atonement (2002), demonstrates his literary taste for bridging the "past" and "present." Marinating his narrative in Cold War events, and adding a dash of what Linda Hutcheon calls "historiographic metafiction," he makes a postmodern signature dish that sustains its paradoxical hybridity: a representational self-reflexivity or an anti-representational reflexivity. Aligned with Monica Cojocaru's detection of a "metafictional twist" in the novel as a part of her comparative investigation, this study discusses that Sweet Tooth's dual narrative makes it eligible to wear the postmodern badge.

The present research argues that it seems not all writers and their works may fall into an omnipresent ideology trap as Althusser conceives it; or unlike what Althusser holds, not all fictional characters are ‘interpellated”. Therefore, this research gives focal attention to reconsidering Althusser notion of ideology and his Ideological State Apparatus, ISAs, especially the cultural ISA through a descriptive-analytical method. Reed’s novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967), enjoying circumstantial artistic, religious, ethnic, racial, and literary characters, presents protagonists who not only refute or subvert this domineering ideology but also reshape and redefine it, making it necessary to reconsider Althusserian definition of literature as a cultural ISA. The novel, parodying “the Afro-American tradition of first-person, confessional narratives” is read as a microcosm to repudiate Althusser’s macrocosmic notions of reality. All through, the findings indicate that through the course of the novel, Reed subverts the dominant cultural and ideological discourse of American society through questioning the White standards from language and notions of reality to the ruling system.

In An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro gives an account of Masuji Ono, an ageing painter who reviews his life and profession in the post-World War II Japan. Though the novel has huge potentials for psychosocial development of characterization, few studies have paid attention to this potentiality. This study is going to investigate the characterization of the protagonist in terms of the midlife crisis with which he is involved. Considering the fact that Masuji’s review is characterized by the obsession with family and profession with an attempt to decide whether he achieved “generativity” or “stagnation,” his account can be discussed in terms of Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development. Focusing on the seventh stage of Erikson’s theory which is primarily characterized by deciding over the binary “generativity versus stagnation” and the individual’s struggle to decide on the meaning of life, the present research explores Masuji’s attempts at creating a positive image of his past and also his tendency to compensate his shortcomings in familial issues in order to finally feel “generative” in his midlife years. Ultimately, this research comes to the conclusion that Masuji is able to overcome the psychological tribulations of the stage by developing the virtue of “care.”

The main objective of this study is to examine different layers of power relations between characters of Persian novels as represented by Afsoone Sabz utilizing Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis framework (1996) which paves the way for decoding social structures that cause verbal abuse in Iran. To this end, Afsoone Sabz novel, written by Takin Hamzeloo, is chosen as the case study. It can be maintained that social structures like gender inequality, socioeconomic status differences, and class struggle determine verbal abuses in Persian. It is reasonable to argue that Hamzeloo uses her text to influence the audience (Iranians in general and Iranian women in particular) to be aware of social practices (gender inequality, socioeconomic status differences, class struggle and power relations) in an attempt to change, if not subvert, power relations (obtain gender equality and remove socio-economic inequality in Iran). The paper suggests that Hamzeloo uses othering strategy, as a powerful rhetorical tool, to portray the pessimistic outlook Iranian men hold about women through verbal abuse.

Although Dynamic Assessment (DA), rooted in Vygotsky’s (1978) Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) notion, has been extensively researched in teaching English as a foreign language, it has remained largely unexplored in teaching Arabic as a foreign language. To bridge this long-lasting gap, this study purports to investigate the effects of DA on improving Iranian Quran learners’ recitation performance. For this purpose, two intact grade 7 classes were selected at a public high school in Borujerd city, Iran, and were assigned randomly as DA group (n=21) and non-DA group (n=23). Later, they went through a pre-test, intervention (offered based on the principles and procedures of DA for the DA group and held in 15 sessions), immediate post-test, and delayed post-test. The collected data were analyzed through a one-way ANCOVA. Findings documented that the DA group outperformed the non-DA group on the immediate post-test. Additionally, the results evidenced that the DA group outweighed the control group on the delayed post-test. The study ends with proposing some implications in consistent with the tenets of Sociocultural theory.

The present study was an attempt to investigate assessment literacy among ESP instructors in the Iranian academic context. A mixed-methods sequential explanatory study was designed, and 100 novice/experienced ESP instructors with TEFL/non-TEFL backgrounds at the Ph.D. level were selected through criterion sampling to complete a questionnaire and a scale. Then, from among the mentioned participants, 20 were selected for classroom observations and in-depth, semi-structured interviews based on convenience sampling. First, the quantitative data were collected using observation checklists and analyzed through running Chi-square to compare the assessment practices of novice/experienced instructors with TEFL/non-TEFL backgrounds. Next, the qualitative data were collected through taking notes and applying interviews. All interviews were transcribed, categorized, and analyzed through content analysis of themes and open/axial coding. The findings indicated that the instructors with TEFL backgrounds significantly practiced assessment methods more than the ones with non-TEFL backgrounds. Furthermore, it was found that novice instructors significantly practiced assessment methods more than the experienced ones. Likewise, it was identified that novice TEFL instructors perceived assessment components better than their non-TEFL or experienced counterparts. The findings of this study can be useful for executive administrators in the ministry of higher education, university instructors and students.