Research in Contemporary World Literature
Year:2011 | Volume:- | Issue:60|Papers Count:8

Urdu literature has provided an outstanding treasure by using all Persian literary genres presented in both verse and prose. Among all literary genres of poetry elegy is the kind which some of the scholars and critics of the subcontinent consider as an independent genre from Arabic and Persian literature. There is no doubt that mourning and lamenting for the dead has always been part of every nation’s culture. The only difference is between the ways of expression and the depth or shallowness of the feelings. Among them the elegy for Karbala’s Martyrs has found a special form due to its religious significance. Urdu elegiac poets, who are mostly among the Shia Muslims, have improved it to the extent that the scholars and critics of the subcontinent, regardless of their religion and beliefs, admit its literary significance. They have added elements which besides being mournful attract readers and listeners because of their dramatic characteristics. Dividing elegy to different parts and particles such as face, figure, entrance, battle, and etc. in the form of Mosaddas Tarkibband during different periods of time shaped a literary genre in which only the dignified poets could shine. So during the glorious days of Urdu elegy in the city of Lakhnau, lowly educated and inexperienced elegiac poets were left out naturally and the literary significance of Urdu Elegy was raised highly by the dignified and first class poets’ presence.

As a significant number of post-colonial writers have reread colonial masterpieces, the main purpose of the researchers in this study is a detailed analysis of Among the Believers by V. S. Naipaul in the light of Orientalism.This article is indeed a response to the representation of the Orient, Islam, and the Islamic Middle East in the West, in general, and in Naipaul’s travel writing, in particular. The present article is also an attempt to trace the concepts and images that led not only to the emergence of the stereotypical and monolithic Orient, but also the portrayal of the Muslims throughout colonial discourse and clich és. Moreover, it focuses on the process of generating the constructed representation that established in the end the binary opposition between the Orient and the Occident. In fact, the orientalized Orient with its cultural, religious, political, and historical differences has been turned into a serious threat against the Western civilization. Finally, the researchers endeavor to highlight the Orientals’ resistance as well as the role of Islam as a matrix of resistance against the dominance and hegemony of the West.

Since the late Seventies the German literary scene has witnessed a rising presence of German writers of foreign extraction examining their intercultural experiences on pivotal topics like refugees, schism, alienation, identity crises, and social and cultural conflicts. This paper deals with the method of presentation of the conflicts and problems related to culture, society and identity as depicted in selected migration literature of the last two decades of the twentieth century, and shows that the experiences of alienation and incongruity depicted in these texts have had a variety of reactions, and have suffered a significant and rapid development during several decades. A literature initially intended to confront prejudice, manages in a relatively short period, through the introduction of new topics and variety of form and language, to move from the borders of cultural discourse into the depths, and find it’s proper place in contemporary German literature.

The Sand Child is the masterpiece by the Moroccan- French author, Tahar Ben- Jelloun. In this masterpiece, by recalling the memories of his native country and omitting the boundry between reality and fantasy, Ben-Jelloun has crated a world which is the combination of these two elements. Ben-Jelloun presents symbolically in this work, a tragic matter. In this masterpiece, the author presents the theme of search for identity of the protagonist. He does not only present the reality of society in his story, but also criticizes the loss of identity. This article tries to study not only identity, but also to research about subject, characterization and Ben-Jelloun’s world. This research is an opportunity to study in this masterpiece, the results of obligatory identity and the improper deportment with daughters in some traditional societies.

The Negritude movement reached the crux of its popularity in 1960s. Thinkers of this movement to defy the constant development of imperial cultural domination employed the discourse of the colonizer. For instance, they appropriated the binary oppositions which were initially propagated by colonialism but disarranged the hierarchies of importance, beauty and power in them. A Dance of the Forests, written in 1960, at one level is a critique of the Negritude movement. According to what has been represented in the play, Soyinka admonishes most of the theoretical principles of Negritudinism yet, at the same time, he believes in the strategic political potentialities of the movement. Claiming that cultures in Africa, as elsewhere, have never been self-directed, Soyinka questions the essentialist outlook on history and race held by the Negritudinists. In brief, he presumably does not advocate Negritudinist ideologies unless they are employed transitorily to resist imperialism.

Some believe that language and literature are two independent systems while others hold that the two areas are not independent of each other. The present study has tried to demonstrate that Persian poetry is closely tied with the language by evaluating the influence of scrambling, word order, complex predicates, subject-verb agreement as well as some supersegmental features in Hafez’s works as one of the most outstanding poets in Persian literature. To do so, some sonnets of the poet have been analyzed in terms of the above -mentioned features. The study indicates that in addition to complex predicates that restrict the Persian verbs to a few forms like “kardan” (to do) and “Zadan” (to hit), the six agreement markers increase the number of repetition. A contrastive study of Shakespeare’s and Hafez’ sonnets in the study showed that literary devices of Persian and English literature are different. It has been argued that in Persian repetition of agreement markers as well as light verbs are important devices in creating literary works while the English language lacks them.

Understanding the elements or structural constituents of the modern theater is not enough. It should be examined through a method according to which the characteristics of Modern Theater are harmonized and lead to an organized system. Hence, the elements can only be understood through the whole body. This paper tries to achieve some results about the Modern Theater through a structural analysis. In doing so, some structural elements of the Modern Theater or Ridicule Theater are examined through UNESCO Theater and then the paper compares the differences between the body of this kind of theater and the traditional one. These differences clarify the essence of Modern Theater. One of the most significant differences is the language of the scene including movements, lightings, sounds, etc. which receives an important attention and increases the dramatic effect of the work.