نشریه پژوهش ادبیات معاصر جهان
سال هفدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 65، بهار 1391)

As one of the seminal figures of modernism and a member of the Frankfurt School, Theodore Adorno has questioned some of the fundamental concepts of culture in his "critical theory." The term "Culture Industry" coined and mostly discussed by Adorno refers to a post-Enlightenment era in which culture has acquired a new function: the slave under the shadow of dominant hegemony and instrumental reason. Under such conditions human beings are not deemed as cultural beings but mere commodities whose identities are lost due to commodification, standardization, and massification. As one of the opponents of the Enlightenment project in Iran, one may undoubtedly refer to Jalal-al-Ahmad who has devoted most of his literary and political writing to the same issue. Focusing on cultural awakening, Jalal attempts to portray the social condition of his milieu. The present paper is an attempt to investigate the concept of "Culture Industry" in Jalal's Modire-Madrese.

Bertolt Brecht composed poems, focusing on the political, social and economic situations of his time. This fact could also be seen in his plays. With this outlook Brecht challenges the readers of his work with regard to the social problems of their time. Doing so, the reader finds himself in a difficult task that tests his ability and skill to resolve the problems. The initial poems of Brecht show his nihilistic, anarchistic and expressionistic opinion. He also tried to question the Bourgeoisie which can be considerd as an essential characteristic of his early plays. In the middle of the third decade Brecht has shown Marxist tendencies in his plays and has tried to condense Marxist opinions. During his emigration and in order to fight against Fascism, Brecht adopted a new style in composing his poems. He started to compose them ignoring rhythm and rhyme. He felt certain that rhythm and rhyme were an obstacle in expressing social problems. Although Brecht started to compose political poems after the Second World War, the conception of love can be traced in the lyrics of the later period of his artistic activity.

Although literature was supposed to have an instrumental, advertizing and political role in the revival of socialism, the hegemony of Marxist ideology did not simply take place in this area. T h i s article studies three considerable works that have had a significant role in smashing ideological obstacles and generated a creative literary atmosphere. These three works have also been able to make an organic link with global literature and have avoided the dominant monological discourse with the help of their special themes and structures. These works belong to different decades and have differences in terms of content, but have not surrendered to the requirements o f socialist realism. This study shows that rationalism, skepticism, introspection and individualism were so embedded in the German culture that even the pro - Marxist authors refused to accept the presuppositions of "socialist realism".

Italian "immigration literature", novice and still subtle, emerged in the 1990s with considerable delay in comparison to other European countries. This type of literature engages in the elimination of borders and the narration of the untold, speaking of a rebirth, the unfulfillment of a dream and the constant hope for its realization. The authors of this literature utilize reality, autobiography and imagination to create works which portray the connection between current Italy and the past life of the immigrants, a colorful image that, in most cases, has been neglected by Italian authors. In this essay, after exploring the manner of the emergence of "immigration literature", we will try to understand how the host country can become an appropriate fertile ground for ingenuity, how the experience of leaving one's homeland can contribute to the production of a new literary genre and finally how a narrative from far away countries can reflect the dissonances and discords, the constant void inside the immigrant and the sense of alienation interwoven with being. These, alongside other topics by "immigration literature", lead to an identical issue; the lost and divided identity of the immigrant.

The effect of translation on political, economic and cultural relations is an undeniable issue. Translation is one of the ways to convey information and knowledge all over the world. Moreover, it is a way to establish relationships among nations with different languages. Iran and Armenia are two very close peoples that have had deep relations from antiquity and share a common culture, background and destiny. One of the main aspects in translation which helps to study cultural relations between two nations is the history of translation. Studying the Persian-Armenian translations and becoming familiar with professional translators, will give us information about Iran and Armenia and their interactions. Despite all these relations and common points, unfortunately little attention has been paid to the history of translated works in Persian and Armenian languages up to now. The main goal of this historical research is to introduce the history of Persian-Armenian translations in Iran and Armenia and its trend after the Islamic revolution of Iran

One of the subjects that we rarely notice in the study of literary works is how the title of a literary work or how the names of the heros are chosen. The authors choose various names for their works and their heroes, and sometimes they choose the name of the main hero as the title of their work. Most of the time, the name of the hero is chosen accidentally, but sometimes the author follows an intention. One of the authors who has paid special attention to the choice of the title of his work and the names of the heroes, is Romain Rolland, the French writer of the novel Jean-Christophe. He has chosen the name "Jean-Christophe Kraft" as his hero. In this article, we try to find the reasons why Rolland has chosen this name in order to find proper answers for the following questions: Has he tried to produce sense through his choice? What are the factors that may affect the making of meaning in his choice? Ultimately, the object of this analysis and synthesis is to make the reader familiar with one of the essential and effective elements of a novel; the name of the hero.

Because William Shakespeare plays a significant part in English literature, many critics and authors have written on his life and works. However, in the postwar British theatre which was influenced by the student riots of May 1968, Shakespeare was introduced as a playwright who was not only influenced by the dominant ideologies of his time, but one who also reinforced and promoted them in his plays. Many modern dramatists rewrote Shakespeare’s major plays with the purpose of subverting their latent ideological discourse. Edward Bond in Lear (1971), through his subversive rewriting of King Lear, turns Lear from a dictator into an informed political dissident and Cordelia from an innocent woman into an autocratic governess. Tom Stoppard also rewrites Hamlet in his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967) by giving voice to the two minor characters from Shakespeare’s play. He marginalizes Hamlet and Claudius, the major courtiers, in order to illustrate Hamlet’s absurdity and ideology to the modern reader. Thus, by comparing the two modern critical rewritings of Shakespeare, an attempt is made to explore the reasons for the demythologization of Shakespeare.