LITERARY CRITICISM
Year:2012 | Volume:5 | Issue:18|Papers Count:8

One of the significant elements in the formation of narrative structure is the sequence of its events which is explored under the umbrella term of temporal element. Abbas Maroufi’s novel Peykar-e farhadis a work in which real and imaginative times are what narrative is based upon. The novelist relates, in the novel’s surface structure, one single story in three different temporal frames, yet breaks the narrative linearity, so that for the most part the existing relations and temporal order of events remain obscure and, consequently, time, losing its quantitative value, fades away in the narrative. The current paper attempts to survey the order of events and narrative temporality in addition to studying how the author, by deploying some features of stream of consciousness, has narrated the mental structure as well as confusion of the novel’s female character. These features range from temporal and spatial turbulence, free association, author’s textual removal, and assigning a role to the reader in narration act due to direct displaying of disturbed subjectivities as well as uncensored stream-of-consciousness memories-being the same as pre-lingual mental layers-to utilizing internal monologue and soliloquy in some parts of the story, poeticness, mental obscurity and difficulty of finding the decisively right meaning for the novel with the purpose of developing a particular narrative technique.

One of the most effective approaches for critical studies of literary works is Critical Discourse Analysis. This article studies Madar-e sefr darajehwithin this framework by analyzing some of the most important aspects of the novel such as semiology of its title, images, characters (actor, affected, and narrator), narratology, structure and the theme of the story. Furthermore, the status of this novel in the field of political fiction is studied. Based on Fairclough’s approach, the findings of the article suggest that Madar-e sefr darajeh, as a literary text, is in direct relation with the dominant social discursive practices and social hegemony.

Dream is one of the most important elements of modern novel. In Derakht-e anjir-e maabed, the only modern novel by Ahmad Mahmoud, this element plays a key role. At the beginning of the novel, Alamdar-e Avval, mentions his dreams and the Alamdar of the next generation narrates those dreams and finally the Alamdar of the third generation writes down those narrations. Alamdar’s dreams are obscure and complicated and challenge the reader. Besides, later in the book two dreams by Mard-e Digar and Sarmast-e Bakhtiari are narrated. The major dreams form the first chapter of the novel have not been studied analytically yet. This research offers an analysis of these dreams by summarizing the dream in the author’s own language and with the help of Freud’s method in the Interpretation of Dreams based on genetic structuralism according to which different parts of the novel find their meaning only in a general structure.

The first political story after the Islamic Revolution of Iran is probably Sellul-e hejdah by Darvishiyan. The work mirrors the author’s memories of the prison and ideological armed struggles. In addition, this text is the first story by the author after victory of the Islamic Revolution and can be considered as the first political story after the revolution. A study of the various levels of this story shows that Sellul-e hejdah, in spite of being a memoir, is one of the best examples of political fiction. The dominant radical discourse of the 80s [1360s] manifests the confrontation of four different generations. The first generation includes those conservatives who are traditional and religious and are unable to confront the dominant discourse. The second generation includes those conservatives who are not happy with the political decadence but prefer to maintain the situation. The third group relates to those radical freedom fighters that are not satisfied with the status quo and suffer from discrimination and tend to change the society. Finally, the fourth generation includes descendants of the revolutionaries who have little knowledge of the revolution and yet their lives are tied to it.

The present research examines the concept of love in two separate and distinct spheres. On the one hand, love is considered as a transcendental experience and concept that is static and related to a meta-human truth. This type of reading of love is mainly initiated and developed through Plato’s writings. On the other, there is a view that considers love (even in its Platonic sense) a humane, cultural and more importantly “textual” phenomenon. In other words, love can only be understood, multiplied and experienced within language (or as Jacques Lacan calls, “symbolic order”). In this paper, I have studied these two views in relation to the collection of short stories entitled, Love on the Sidewalk, written by the contemporary Iranian writer, Mostafa Mastour. In order to do this, I have first studied the concept of ‘absence’ in love and how the experience of love always depends on the absence of the lover or the beloved. I then argue that love, in these stories, is a ‘sign’ that is constructed and signified with a system of signs. And finally I illustrate how the characters in these stories fall in love and understand love through “narratives of love”. All this would give love a plural and narrative significance. Love is therefore a sign that is always in the process of being constructed.

There are several attitudes about the linguistic characteristics of literary works by female authors. The present study aims at highlighting the need for a stylistic analysis of female fictions as a method for linguistic, literary, and ideological analyses of these works. In this study, we have studied the most important stylistic aspects of Pirzad’s writings through a feminist stylistic approach. The results of the study indicate that from the first work of the author (Mesl-e hameh-ye asr-ha) to the last work (Adat mikonim), a feminist point of view has emerged at different levels of the texts, e.g. lexicon, sentence, and discourse. The changing trend of thought which leads to linguistic transformation and development in the author’s work is as follows: in Mesl-e hameh-ye asr-ha, Ta’m-e gass-e khormalu, Yek ruz mandeh be eid-e pak, the women are engaged in routines and have no intentionality of their own, while in Cheragh-ha ra man khamoosh mikonam, the women status is challenged, and in Adat mikonim, due to the role of women in social activities, a different description of female identity as the agent of change is presented.

The River’s End is a fictional work with a dream-like structure. In this article we analyze this story and its meaning-making structure through a Freudian approach. This reading includes two layers: (1) the overt or surface structure of the story; (2) the covert or deep structure of the story. In the overt layer, it is demonstrated that the story has a conceptual structure and its events are narrated in a disorganized plot in which the causality and time sequence are distorted. In the covert layer, we have distinguished between metaphoric and hidden plot. In the metaphorical plot, the symbols of the narrative of The River’s End have been identified and two symbols of Zayandeh-Rood and Gavkhuni as two prevalent feminine symbols which are related to the return to the womb are analyzed. Many of the characters then based on their relationship to these two symbols are psychoanalyzed. In the hidden plot the relationship between the narrator with the pleasure principle and death principle are analyzed to unravel the unending suspension of the narrator in the procedures of fate, repetition, and movement toward death is defined.