درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study focuses on the strategic process of enlisting the readers’ empathetic responsiveness in Thomas Hardy’s major Wessex novels. The analytical perspective draws on Suzanna Keen’s theories in affective narratology; it intends to uncover the stylistic strategies of affective impressionism in the Wessex narratives. The methodological procedure is grounded in the qualitative appraisal of the emotive aspects of Hardy’s realistic representations through critical discourse analysis. The research approach is influenced by the recent mind theories in cognitive science, emphasizing emotional perception as the most significant determinant of the gestalt of interpretations. The semi-fictional world of Wessex capitalizes on an insight into the primacy of emotive sensibility over cognitive rationality. The authorial intentionality in the Wessex narratives aspires to propagate human compassion by resorting to the literary application of the empathy-altruism hypothesis. The melioristic agenda for edification via investment in the readers’ emotive capacities saturates the narratives’ impressionistic composition. The manipulation of the narrative consciousness foci in the major Wessex novels enables Hardy to maintain his readers’ empathetic identification with his characters’ predicaments in a philosophical context. Moreover, the tagged characterization of the protagonists establishes the intended impressions of their temperament and demands the corresponding empathetic responses from the readers.

The purpose of the research is to analyze how the cyborgian theories of virtual subjectivity, dromology, enfleshed materialism, aesthetics of disappearance, hybridity and metamorphic becoming are employed by modern technology to create humanoid. Gibson’s The Peripheral delineates multiple subjectivities as well as challenges of virtual creatures through tracing the life of Flynne, the major protagonist. We are to grasp humanoid’s beyond human ‘nature’, or ‘character’, or ‘being’, or ‘transitive identity’ in a way that corresponds with other human beings. The research portrays the subjective sense of being-in-the-virtual-world and analyzes the humanoid’s development in the form of a cyborgian human simulation. Donna Haraway, Paul Virilio and Rosi Braidotti are the selected theorists introducing the theory of the research; cyborg; an umbrella term referring to cybernetic organisms. Cyborgian literary theory focuses on the author who identifies the fictional subject as a new creature, which is partly inorganic and partly machine, to demonstrate that technology does not need to be dehumanizing; rather, it acts as a re-humanizing force to claim agency over our subjectivity. The peculiar thematic characteristics of the novel as an epitome of cyborg narrative, including non-linear apocalyptic time traveling narrative, fragmentation of subjectivity, formation of transhumans and constructed humanoids, are analyzed.