Research in Contemporary World Literature
Year:2011 | Volume:- | Issue:63|Papers Count:7

Drawing upon Julia Kristeva’s 1969 theory of intertextuality and based on Leppihalme's model for translating allusions (1997), this study analyzes how Iranian translators of T. S. Eliot’s poetry have dealt with rendering his allusions into Persian and what major strategies they have used to undertake the task. The analysis of four of Eliot's most heavily allusive poems "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", The Waste Land, "Hollow Men" and "Ash Wednesday" along with their sixteen different translations into Persian reveals that ‘name retention’ for PN allusions and ‘minimum change’ and ‘explicit explanation’ for KP allusions are the most frequent translating strategies. The study will also show that there has been a significant decrease in the frequency of minimum change strategy and a proportionate increase in the frequency of explicit explanation strategy over the course of the four decades of translating Eliot since the 1960s in Iran. This implies translators’ increasing tendency and preference over time towards producing more target-text, reader-oriented translations.

This research, based on the fundamental theories of comparative literature, indicates that the treasure of Persain culture and literature has played a vital role in creating and inspiring several literary masterpieces of the world. Andre Gide –the eminent French writer–is one of those who under the influence of this rich heritage has created such a unique work as "The Fruits Of Earth". He has created this famous work under the influence of Persian literature. By mentioning a line of Hafiz and a verse of Quran at the beginning of his book, Gide has indicated his special attention to oriental works. To some extent, his "The Fruits of the Earth" is related to oriental literature, especially Persian. Although he has mentioned the name of Khayyam just one time, the influence of Khayyam on his work is more than other Persian writers. This research shows the different ways and the extent of Gide’s familiarity with Khayyam and offers a comparison of common concepts in "Rubaiyyat" and "The Fruits of Earth".

Among British playwrights, George Bernard Shaw is a dramatist who envisages the hermeneutics of history with a m ore challenging perspective w hich approximates him to a modern o utlook. In this regard, he manages to attune his philosophy of history (best exposed in a 1923 p lay by the name of Saint Joan) with the idea of F. W. Hegel, the nineteenth - c entury German th inker, and his unique approach to the speculations on the philosophy of history. The attempt of the present study is to read Saint Joan through the looking glass of Hegel’s two eminent works, The Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of History and if possible, to excruciate the assimilations between the two thinkers and their involvement in the notion of history.

The post-9/11 fiction is regarded as one of the indispensable parts of contemporary American literature. Prominent novelists such as Martin Amis, John Updike, and Don DeLillo have directly addressed the 9/11 terrorist events in their fiction. DeLillo’s novels, however, have been of especial interest to the literary circles due to their decades-long preoccupation with the issue of terrorism in its different forms. For instance, Mao II is particularly described to be the historical prescience and anticipation of the 9/11 attacks. In this article, the writers explore the re-inscription of the dominant discourse of neo-Orientalism in Mao II and make a comparison between some of the dominant accounts of the 9/11 event and what is being introduced as terrorism through the framework of Orientalist discourse within the novel. The objective is to expose the roots of the novel’s “anticipations” of the 9/11 and thereby de-mythologize the author’s status as a guru of terrorist novel.

Cinema as a Cultural Industry, is the promoter of identity, memory, dreams and collective projects. Mexico has introduced its collective identity to the world, using this industry. Examining the application of this industry in Mexican Cinema can be considered an important step for improving the country’s cinema. Approaches to the origins of modern nations consider culture as a fundamental constituent of construction and experience of a nation and the linking element of a film to a national cinema is common mass culture of that nation. The film “Hell”, in spite of considering Mexico's drug trafficking problem, only reflects the national and cultural identity of the northern part of Mexico. On the other hand, Mexico has still a long way to achieve its revolutionary goals. Adopting a transparent approach and dealing with social problems in this film shows that Mexican cinema is trying to take key steps toward achieving these goals. In this research, the critical method of Fairclough in three levels (Description, Interpretation and Explanation) and three aspects (Literary, Dramatic and Cinematic) was applied in the film “Hell”.

This article aims to study an important principle in discourse analysis, which belongs to Paul Grice, the contemporary philosopher. He believes that in addition to giving and taking information during a conversation, people also show their cooperation with each other, and so he suggests the ‘cooperative principle’ which contains some principles of subtext. Since the cooperative principle is with regards to dialogue and conversation, it can be applied to plays. This article studies the cooperative principle in Top Girls by Caryl Churchill and through this study; it shows the political and feminist approaches in this play, because these approaches are shown through language. The goal of this article is to show how Churchill was or was not successful in showing her ideological beliefs through language and cooperative principle in particular. Through this study, it will be shown how linguistics and its principles, strengthen the dramatic effects and help the dramatist to show his/her ideology.

In contrast with modern Cartesian epistemology that is based on the subject-object dichotomy of man versus the world, postmodern approach makes no distinction between the two; conceiving them in a dialectical interaction. This article contrasts the traditional/modern and postmodern views of "reality" by analyzing two examples from the short story genre, taken as metaphors for rendering reality: In Hawthorne's traditional story the protagonist leaves his house (the world) to watch it from without, (without any encounter with it). In the classically happy ending of the story, his homecoming makes no apparent objection or surprise on behalf of his wife, and the border and relation between the subject and the object is not violated. But in Louisa, Please Come Home there is no subject-object dichotomy between the protagonist and the world, and they mutually modify and define one another. When Louisa comes home, her parents and sister do not recognize her. The subject and the object in this postmodern short story are relative, and their identity and relation are dynamic. This article deals specifically with the element of point of view and the idea of seeing.