نقد و نظریه ادبی

The present study intends to investigate the contours of gender performativity in Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), which depicts Nafisi’s life experiences in Iran in the 1970s and the 1980s. Drawing upon Judith Butler’s conceptualization of gender performativity, this research probes into the notion of gender roles and gendered subjectivity during the period Nafisi’s narrative covers. The central questions of this research are: 1. How do the contemporary codes of normativity define gender performativity in Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran? 2. How do the major characters of Nafisi’s memoir react to their gender roles, and to what effect? To answer the stated questions, this study adopts Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, which pivots around her view of gender as a social construct. The study reveals that the regulative social structure defines certain gender-oriented roles for both sexes and monitors their implementation. It also shows that the contemporary political system, with its regulative and punitive laws and homogenizing strategies, normalizes and bolsters male domination, and propagates stereotypical gender roles. The characters’ resistance, however, usually ends in the consolidation and absorption of a new set of gender clichés, which is mostly Westernized; put differently, the rejection of certain gender-based performances generally leads to the performance of another set of gender roles.  

World literature investigates literary works that circulate beyond their cultures and demonstrates what like-but-unlike is. It considers a certain motif and sees how it represents its cultural aspects. . The Jungian archetype of the bird is the common thread that has been analyzed in this comparative study. Bird’s flight sheds light on metaphysical ascendance and transcendence. Moreover, the bird archetype conveys meanings associated with death, rebirth, awareness, consciousness, enlightenment, and wisdom. This article compares the archetype of birds in the poetry of Attar’s The Conference of the Birds (1177), Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1992), and Agbemabiese’s “ Sankofa” (2008). The reason for such a choice is that, although they belong to different ages and literary heritages, all three portray a journey toward an individual’s Self-perfection.  These poets utilize the bird archetype to manifest how Simurgh , Albatross, and Sankofa, reveal their archetypal meanings in Persian, English, and African cultures. By a comparative method based on Jung’s archetypal “process of individuation”, the bird is a uniting archetype, that represents the “Self” in Jung’s terminology. Binding the poetry of these nations demonstrates that through a self-realization journey, the individual can achieve perfection or become one with the whole.  

The present article seeks to read Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Sadeq Chubak’s Puppetry (Kheymeh-Shab-Bazi in Persian) in order to demonstrate their similar treatment of both ‘the natural’ and the fate of human beings when positioned in contrast with the natural. Hardy and Chubak, despite belonging to distinctive contexts, were both under the influence of the premises of Naturalism. The present paper aims to explore these two works of fiction in order to compare the way both authors employed the Naturalist literary trend in their style of writing, characterization, and perspective. Both authors employed an objective viewpoint, pretty similar to how scientists approach their object of study; they kept their distance from their narrations, with no particular effort to interfere in or to comment on the occurrences of such narrations. This research focuses on how, through utilizing Naturalistic principles, they endeavored to expose the quivering position of human beings when exposed to the powerful impacts of the natural. The study focuses on their similar approaches towards apparently dissimilar issues which, despite the considerable discrepancy concerning the socio-cultural contexts of their works, lurked below the surface of the fiction they produced.  

The present paper studies J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983) and Jafar Modarres Sadeqi’s Gavkhuni ( The Marsh ) (1362 [1983]) through a spatial perspective. To this end, the study avails itself of a constellation of concepts formed around Edward Soja’s Thirdspace, Michel Foucault’s heterotopia, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope. Reading the selected novels through these key terms shows that despite striking differences concerning the nature and manifestation of space, both novels configure space as belonging to the realm of the father. In Life & Times of Michael K , Michael begins a journey across South Africa to escape this paternal realm, while the unnamed narrator of Gavkhuni , having failed to escape the memory of Isfahan even after moving to Tehran, starts to write to get rid of his nightmares about his father. At the end of the novels, both protagonists return to their first places: Cape Town and Tehran, respectively. However, as the beginning and ending points of the novels, these cities do not remain the same for them: Michael preserves his identity as a gardener even in Cape Town, and the narrator of Gavkhuni reconciles with the ever-present image of the father and Zayandehrud in Tehran through writing.  

This study aims to show the reasons behind the capability of grief over the death of each person and how violence is performative in registering someone as livable or unlivable. This study also uses descriptive analysis methods and library research techniques. The main character in this novel Meftah, is an Arabic literature student, a religious person who works in the graveyard. This resulted in his recounting the story of the Sookhteh brothers whose deaths are not recognized so they are not mourned over properly. Through Butler's idea, the researcher tries to find out how livable and unlivable people are distinguished and what makes people believe that only registered lives are capable of being mourned over, and performative violence makes people differentiate between worthy and unworthy human beings.  The appearance of Homo Sacer is discussed in detail, the person who cannot be sacrificed but can easily be killed. It is deduced that people who are deprived of the primary conditions of life be it safety, welfare, or peace, as the main characters of this novel, don’t count as livable humans. They are not registered as humans, so they are not recognized and they become unrepresentable. Violence does not only lead to death but it also paves the way for people to ignore the death of some who are not subjectified and are not worthy of being grieved.

Thomas Malory's Le Morte d’Arthur and the epic part of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh , addressing two key questions: how does Hillman’s concept of archetypal images illustrate the major images of women presented in Le Morte d’Arthur and Shahnameh ? And, how are these images treated in their respective contexts? Using James Hillman’s Post-Jungian theory of archetypal images, which emphasizes preserving the individual details of the images, in contrast to Jungian archetypes that are reductionist and imprecise, this study explores the images of the women in Le Morte d’Arthur and Shahnameh both individually and in relation to one another. Based on a detailed examination of the unique characteristics of their images, collected from textual evidences, each of these women are categorized under the archetypal images of the daughter, the lover/wife, and the mother. The results of this study propose a comprehensive pattern, supported by various examples, for further detailed analyses of such archetypal images, as they open up new horizons for feminist studies by illuminating women’s multidimensional personalities. In addition, the major diversions from this pattern under the archetypal images of the sorceress and the warrior are discussed according to their respective contexts and societies as well.

This study traces James W. Messerschmidt’s concept of hegemonic masculinity in two post-9/11 novels, The Submission (2011) by Amy Waldman and Sons and Other Flammable Objects (2008) by Porochista Khakpour. Messerschmidt’s Structured Action Theory considers hegemonic masculinities as surreptitiously omnipresent or social constructs whose main purpose is rendering unequal gender relations possible. We believe that this theory can help us better understand the transformations the masculinities of these novels undergo after the 9/11 attacks. In analyzing the novels, we argue that characters who manifest pre-9/11 ideals of American hegemonic masculinity and who are symbolically disempowered by the attacks endeavor to regain their hegemonic status by establishing the hyphenated Middle Eastern and South Asian masculinities as their racial Other and subordinating them in the post-9/11 landscape. In other words, we will focus on the former group’s symbolic emasculation and their subsequent remasculinization in light of the 9/11 attacks and the impact of this transformation on immigrant men in the United States. Moreover, by applying the Structured Action Theory to the aforementioned novels, we aim to show how American hegemonic masculinities, previously defined as strong, untouchable, and invincible, are reconstructed, after the 9/11 attacks, around the ideals of revenge; besides, we explore the responses of the Middle Eastern and South Asian men to their unequal position. Ultimately, we analyze the varying intersections of gender, religion, nationality, race, class, and age which are at work to reconstruct such identities.