LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM
Year:2021 | Volume:5 | Issue:2 (10)|Papers Count:12

Descriptology examines the nature of description, studies literature from the perspective of description, tries to identify different types of description in literary texts and, by providing a structured framework, offers a system for the criticism of texts. The main aim of the present study is to apply the theory of descriptology to Shahab al-Din Zidari’ s Nafthat al-Masdur in order to redefine description and examine its types. As a model or paradigm, typology encompasses a conceptual and theoretical framework, while being a critical tool, it has exploratory use and allows for the literary analysis of a text. In this regard, Nafthat al-Masudar has the potential to serve as a basis for the completion of this theory, as it displays a remarkable variety and offers a special view of description and its application in the text. The paper argues that many of the beauties and characteristics of the literary text are made possible through the examination of the techniques, methods, and details of the description used. However, this paper is not a descriptological analytic study of the text; it is merely an introduction to it and offers an apparatus that can be used for descriptological research.

There is no doubt that different hermeneutical approaches have become accepted as a general theory, . But can hermeneutics be a step beyond the theory and enter the critique? In author-centered hermeneutics, Schleiermacher is theoretically believed, as it is realized, hermeneutics is preceded by critique, and criticism comes after hermeneutics Schleiermacher's commitment to gramatical interpretation and psycological interpretation, establishes between the author-centered hermeneutics and the critique. Hirsch, by distinguishing between two types of criticisms, believes there is a link between the authoritative hermeneutics and the inner critique. In addition, Hirsch's quadruple criteria for proving the probability of an interpretation result in the valuation of valid interpretations of the invalid. But from the point of view of the critics, philosophical hermeneutics is in come and go between theory and critique The author believes the two criteria Gadamer specifies for correct interpretation that is "fore-conception of completeness and distance, Philosophical hermeneutics is pulled to the point of critique In the meantime, literary hermeneutics, with emphasis on the method of reading the text, enter the realm of criticism.

Trans-legendism is rooted in the legendism of the Romantics in the late eighteenth century. Romantic poets were the first to begin legendism which is a kind of rewriting and recreating legends. But Symbolists took a step further in presenting legendism and even trans-legendism. There is a fundamental difference between legendism and trans-legendism: whereas recreating legends and legendism had been openly concerned with legends, trans-legendism was interested in the ambiguous and intertextual transmutation of legends to such an extent that sometimes the readers could not trace it back to the original legend. In Iran, Nima Yushij was the first poet to use trans-legendism in a singular manner in his free verse. The aim of the present article is to introduce narrative legends in the inner layers of Nima’ s poetry, which leads to the advent of femininity and resistance to the rigid masculine language. Finally, following the trans-legendism theory, the article investigates the structure of Nima’ s free verse, specifically in the poem “ Snow” .

“ Conceptual history” is a relatively new theory and method which has been influenced by the tradition of continental philosophy and new historicism. This theory and method, with its critique of traditional historicism, puts emphasis on the “ concept” and claims that by studying the creation, evolution and conception of concepts, one can represent ideological conflicts in a political structure. In the present paper, after defining conceptual history, attempt is made to address the role of this theory in continental philosophy by emphasizing the views of Reinhart Koselleck, the most renowned scholar in the field. In his seminal project on conceptual history, Koselleck explores the concept, its differences from the word, and how concepts influence political events. He believes that without concepts, neither society nor the political arena of action will exist. Moreover, to him every concept in the system of thought has anti-concepts that can overcome it by having a specific meaning. On this basis, Koselleck pits anti-concepts against concepts and speaks of a semantic battle that can justify and explain the efforts of political forces and groups to overcome a particular discourse. As a method, conceptual history also attempts to discover the meaning behind the accumulated layers of time.

Feminist literary criticism seeks to revise the classical criteria of criticism and literary history, and create a feminine tradition in literature. Studying feminist criticisms in specialized journals can play an important role in showing the direction of this type of criticism in children’ s and adolescent literature. Using a descriptive and qualitative method and a deductive-inductive content analysis method, the present study examines the articles published between 1997 and 2014 in the journal Ketab-e Mah-e Kudak va Nojavan (The Monthly Book of Children and Young Adults) that have adopted a feminist approach in order to give an overview of the status of feminist criticism in them. The results show that out of 1073 articles, 27 articles employed this approach. Time has influenced the pieces quantitatively and qualitatively. Female critics are more prolific. The most widely used feminist components are derived from liberal and somewhat radical tendencies. The critics’ tendency toward Anglo-American feminist criticism is more than the other tendencies. Well-written titles and introductions, good cover designs, thematic classifications and fitting conclusions and useful suggestions to the readers and writers are among the strengths of the articles. In contrast, giving scant attention to children’ s literature theories, drawing insufficiently upon feminist approaches in their analyses, insufficient references to the texts, failure to use first-hand sources and dealing with irrelevant issues are some of the weak points of the articles.

Different styles of illustration can be found in retellings of Shahnameh for children. These styles cover a wide range from realistic to the abstract. They have used visual cues to reinforce or sometimes weaken linguistic concepts. One of the functions of visual cues in the narratives is to characterize or identify the heroes. In this paper, the aforementioned ontological signs are classified and analyzed according to Peirce’ s semiotic system. The Pierce trilogy (icon, index, symbol) shows the amount of distance between the signifier and the signified. Iconic symbols have the highest degree of similarity to the signifier, and symbolic signs have the least. The index marks are in between. In this study, we understand the importance of imagery as an enlightening factor in enhancing children’ s cognitive understanding. We also find that these signs, while being motifs for recognizing the characters in the story, also reflect social and cultural characteristics, and the illustrators have not always based their work on the child on and his or her pre-learned experiences of image perception; rather, they have taken into account popular preferences and individual style. Of the three styles examined (realistic, abstract, and miniature), realistic style has the most, and miniature style has the least iconic and indexical signs to identify the characters in the story. Symbolic signs are seen in almost the same proportion in all three styles. In terms of the relationship between the text and the image, there is generally an increasing relationship.

The study of genres is one of the significant subjects in the field of literary criticism and theory, which regained importance in contemporary literature following the upswing of criticism. The advancement of discussions related to literary genres also faced challenges. Genres come into existence for different reasons. For example, they sometimes form sub-genres of the same type inside themselves or form them independently; they may also live inside the dominant genre as a recessive genre, associate with other genres, or form kinship relationships. After coming into existence, sub-genres also move in a similar direction. The mixture of genres and sub-genres sometimes generates new genres and micro-genres in different manners. Micro-genres also make the same effort for survival. In such a situation, some sub-genres and micro-genres fade and sometimes they may revive or resurrect in other situations. These relationships and the progress of genres from the beginning to the end – which can be called the struggle for survival in genres – can solve problems like the ingenuousness of genres, the impossibility of including sub-genres under a specific genre, and the mixture of genres, subgenres and micro-genres.

After two decades, the challenge of theory-phobia and theory-ism has, for some, entered a discourse that can be called the ‘ critical discourse’ of comparative studies of Persian poetics. This discourse challenges comparative studies of the heterogeneous Persian and Western literatures and through the essential and foundational rejection of these studies, attempts to deny their existence and essence. Some Western scholars regard other literatures as a propelling force that can fill in the void of contemporary literary theory. Others from the East consider such studies to be an opportunity to regain a lost literary-theoretical identity and thus return to the global literary discourse. Even though the critical discourse intends to deny comparative theoretical studies in an imbalanced way, it, nonetheless, puts forward some points which are required for such studies to be done, and highlights the explication of a special set of instructions for dialogue among heterogeneous literary theories. Pursuing this aim, the present paper adopts a descriptive-analytical method in order to critically present and develop the main principles of Shunqing’ s Variation Theory. What he establishes as the four main principles of dialogue – discursive independence, discursive equality, mutual elucidation, and the search for a common ground while maintaining difference as well as the mutual complements of variability among heterogeneous literary theories – contain a set of practical instructions that can introduce comparative poetics to a new phase of dialogue.

Each narrative structure includes some actions. These actions are in connection with values. Now, as to how these actions can create value in Persian and Arabic Risalat al-Tayrs, it seems that in these texts, different values are created under the influence of different actions and are adapted to the narrative structure. Investigations using a descriptive-analytical method and the structuralist approach (Todorov’ s theory of syntactic representation) as well as semio-semantics (the system of values) show that actors make a contract before entering the status of disequilibrium. Then the actors enter competence 1 and obtain virtual values. In the next step, action happens. After that, actors enter competence 2 and obtain potential values. Then the actors enter a situation which entails emotional tension and can be the force to create a new balanced position and also lead to ethical value. In the next stage, actors enter a position of renewed equilibrium and obtain ethical value. Finally, the birds reach the object or get separated from it in the following manner: connection with the object, eternal destruction of and disunity with the object, conditional connection with the object, unknown unity or disunity and the transformation of subjects into the object. Accordingly, the basic grammar of Risalat al-Tayrs is as follows: Journey – negotiation/sermon/warning – gaining knowledge – union.

This study aims to investigate and analyze the consequences of trauma through the lens provided by Slavoj Ž iž ek. He believes that the unexpected intrusion of the Real into the Symbolic order is called trauma, which gains meaning only in retrospect. Different subjects respond differently to a trauma. According to LaCapra, the usual responses of subjects to trauma are “ acting out” and “ working through” . The process of “ acting out” contains traumatic symptoms including arousal, intrusion and constriction. But by “ working through” , the subject tries to come to terms with the traumatic experience and the related loss through mourning. Ž iž ek contends that the continuum of various reactions to trauma ends with the birth of a new subject known as the post-traumatic subject. The prominent consequence of indirect experience of a traumatic event is that an external crisis leads to an internal one, since trauma operates retroactively and attenuates the successful functioning of signification. Therefore, trauma becomes a disorder which entails traumatic symptoms that affect identity and meaning.

Literary Darwinism is a recent approach in literary studies that makes extensive use of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science to explain and make sense of literary phenomena. In this paper, I have done two interrelated things: 1. I have given a brief account of literary Darwinism and its epistemological foundations which puts it in direct opposition to the current constructivist paradigm of literary theory or simply “ theory” , and 2. I have given a Darwinian account of fictional narrative. To do the latter, I have adopted an anti-constructivist stance and have drawn on the ideas of Brian Boyd, Joseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall and Steven Pinker to explain the cognitive aspect of fictional narrative. I have gone so far as to formulate the idea that the fictional narrative constructs a possible world and a model of reality significantly analogous to the world in which we are living, in such a way that makes it possible for us homo sapiens to understand the biological and social challenges that lie ahead of us and experience them vicariously and at almost no cost. Successful fictional narratives, thus, beyond their structural and genric dimensions, have a cognitive significance, and making sense of them in an inter-subjective world is an adaptation for the the literary animal that in turn explains their functionality and universality.

Due to the socio-cultural events following the Constitutional Revolution in Iran, the forms of interpellation of human subjects and their identity construct have substantially changed, affecting the construct of subjects in fiction. Unique interpellation of female subjects in the early 20th-cenutry Persian fiction, especially in that of Hedayat, could be cited as a great example of this phenomenon. Employing a constructivist approach, the present paper seeks to interpret and classify the gender-based interpellation of subjects in Hedayat’ s stories. In doing so, the discussion at the macro-level in this study draws on the ideas of Althusser, whereas for the analyses of textual signs on the micro-level, Goffman, Brown and Levinson’ s theories have been used. The results show that the construction of location/situation of each fictional subject is, in fact, an outcome of the three layers of bodily, reaction-oriented and belonging-oriented interpellation. These have been expressed by narrators and fictional subjects and have, accordingly, created positive or negative faces for the subjects. Although bodies have been objectively described in bodily interpellation, the final assessment of the same bodies, as the main criterion of face-formation, is basically fulfilled through mental factors, on the basis of classical aesthetics. In contrast, due to the dominance of realism in the texts, in reaction-oriented and belongings-oriented layers of interpellation, class relations, forms of consumption, and taste of subjects are among the main criteria for face-formation. Although the gender-based construction of female subjects in Hedayat’ s stories, in line with the attested individuality in the contemporary world, is mainly based on personal and historical relations of subjects, its face-forming criteria have been formulated on the basis of a variety of epistemic and aesthetic factors.