Critical Literary Studies

Although literature and anthropology might seem an unlikely pair, their collaboration has been the subject of debate. As a theoretical endeavor, the present study aims to propose the fruitful collaboration between these two domains through the framework of litero-anthropological research. The results of such research disclose how fictional works once analyzed by means of anthropological criteria can be assigned to three levels of reading that are not only relevant to anthropology but also uncover the layers of meaning in literary narratives. For this purpose, a theoretical framework is formed that draws on Max Scheler’s exemplary person, Clyde Kluckhohn’s value and Edward Fischer’s the good life, the combination of which has not been analyzed collectively before. It was concluded that the analysis of a literary work by means of this framework opens a new gate to character analysis whereby literary critics can reveal how protagonists are portrayed as exemplary persons who promote a set of values through their discourse. Finally, the theory of the good life revealed if the set of values the protagonist upholds is conducive to attaining the good life. These values aim to reach beyond the world of fiction and meet the actual world of the readers.

This article unravels the concept of eco-trauma in American Indians’ lifestyle in Gardens in the Dunes (2000), a novel portraying eco-concerns of Leslie Marmon Silko (1948). Silko’s novel is preoccupied with ecological concerns of American Indians who depend on nature to continue their existence. Being detached from their ancestral lands, Indians encountered several psychological problems due to their indispensable loyalty to nature. This article focuses on the significance of environment and ‘place’ according to Lawrence Buell (1939), and traces ‘place’ as the center of feeling for a person. Cheryll Glotfelty’s connection between nature and culture, and Cathy Caruth’s perspective on trauma have been utilized to explain Indians’ psychological problems due to loss of ancestral lands. Eco-traumatic approach illustrates the interrelation of Native American’s identity and culture with their living place. Indeed, Indians return to their land to eliminate their environmental concerns. Their ceaseless effort to reverse eco-trauma by adhering to their ancestral ritual is also examined in this article. Silko re-emphasizes and stipulates that the notion of nature can consolidate Indians’ identity; hence, loyalty to natural environment ensures how Native Americans’ loss of land and nature opens up the experience of eco-loss or eco-trauma and diminishes Native Americans’ culture.

In Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation (2014), a unique relationship is established between a fecund and futuristic environment called Area X and a group of scientists commissioned to probe this area. While the scientists’ initial response toward this area is human-centered and Anthropocenic, the conventional expectations of this initial response are severely shattered later in the novel. The present study believes that the various aspects of this shattering gives us a glimpse of the kind of relationship we could have with the environment in the Anthropocene, the human epoch. By utilizing the theoretical concepts in key secondary sources – such as Pieter Vermeulen’s Literature and the Anthropocene (2020) and Benjamin Robertson’s None of This Is Normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer (2018) – the study identifies that various demarcational means fail to fulfill their binary making function due to the vastness and unmappable nature of environments such as Area X. Accordingly, this failure constitutes the study’s purpose in that it shows conventional paradigms of mankind’s knowledge bodies could not delve into the cognizance and intentions of an amoral and un-registrable environment. This failure also shows recalcitrant areas such as Area X are already present and all encompassing around us.

This study pursues a study of radicalism in Hare’s most radical play, Fanshen, and in Foucault’s mode of radicalism within his theory of power relations. From a specific perspective, this study borrows from the new wave of reevaluating and reinterpreting Foucault, which is concerned with irrationalism in his mode of radicalism. This analysis helps us comprehend the changes in the social trends and the specific pattern of radicalism in both Hare and Foucault. What concerns this study gravely, is the absence of the other side of reality or possibility in Hare’s Fanshen and in Foucault’s claims on power relations. The aim of the study is to depict how adopting radicalism and revolution by Hare and Foucault results in the justification of malfunctioned experiments. Furthermore, the way political tendencies are manifested to the audience is proved to be a key factor in the analysis of British political theater and in the shaping of British society. Finally, it is found that a Foucauldian reading of Fanshen results in the recognition of Hare’s specific pattern of radicalism which is in line with Foucault’s.

Through the lens of spatial studies expounded in human geography, this paper aims to investigate the dynamics of space and place in the metropolitan context of two twentieth-century novels set in contemporary Sydney titled Indelible Ink (2010) by Fiona McGregor and Five Bells (2011) by Gail Jones. The characters' interactions with city spaces and places will be studied to examine the effects of spatial experience on their lives. Inter-related notions of sense of place, place identity, and topophilia are analyzed in the light of theories expounded by thinkers including Yi-Fu Tuan and John Agnew. This is complemented by an examination of the impacts of landmarks as iconic public spaces on the characters employing ideas put forth by Christophe Den Tandt. One of the conclusions the paper reaches is that characters of both novels fail to establish or maintain stable bonds with places of their dwelling and cityspaces, as a result of which, their sense of place as well as their inner peace and security are disturbed. When place identity is undermined, they suffer from a sense of dislocatedness and placelessness.

In the annals of the Greek myth, there has been a lacuna surrounding Menelaus and Helen’s relationship following the sack of Troy. What distinguishes Barth’s retelling of the Greek myth is filling this void through constructing a posthistory to the relationship the couple bear to each other and his giving voice to the concerns of Menelaus, a character who has always been in the recess of the canon. While a large body of research has approached Barth’s “Menelaiad” in light of literature of the absurd, this study, through adopting the stance of quantum mechanics on the nature of reality, will demonstrate that Barth’s work is anything but absurd. Establishing the framework of the article based on the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, the present study argues how the adoption of the subatomic reality, implied in Proteus’ advice, allows Menelaus to jettison his festering obsession with the causality behind Helen’s choice and re-embrace her.

This research applies an interdisciplinary method of discussion to read George Martin’s A Game of Thrones, an epic fantasy, under the light of Nancy Katherine Hayles’ theories concerning modern laws of physics and literature. The plot of the novel has prominent intricacy with vulnerability and flightiness of its storyline and characters which remains open to abundant literary interpretations. This article uses thermodynamics to refer to a type of physics concerned with temperature and heat, and their link to energy, entropy and the physical qualities of radiation and matter. The conduct of these quantities is ruled by thermodynamic laws that transfer a perceptible description utilizing quantifiable macroscopic physical features. This research traces them within the system of Westeros, a fictitious continent enduring countless tensions and wars, in which entropy is manifested metaphorically. Martin shows how thermodynamics and entropy function and bring chaos, and bases his fantasy on the violation of scientific laws to epitomize the ontology of physics and give meaning to his imaginary world. Regarding this, the researchers show and conclude how Martin interplays physics and literature to decipher the reality of this chaotic world and propose a realistic framework to see the mechanism of universe in fantasy and reality.

The bulk of what we know as violence is myth. Since myths have been told and retold over the years, they have been taken as truth. This paper explores racial myths as representations of verbal violence in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved. Toni Morrison as an African-American identity explorer dwells on the slogans and myths as manifestations of Žižekian symbolic violence. Methodologically, this study uses political discourse analysis, black gendered feminism and psychoanalysis in the light of Slavoj Žižek's commentary on violence to be the approaches of analyzing the drawn data. The fusion of psychoanalytic terms with political ones sheds a fresh light on the concepts of ideology and violence. This paper aims at exploring the mechanisms of the black violence myth that spread the racial beliefs that Africans are more violence prone and have higher pain tolerance than Europeans. The conclusion extracted from this study confirms that the discourse of the myths functions as pseudo-ideologies to normalize the violence against non-European races and stop the African subalterns' resistance in the form of fighting back against the raids of the Europeans.

The present study aims to investigate speech acts in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d'Urbervilles based on John Austin’s theory. In the present research, the researcher attempts to investigate female characters’ speech acts in the selected novel at three levels of locutionary act, illocutionary act, perlocutionary act. Austin theories have been published in the book titled How to Do Things with Words which introduces speech acts. The philosophers believes that language is used to display the world. In other words, it shows what exists and what does not exist. The same mechanism can be traced and studied in Tess’s speech acts. It might be claimed that for Tess, the language is not the means of transferring meanings. It is a tool through which their psyche, identity, and the course of their life can be constructed. Using linguistic theories in analyzing the selected work can both depict new aspects of the novel and give insights to the linguists. It can be concluded that the speech acts are the reason why Tess fails in the society and have tragic destiny and the link between the characters’ language and psyche would be detected.

The current study is interdisciplinary research having a psychological look at the quality of translated texts. This work was an endeavor to probe the effect of the translators' personality- extrovert and introvert- on the translation quality of political and journalistic texts. It also explored the effect of the graduation level on the translation quality. To achieve the ends, the data was obtained from 50 graduate and 50 undergraduate students majoring in English translation at different Iranian universities. The translated texts were assessed by three ratters using Farahzad’s model (1992) of translation quality assessment. The results of independent samples t-test revealed that the personality characteristics of the participants did not have significant effect on the translation quality. Moreover, the results of ANOVA indicated that the extrovert students had a better performance than the introverts in the accuracy scale, but the reverse pattern emerged in the case of style scale where the introverts outperformed the extroverts. The research has attempted to consider the interrelationship between psychology and translation field and can be beneficial for importing concepts and theories from the field of psychology. Regarding the results, "introversion" and "extroversion" can be considered as two sources of variation in translation process and outcome.

The effect of reading and teaching literary texts on the development of productive skills of language learners has long been an eye-catching factor for researchers. Having determined the interest through analysis, the present study seeks to search the effect of literary texts on the enhancement of vocabulary usage and composition length of the EFL learners. To achieve the above-mentioned desire, a case study was designed, including the population of 15 intermediate EFL. The case was chosen from the language learners of the Velayat University of Iranshahr. They were supposed to read and discuss a literary text, the effect of which on their writing was later compared to a previously prepared composition, before the exposure of the literary text. A focus on the vocabulary range and composition length along with the progression of their ideas in writing revealed that literary text and the discussion session were highly influential on the above-mentioned features. They used more lexical resources from the literary text in their composition along with a longer and more comprehensive text in terms of progression.

English language teaching policies have recently become a growing concern in several countries, including Iran. Whereas several studies have noted the role of explicit policy documents and texts, fewer studies have explored the role of implicit ELT policies. This research investigates the implicit ELT policies embedded in professional practices of selected private English language publishers and institutes in Iran. The study’s qualitative data comprised documents and archival information taken from sources such as official websites, social networking accounts, catalogs, and brochures of eight prominent publishers and eight leading English language institutes. Thematic analysis of the data revealed three aspects of the publishers' activities (Nominal features, Supplementary materials, and Practical features) and four main aspects of professional practices of the language institutes (Overcategorizations, Tests, Teachers, and Coursebooks). The findings suggest that the practices of the leading publishers and institutes might act as implicit policies which would most likely provide directions for other publishers and institutes in the country to pursue and adopt. Thereby, it is suggested that instead of following pre-set accepted agendas, the leading publishers and institutes work creatively to analyze local requirements and respond to the needs of Iranian learners to enhance the status of ELT in the country.