Journal of Literary Studies
Year:2014 | Volume:47 | Issue:1 (184)|Papers Count:6

Theoretically, narrative modes are divided into three levels whose convergence is called metalepsis. Genette characterized it as "any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.) or the inverse.’’ Thus, any convergence or contamination between distinct enunciative situations or diegetic levels, any movement across presumably sacrosanct borders, any violation of the frontier between story and discourse, narrating and narrated, embedding and embedded narratives constitutes a narrative metalepsis. The questions discussed in this article are: 1) what is metalepsis? 2) Is it peculiar to postmodern stories or it can be traced back to classical literature? 3) What are the functions of this technique in narrative texts? 4) What are the different types of metalepsis? The goal of the current essay is to define and analyze the theoretical basis of this narratological device.

Feminist critical discourse analysis is an approach distinguished by its focus on revealing unequal power relations between women and men in their social life. In the present paper, it is suggested that Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of the formation of gender identity and female subject in The Second Sex provides a meaningful theoretical ground to the feminist critical discourse analysis. Although The Second Sex antedates current discourse studies, it reveals a notable compatibility with the ontological and epistemological assumptions of the critical approaches to discourse studies. In this article, The Second Sex has been analyzed in regard to its critical approach, its idea of power and ideology, its relation to social constructionism, its critical approach to common sense and science, its evaluation of historical changes and the role of discourse orders in the formation of subject.

In the second half of 20th century, the German thinker Wolfgang Iser developed a theory of reading literary texts that opened up new horizons in literary studies. By focusing on the reader instead of the writer, Iser introduced new ways of reading. He subsequently extended his literary studies, went beyond the conventional domains, and developed a novel area of research which he named “Literary Anthropology”. The present article is an attempt to draw an outline of Iser’s major notions.

Critical discourse analysis has proved to be of great help in analyzing the form and meaning of literary works. Certain scholars such as Norman Fairclough have greatly improved such studies. The present study deals with one of the political letters of Mas’ud I of Ghazni to Arsalan Khan written by his secretary Abul-Fazl Bayhaqi. The complete version of the letter has been recorded in Bayhaqi’s history. Using Fairclough's method, the article tries to study power relations. In this letter, Bayhaqi carefully employs diction, grammatical structure (e.g. active and passive voices), and modality to show the king’s power even after his Dandanghan failure.

Among the sources on Tasawwuf, the works of Ibn al-‘Arabi especially hold femininity in high regard. The present study is to illustrate that beyond the transcendental view of Ibn al-‘Arabi to woman, there are some prominent traces of binary oppositions that, according to Hélèn Cixous, culminate in different reactions to feminine and masculine roles and ultimately lead to the appearance of patriarchal atmosphere. In the first part of the article, some ontological concepts are examined to delineate Ibn al-‘Arabi’s attitude towards femininity. In the following sections, his positive and negative perspectives on woman, which are the representation of his viewpoint towards gender characteristics, are analyzed. Besides, in the analyses, the change of masculine concepts to metaphysical ones in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s view is shown.

Throughout the history of Persian poetry, qasida has had an imitative and steady form. Such a characteristic has played a key role in the weakness of the vertical axis of this form of poetry and has always caused poet's imagination to move in a single direction. Furthermore, this form of poetry is frequently associated with a predetermined chain of images. But Nasir Khusraw’s (1004-1088 CE) attempts in introducing changes into the vertical axis of qasida are innovative; the patterns he had presented for the structure of qasida are varied and unique. In this essay, all Nasir Khusraw 's qasidas are compared in terms of structure with those of his three contemporaries: Onsori (?-1040 CE), Farrokhi (?-1038 CE) and Manoochehri (?-1041 CE). Finally, the study focuses on certain characteristic features of Nasir Khusraw's qasidas such as lengthy description, allegory, personification, frequency of key words throughout the poem and the cohesion of verses by the conjunctions resulting in the stability of vertical axis of his poetry. Such features are less common in the contemporary poetry.