Research in Contemporary World Literature
Year:2010 | Volume:- | Issue:59|Papers Count:7

Jean Racine, the 18 th century French author, gave outstanding roles to his female characters. The presence of women in the literary works of Racine was so powerful that some referred to him as the founder of female territory in literature. This text draws a comparison between three heroines featured in three Racine plays of Andromach, Britannicus and Phedra which are among the remarkable works of the author. Andromach marked the major accomplishment of Racine in the world of literature. Britannic us was yet another boost of fame for Racine since in this play he distanced himself from his usual Greek themes and borrowed the subject from ancient Rome to demonstrate his mastery in Roman history and literature. And finally, Phedra, the most noted and the most controversial play written by Racine is constantly considered as a finale to the non-religious works in the career of this playwright.Andromach, a princess from Troy; Agrippina, the mother of Nero in Britannic us; and Phedra, a queen from Greece are all heroines who have exceptional positions but varied motivations. These heroines are characterized by distinctive differences. At the same time, they share resemblances in their way of facing challenges, their attachments to their past and their influence on the fate of other characters in the story.

The present project is an attempt to give a model of African-American subjectivity by applying different theories of subjectivity to Toni Morrison' s representation of African-American people in Beloved. Since Beloved represents a group of ex-slaves, who remember harsh memories of slavery, their subjectivities can be analyzed from a post-colonial perspective within the framework of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. As slaves, black people’s sense of selfhood is drastically destroyed by white people’s inhuman treatment of them. However, they show signs of self-awareness and agency by resisting slavery’s subjugating mechanisms and discourses. By the use of subjectivity theories of postcolonial critics such as Edward Said, Frantz Fanon and Homi Bhabha, as well as theories of the Chicana feminist, Gloria Anzald.a, we explain how black people are capable of preserving a sense of selfhood and to what extent they are active agents in their actions. We also investigate their subjectivities after freedom and explore the importance of community relationships and unity among black people in casting aside their commodified subjectivities and developing strong, dynamic consciousnesses.

Although the novel The Vacant Place of Salouch (Jaye Khaliye Salouch) has a powerful realistic feature and trend of narrative so withdrawn from imagination that makes it difficult for the audience to follow- of course this is adaptive with the novel's theme and slow concatenation of events- it seems that considering this realistic feature, a great part of the narrative structure of the novel is based on symbolic images. In this article, we pay attention to the influence of symbolic images on the plot of the story, by studying the two images of cavity (Goudi) and home (Khaneh), and its impact on the actions of two main characters, Mergan and Salouch. Furthermore, most of the influence of this work and the identification of audience depends on these images.

This study is a discussion on translation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby from English into Persian by Karim Emami based on New marks’ (1988) classification of cultural elements. The discussion revolves around the problems of translation focusing on some of the cultural and linguistic issues encountered in the original and how they are resolved in the strategies used in the translation process taking Ivir’ model (1987) into consideration. The study, therefore, seeks answers to the following question: Has the translator of (The Great Gatsby) used literal translation for translating all linguistic and cultural elements? It is claimed in this paper that all translation strategies when used simultaneously throughout the same text would render a suitable translation of cultural elements and categories.

Along with the beginning of novel and short story writing in Persian and Urdu languages various literary movements like Realism, Social Realism and Surrealism overshadowed the contemporary literature of Iran and Pakistan. Modern prose of Persian and Urdu consists of great assets from novels and short stories, and their considerable background. During various periods of the growth and prosperity of literary fiction, the short story has been a pioneer in modern story writing in any language particularly for contemporary writers. In this article, we have briefly studied the movement of realism in short stories of both languages, we also have a comparative look at realistic literature of these languages. In fact, realistic writing has been an important characteristic of contemporary literature of the Persian and Urdu language.

Among the various interpretations of Michelangelo’s Moses, Freud’s is well-known. The founder of psychoanalysis, Freud reviews all the critics and interpretations of this masterpiece and then offers his own: this Moses is not about to spring up, as claimed by others, but on the contrary, is sitting down, suppressing his "rage". In the light of recent works of Daniel Arasse, art critic (study of the "signification” of the index finger in Renaissance works), and Christian Bromberger, anthropologist (Trichologiaques, the analysis of the significations of pilosity, "beard" in particular), and by integrating some details neglected by critics up to now, the author of this paper intends to argue that the main theme of this set of three statues together (Moses, Rachel and Lea) is that of power. The arrangement of the assembly is symmetrical: the divine power or celestial (horned Moses in the center, the Tablets of the Law and the contemplative posture of Rachel on the left) and the terrestrial power of the man-prophet (the palpable force emanating from exuberant musculature, the imposing beard, the statue of Lea staring at the Earth).

Tournier, in the novel Friday or the Other Island which can be assigned as the recreation of the novel Robinson crusoe by Daniel Defoe, expresses his own philosophic standpoints by utilizing myths. The writer delineates the solitude and miscellaneous difficulties that the hero of the novel faces, but he depicts the spiritual changing ways in the pacific ocean. Making an acquaintance with the island native boy, Friday, helps him get rid of cosmopolitan affairs and become aware of the mysteries of nature and the spirital world. To become acquainted with the naturalistic and impure world Tournier tries to utilize symbols and myths and escape from the material world to be closer to the spiritual one and mythical conditions.The text as an opposition to the Western civilization, tries to help man to find that human nobility can be retrieved. With the delineation of myths and symbols, this fiction tries to depict how the story gets rid of material affairs and reaches spiritual pleasure.