غیاث الدین علیزاده

Hooshang Golshiri’s “My little Chapel” relates the story of a character who finds himself in possession of a toe-like protrusion from the beginning of his life, an abnormality which brings him into a never-ending conflict with his surroundings. The obsessional attachment of the narrator with his sixth-toe, however, poses significant questions regarding the nature of his symptomatic dependence on this apparently useless piece of flesh. Through a psychoanalytical reading of the story, the present article is an attempt to shed light on the psychological intricacies of this problematic relation. Drawing on the teachings of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek, it argues that the only solution to this enigma is to consider the toe as a materialization of the pure nothingness and lack which, from a psychoanalytical point of view, marks the very core of the subject in the symbolic universe and becomes the only venue for the safe flowing of jouissance. Through its inert presence, the toe embodies the Lacanian objet a as the most precious, albeit illusory, thing in the psychic life of the human beings, the removal, or the disclosure, of which could lead to irreparable consequences.

The present article attempts to trace the elements of change in the early and late Shakespearean tragedies from the viewpoint of style and the writer’s ideological stance. Shakespeare’s tragic writing undergoes certain modification as he moves further in his career. One aspect of this modification is the change in the protagonist’s dynamism. Although Romeo and Juliet both show certain signs of development which separates them from comic characters, they still lack the psychological depth which is witnessed in Shakespeare’s late tragic heroes. It is true they realize their tragic fate, yet they fail in gaining full consciousness of their situation and their contribution to their own destiny. Another aspect is the change of diction toward a more ‘natural’ employment of language and rhetorical devices. In Shakespeare’s mature tragedies, we do not see the experimental lyricism we witness in Romeo and Juliet, as the playwright seems to adopt the classical notion of decorum, according to which each character should speak in accordance with its social status.