جواد یعقوبی درابی

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.

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.

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 research is to read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men in the light of Fredric Jameson's theories. In Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, the writer depicts how irony and self-consciousness have penetrated the culture of postmodern man and how capitalism and neoliberalism have influenced people's lives and identities and, with the help of ideology, have turned man into a thing incapable of human relations. Fredric Jameson declares that historicizing literary texts can help the readers understand the latent and deep layers of meaning in the works. Jameson's main concern is that in a neoliberal society, the authorities use ideology to preserve power, and by ideology, they turn citizens into consumers. The result is the alienation and reification of people, and they lose their true identities, which is the death of the postmodern man. By reading this short story collection from a Jamesonian perspective, the reader tries to investigate the man's identity in a neoliberal society to show how a closed system like a neoliberal system can preserve power by using ideology to influence the mindset of the citizens and reify and alienate them and impose the superiority of market on them. This research shows how Wallace investigates man’s identity in a neoliberal society to show how a closed system like a neoliberal system can preserve power by using ideology to influence the mindset of the citizens and reify and alienate them and impose the superiority of market on them and how the identity of people is gone and how the death of the postmodern man has happened.