Research in Contemporary World Literature
Year:2019 | Volume:24 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:14

The history of research in the field of lifestyles, which is a subset of the findings of the modern semiology based on the ideas of semiologists of French school since the eighties, goes back to Erik Landovsky. According to Erik Landovsky, a French social semiologist, there are four different lines of identity that he interprets as "different styles of life"; in each of these styles, other groups, in accordance with the central norms group, have a certain movement path: Snob, Dundee, sun-worshipper and bear show other shapes that each shows a certain behavior relative to the norm reference group. “ Snob” is the representative of those who want to make themselves as reference group; in fact, Snob uses a simulation strategy to make itself as much as possible as the reference group. He considers the position of the reference group superior and beyond his own, and therefore his main concern is to mimic the behavior of the reference group while covering his original behavior...

In the contemporary era, since there has been an ascendancy in the value of the concept and practice of interdisciplinary research as an academic program or process seeking to synthesize broad perspectives, and epistemology in an educational setting, the present research attempts to provide a possibility of bridging the gap between science and art by bringing to light the recent manifestations of science-art interaction in theatre and dramatizing the world of science thematically and formally. Chaos theory, as the mainstream focus of such dramatic conceptualization of science in art, is a field that in recent years has acquired interest and practitioners in a number of disciplines in arts and humanities...

One of the most effective theoretical issues for contemplating and answering contemporary world issues is Grotesque. Grotesque is a more or less fictional category, because many categories collide in it and in it you can see abnormalities, surprises, laughs, panic, and most of all the element of imagination. Grotesque, sometimes referred to as "mixed comedy, " is one of the most popular techniques and styles in art and literature which expresses heterogeneous and contradictory feelings such as fear and disgust and laughter and humor and at least since the late sixteenth century it has been known and used, but its concept in the literature of the twentieth century becomes more and more applied and in the writings of the great and authoritative writers, it is considered as an outstanding tool for expressing the complexities and dimensions of modern life. Grotesque can be considered a successor to comedy in modern literature...

For a long time, two epistemological areas of history and literature, both in traditional and modern forms, have bases, fields and common themes for research and study. If we ignore the traditional form of these two areas, in its modern form on the one hand, the historical novel as a literary genre and on the other hand, social history as a historical genre, although both have a different way and expression, they include common issues: social relationships, daily life of ordinary people, women, rural classes and peasants, folklore, music Etc. In other words, a historical novel by addressing such issues represents social history in itself. Great writers of the historical novel like Walter Scott, Roman Roland, Thomas Mann, Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin and many more in their novels have addressed issues and focused on topics which are clearly the subject of social history. This is exactly where the historical novel can be called one of the most important links and common fields of history and literature...

Marie NDiaye is one of the most eminent writer-storytellers in France today. She is the author of around twenty books, novels, short stories and plays and has received international acclaim and won several awards. In her works, NDiaye talks about women's issues, their common concerns, feelings, worries and fears. She has created one of the most original novelistic universes of the contemporary French novel. Literary critics appreciated not only the virtuosity of her style but also the very distinctive way she manages to disrupt the monotony of everyday life by introducing fantastic and supernatural elements into her stories. In her books, there is a mix of fantasy and reality of everyday life which causes a strange feeling in the reader. Self-Portrait in Green is one of her novels that, with a complex structure and perfect writing, evokes that strange feeling in the mind, a feeling that Freud called "uncanny" and explained it in an article of the same name published in 1919. Freud defines the uncanny as « that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar » (1988: 2). The uncanny is, therefore, the experience of something strange, but which refers to something familiar or inseparable from oneself.

Comparing the continent, English poetry enjoys a specific and peculiar place. According to Dr. Mojtaba Minavi it is only English poetry which possesses a particular position among other European countries; for the Germans revealed their capacities in music, the Italians in drawings, and the Russians in Novels, but the English like the Iranians indicated their capacities and spirits in poetry and mysticism. Confessional poetry in its historical course in the Western literature changed to be a different genre comparing with other similar kinds and genres during the past ages. English sonnet in the 16th century (the Renaissance period of the English literature) while imitating the Italian ones, like those of Petrarch, achieved a high place after William Shakespeare composed his sonnets and lyrics.

"Comparative literature" is the (study of the links and the literature interaction in different languages and the study of the impact of these interactions. Comparative literature is an interdisciplinary research that studies the relationship between the literatures of different nations and considers the relationship among literature, arts and humanities. The comparative literature in its birthplace, France, was part of the literature history, and the French scholars were more interested in the sources of inspiration and historical evidence that emphasize the literary links of nations and their being influenced from each other. Hence, attention to the aesthetics of literary works did not matter much in the French school of comparative literature...

Ahmad Shâ mlu is considered as the founder of the “ White poetry” in Persian literature. A wide range of themes are treated in his poetry, from love and woman to liberty and egalitarianism, as well as death and existential issues. Charles Baudelaire is not only known to be the pioneer of a school called “ Decadence” but also a forerunner of Symbolism in French poetry. The principal themes used in his works are city and urban life, woman and love, death and spleen, liberty and modernity. Despite a hundred years dividing Shâ mlu and Baudelaire, we could still search some similarities between their works and personalities. In this paper, based on a comparative study, we will try to study some examples of these essential topics. Besides that, through this research, we shall try to point out to the resemblances and the differences between the conceptual approaches of the Iranian and the French poet in regards to these themes. The method used in this research is a thematic one, borrowed from the approach of Philippe Chardin in his article “ Thé matique comparatiste” (published in Pré cis de litté rature comparé e, Paris, PUF, 1989). We will treat three issues in poetry of Shâ mlu and Baudelaire: in the first part, we shall study women and love in work of each poet; secondly, we will focus on themes such as death and spleen respectively in their poetries; last but not least, we shall concentrate on liberty and social values in imaginary of Baudelaire and Shâ mlu.

At the end of twentieth century and through the spread of advertisement industry, visual technology enhanced so much so that it turned out as one of the most fundamental aspects of life in the contemporary era. Such wide spread of visual power in social, personal, and political areas of contemporary world has not only foregrounded the significance of the “ visual signs” in comparison with “ verbal signs” in everyday communication but also encouraged many critics, including Mirzoeff, Rogoff, Kress, and Leeuwen to call the post-global age aptly as the epoch of “ visual culture. ” Turning into the major means of communication, visual signs have gradually replaced other means of communication, especially with the emergence of smart phones. However, naturalization of such replacement as well as the “ passive observing” of such images on the part of the viewers have complicated or even concealed the very power of representation such signs usually hold. However, such complexity does not mean that communication happens in vacuum...

Becket was one of the most influential dramatists of twentieth century. His plays are categorized under the Theater of Absurd due to the existential questions and qualities in his works. Krapp’ s last tape like many other plays by Becket, delineates the restlessness of man, trapped in a life which they are condemned to live. However in the case of Krapp, the character does not designate absurdity as much as he manifests nostalgia, despair and regret. In other words, Krapp and Becket’ s other characters are desperate although, as for Krapp, the interlocutor knows the thread which goes back to the strong source of dissatisfaction. Krapp has a reason for looking absurd and disillusioned, which has left a lasting mark on his life. The despair of the individual comes as a conflict between past and present. Krapp is the one and only character in this play. He listens to his own voice recorded in the past. He is incessantly lambasting himself by disapproving of his past...

The cataclysm of September 11 was a turning point in the history of terrorism due to its extreme violence, vastness and the implementation of high technology which was utilized by the terrorists. Such high-tech indiscriminate violence provoked many sociologists and political thinkers to study its reasons and analyze the ways the Western postmodern establishments form the global citizens’ subjectivity. Accordingly, Baudrillard theorizes the processes within which capitalism is globalized and the global citizens are atomized. Besides, Hardt and Negri speak of the Empire/Multitude dichotomy as a framework of power relations within which the Western postmodern governments define the global citizen. The global powers, the Empire in Hardt and Negri’ s parlance, expand their control over the postmodern world by utilization of informational technology, electronic surveillance and liquid modernity. If panopticism, in Foucault’ s thought, was the ways and means of establishing carceral archipelago in western society, postpanopticism in postmodern world is an apparatus for defining and subjectivizing the global citizens...

In contemporary American society the dominant discourse of the white contend to suppress ethnic minority cultures. Throughout the American history, Euro-Americans have devised their own discourse in order to legitimize their colonization and suppress Native and African Americans as it is evident in Toni Morrison’ s Beloved. In order to reach the goals, the white people attached certain meanings to the signs which privileged the white culture over other ethnic minorities. How they have tried to articulate their discourse, its effects on the mentioned minorities and how this dominant discourse is resisted are the sole concern of this essay. Laclau and Mouffee’ s theory on discourse is used to show how opposing cultures have tried to articulate their discourse in the mentioned novel and also how the ethnic minorities in the mentioned novel try to attach different meanings to the floating signifiers in order to construct a discourse specific to their own culture. In this sense, Alan Sinfield’ s theory of faultlines and Raymond Williams’ theory of Dominant, Residual and Emergent and also theories of Michel Bakhtin, Louise Montrose, and Antonio Gramsci are used to show how the minorities channelize their resistances against the dominant Euro-American discourse...

Societies are shaped by voices, but the voices of those in position of power have been the loudest, the most deafening. Undoubtedly, therefore, there have always been voices in societies, specially feminine ones, which have not been allowed on the grounds of being either taboos or against the norms, conventions, and even the laws of a society. Nevertheless, there have been loopholes for these voices to escape and be echoed innocuously. As an instance, Bakhtin believed that carnivals gave people the chance to mock and criticize authorities without falling prey to its otherwise oppressive consequences. Literature, too, tends to have such escape clauses which Bakhtin introduced as carnivalesque-grotesque realism. Like carnivals, he believed, this literary technique aims to distort images of idealism that are internalized in societies. Through these satirical descriptions, a literary text can display or play a carnival, mock the taboo, and cunningly escape its consequences. In so doing, the artist fabricates an opportunity for a prison break from monologue to make a space for dialogic criticism so that the voice of the other could be heard. Such literary escape-artists abound in the realm of literature all around the world and the course of history. Sylvia Plath, the American poet, is one such artist...

The main issue, in this article, is the analysis of Akhavan’ s “ Epigraph” based on Michael Riffaterr’ s semiotic theory. According to Michael Riffaterr’ s semiotic theory, the reading of poems includes two stages: an exploratory (Heuristic) and a reading-oriented (Retroactive) stage. The first stage involves the search for meaning and the second stage considers the implications of language. In research based on semiotics of poetry, Akhavan’ s “ Epigraph” will be checked on reading-oriented (Retroactive) stage. This stage considers its implications of language. This approach in reading the text may explain the relationship between covert and internal accumulation of elements and systems in the text. This then brings the critic to the Hypogram and ultimately leads to the perception of these issues and uncovers the poems structural matrix. It is assumed that can be reached second reading in Akhavan’ s “ Epigraph” and ungrammatical elements, the accumulation, descriptive systems and the structural matrix of Akhavan’ s “ Epigraph” can be revealed...