Critical Literary Studies

The present article aims to analyze Ann Pancake’s Strange as this Weather Has Been through the lens of ecofeminist theories. The study explores the connections between women and nature by focusing on three key areas: inherent affinity and dualism, agency and intrinsic values, and conflict with technology. The article addresses how the novel expresses and upholds ecofeminist concepts and how the female characters challenge the male-dominated power structure by participating in the ecofeminist movement through their actions and words as Earth's guardians. Greta Gaard’s ecofeminist ideas form the theoretical foundation of this research. The article highlights how the primary female characters in the novel exhibit a profound bond with their land and work to safeguard it as guardians of the Earth, embodying resilience, empowerment, and an enduring spirit, and manifest self-confidence and a deep connection with nature. Through this affinity, they portray a sense of belonging and identity with nature. It laments that technology, which is manipulated in capitalist and patriarchal ideologies, treats nature merely as a commodity. The narrative also showcases and criticizes the dire environmental and societal consequences of mountaintop removal mining as a harmful technological practice in Appalachia, which, on a macro level, stands for the world.

This paper aims to analyze Doris Lessing's narrative techniques to explore how she developed the discourse of her stories and depicted her contemporary realities in her story worlds. It seeks to address the question of whether there is a relationship between her real world and her storytelling, and whether her ideology and personal background influenced her narrative approach. To accomplish this goal, we will analyze the novels The Grass is Singing and Martha Quest using Gavin's Text World Theory, a cognitive approach that provides a framework encompassing three levels of analysis: Discourse World, Text World, and Sub-Worlds. Our analysis reveals that the discourse of her stories closely mirrors her real-life discourse, indicating a direct relationship between her real worlds and her storytelling. Lessing’s intricate descriptions of world-building elements, such as time, locations, characters, objects, and actions within the story, serve to advance the narrative forward through both material and existential processes. Moreover, her use of sub-worlds to express her yearning for freedom and justice reflects her critical viewpoints on the oppressive systems prevalent in her time, particularly colonization and racial issues. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that from 1944 to 1956, her storytelling method was influenced by her communist ideology. In essence, the concepts and themes represented in her stories emerge as reflections of her real-world experiences, effectively conveyed through her narrative techniques.

The present study argues the relationship between the media’s power and the reconstruction of subjectivity in Zubaida’s Window, a novel by Iqbal Al-Qazwini. It is a description of the tortured psyche of the exiled woman and her attempts to reconstruct her displaced subjectivity among different versions of media’s Baudrillardian simulacra and to distinguish reality from unreality. Media’s depictions of death and war’s destruction can generate xenophobia among natives who may blame immigrants for their social problems and disturbing spatial harmony. Qazwini re-emphasizes that xenophobia can destroy an immigrant’s self-perception and trigger the preference for death. Moreover, the hyperreal versions of truth and ignoring the subaltern’s voice and revelation affect an immigrant’s mentality negatively and persuade her/him to prefer loneliness and death to have social interactions. This article focuses on the significance of media in the reconstruction of subjectivity, intensification of anti-immigration views, and the dark sides of modern war based on the interrelated theories of David Miller and Derek Gregory. Considering the issues of compulsory displacement and territoriality, Miller focuses on the ethical/political dimensions, while Gregory examines the causes of armed conflicts and geopolitical factors. By applying such an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers investigate Zubaida’s mental downfall, her failure in the reconstruction of subjectivity, and her inability to reconcile different self-images. This article examines her ceaseless effort to reverse the colonial power of media by adhering to her homeland’s memories, or watching her country’s news through TV’s representation, or ignoring spatial interactions, and lack of interest in self-renovation.

The present paper deals with the historical overview and the reception of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets in contemporary Iran. The authors examine the chronology of Persian translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (both scattered and book-length ones) during a century which is a considerable period of time in the examination of the reception of any author in another culture. As poetry is not the most popular genre in Persian translation, the Persian translations of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets suffered from a lot of fluctuations. It was in the latter part of the nineteenth century, a turning-point in the history of the country, that Shakespeare was introduced into Iranian audience for the first time. It started with scattered translations and ended in book-length ones. This study indicates early Persian interest in Shakespeare’s Sonnets which was followed by a lull. The reason behind it was two-fold: the translation of foreign poetry was dominated by French and Russian languages, and the rich tradition of Persian poetry does not feel the need to translate foreign poetry. The reception of Shakespeare’s Sonnets was followed by renewed interest in 1998-2017 and finally book-length translations began to thrive. All in all, Shakespeare’s Sonnets did not have a great influence on Persian poetry, as it was expected.

The current research examines Stephen Greenblatt’s theories on the improvisation of power as well as tyranny in William Shakespeare’s second tetralogy to investigate the complex network of non-violent psychological domination of human being’s mind, by the manipulation of symbolic order through the stages of displacement and absorption. It examines how the Western psychic mobility and its embodiment in empathy and the improvisation of power affect the represented English society in the Medieval era and how the consequential power relationships impact on the ways of ruling the country. The improvisation of power deconstructs the vertical and hierarchical power relations and makes them more diagonal, horizontal or even upward. The represented Medieval English court is a dark labyrinth of conspiracy, intrigue, treason, and complicity. This duality roots in religious fundamentalism of Roman Catholic church. The tension between the two paradigms of court and church causes turbulence and chaos. The result is the absolute submission of the majority through the improvisation of power, which paves the ground for the Machiavellian minority to exert power and gratify their personal self-interest-driven plans, which are mostly tyrannical. Through the improvisation of power, the course of history could change.

The purpose of the present study is to explore the two concepts of time and space in postmodern lyric poetry of the two poets of the 1950s through the lens of the Heideggerian existential theory of time and space, which regards time as a horizon for understanding Being and distinguishes three different types of space: (1) world-space, (2) regions , and (3) Dasein's spatiality. To fulfill this objective, some selected poems of the two poets, including Allen Ginsberg and Ted Hughes, were analyzed temporally and spatially. The findings suggested that the two poets tend to treat time and space existentially and reject eternality. It was revealed that they are existential poets whose existence is manifested in their quest for identity within the immediate world or the global world as well as their concerns for their homeland and ideals. In their poems, time and space are intermingled with Being and reflect each individual’s relationship with the world. The result of the analysis of poems showed that their poetry is not just the language of imagination and perception, but also the language of existence. The world is regarded as an existential space-time continuum and being-in-the-world is the fundamental ontological situation for Dasein. Accordingly, the world, like poetry, is a disclosure of things in nearness or distance, which matters to human beings

This interdisciplinary study examines Ian McEwan's Atonement by combining narrative analysis with the theories of Sigmund Freud and Paul Virilio. It looks closely at narrative techniques, time-related complexities, and cultural meanings in Atonement , linking Freud's idea of repetition compulsion with Virilio's views on technology and perception. Briony Tallis represents both Freudian traumatic re-enactment and Virilio's concept of the integral accident. Her ongoing guilt, like a rosary, symbolizes the repetitive nature of trauma. Using Virilio's gestalt theory, the study offers a new way to understand the novel's focus on perception. This research fills a gap in existing literature by bringing together Freud's psychoanalytic perspective and Virilio's technological insights to analyze Atonement . This combination of theories is a new approach that provides fresh insights into how McEwan's narrative structure reflects the interplay between trauma, technology, and cultural reception. For example, the study explores how the novel's fragmented narrative mirrors Briony's fractured psyche and how technological advancements during the wartime setting influence characters' perceptions and actions. This study of Ian McEwan's Atonement demonstrates how stories can help individuals understand their feelings and experiences better. It uses psychology and technology to explore how storytelling affects the understanding of trauma, perception, and the modern world.

In the immigration studies, the diasporic female experiences are not indicatively considered as the prevailing experiences of immigrant men who are claimed to stand for all immigrants. Thus, it is challenging to examine female migration experiences and the consequences that are ignored. This article explores the ignored parts of female migration experiences as subalterns and focuses on the process of assimilation in the host country following theories of Gayatri Spivak’s post-colonialism. In the age of migration the female characters of the former colonies are being culturally hybridized when they get in touch with the Western factors. That hybridity and their ambivalent attitude between the cultures, they are becoming the mimic women that has not only affected them and led them to identity crisis but also contributed to the dangling of them between cultures lost and confused. This article will carefully examine the consequences of assimilation of the female character, Mumtaz, in Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke in the hybridized atmosphere. Moth Smoke is the debut novel by British Pakistani novelist, Mohsin Hamid, which provides the context for the clash of cultures in its portrait of a country violently divided against itself. Sometimes, assimilation with host cultures are to the extent that the female immigrant becomes baffled and confounded. With shattered identity, she is neither a modern Westernized woman nor an Eastern glorified mother and wife.

The present essay focuses on the witnessing process of the enlisting poets’ effective responsiveness to the devastations they encountered; the two poets to be studied have been directly or indirectly traumatized by wars. The analytical perspective draws on Dominick LaCapra’s theories on historical trauma. It intends to uncover the traumatic effects of circumstances in post-war poems. The methodological procedure is grounded in the qualitative appraisal of the emotive aspect of the poets’ expressionist representation through critical discourse analysis. Trauma theories influence the research approach in historical and structural science, emphasizing witnessing levels, coined by Dori Laub, as the most significant determinant of the gestalt of interpretations. The poems’ demolished vibe exploits an insight into the amalgamation of historical trauma and its steps towards salvation. The authorial intentionality in war poetry aspires to enlighten human sorrow and redemption by restoring the literary application of the historical, structural, and perpetrator trauma hypothesis. The melioristic agenda for edification via physical and critical phases, such as acting out and working through, coined by LaCapra, foci in the varied poems to be scrutinized, enables the poets’ to maintain their readers’ empathetic identification with their characters’ predicaments in a psychoanalytic context.

The migration of Indians to various destinations during the past few decades has led to the emergence of a group of writers known as Asian-American authors in literature. These writers, including immigrant women from India spanning the first and second generations, have crafted a substantial collection of short fiction. Jhumpa Lahiri, a Bengali-Indian writer, explores themes of identity, belonging, displacement, and the challenges of straddling different cultural attitudes in Interpreter of Maladies . This article adopts a theoretical approach and utilizes the library research method, drawing on the insights of scholars such as Stuart Hall and Michael Ryan, to explore cultural displacement, identity, and the experiences of immigrants in a new multicultural environment. The central focus is to know how Lahiri addresses displacement and immigration through trans-cultural discourses while challenging cultural diversities in Interpreter of Maladies . By employing such a trans-cultural discourse, this study aims to analyze how Lahiri portrays the complexities of cultural differences, and identity formation in the context of immigration. The narratives in Interpreter of Maladies offer a rich tapestry of characters navigating the challenges of living between cultures, shedding light on the profound impact of displacement on individuals and families. By closely examining Lahiri’s storytelling techniques and character development, this article aims to illuminate how the author captures the nuances of trans-cultural experiences and the facts that ultimately put their impact on the formation of immigrants’ new identities in unfamiliar territories.

The present paper analyzes Jorie Graham’s “Sea Change”, the eponymous poem of her 2008 poetry collection, through Julia Kristeva’s theories on semiotic and the abject. By tracing the historical attitudes towards embodiment, this research attempts to examine Graham’s outlook towards the mind/body and by extension nature/culture dichotomies in her poetry. The previous studies on the Sea Change collection have mostly focused on Graham’s formal structures and ecological concerns; no other research has used Kristeva’s theories to examine the importance of one’s embodied experience of the world in her poetry to reveal how negative attitudes towards the body lead to a fractured existence for the human subject. Graham’s poetic language addresses the neglect to which the semiotic has been subjected, redefines the body in terms that are not abject and opens up a safe cultural space for it. Her poetry illuminates how mystification and degradation of the body have a positive correlation with oppression of the nature, as concepts belonging to similar dichotomous lines of thought, and highlights the call for a re-evaluation of the attitudes towards the human subject’s existence in the world.

The American ecopoet, Mary Oliver (1935 – 2019) has never been read in the light of the concepts the French philosopher, George Bataille (1897 – 1962) introduced into the world of philosophy and literature even though the enterprise could be abundantly rewarding. Bataille poses the question of general economy as opposed to particular economy. The latter is narrow, rational, self-centered and pivoting around gathering and storage, while the former takes the whole sphere of life into account and concentrates on excess of energy, expenditure, universal wisdom which is far broader and more inclusive, sacrifice and permanence of the sum total of energy available in the living sphere as well as that of the living matter. Oliver, the poet, uses none of the philosopher’s terms, but the scenes she describes in her own poetic style and the language and discourse she uses concerning death reveal the same position and point of view as those of Bataille. That is the gap the present qualitative, library-based study tries to cover at least partially and in particular with regard to the question of death which with the help of an Oliverian stance and in the light of such Bataillean concepts as general economy, excess and expenditure, can turn into a moment of rebirth, vital to the health and a proper functioning of the whole universal system. This two-fold approach will hopefully contribute to both Oliver studies and to the body of research, done on Bataille.