پژوهشنامه مکتب های ادبی
پیاپی 24 (زمستان 1402)

Surrealism is one of the important literary schools of the 20th century. Due to its specific principles, Surrealism was first considered to be a school suitable for poetry. Over time, however, some famous surreal artists produced different kinds of narratives which raised a serious question: what are the characteristic features of surrealist narratives? There was no doubt that the emphasis on the unconscious and techniques such as stream of consciousness would inevitably change the form of surrealist narrative, an issue that can be seen in most modern and post-modern narratives. Therefore, it is impossible to consider the surreal aspects of the narrative by focusing only on the form. To investigate the characteristics of surrealist narrative, therefore, we attempted to focus on Ahmad Hasanzadeh's Khial Baz through an analytical-descriptive method. Findings suggest that the presence of elements such as fantasy have blurred the boundary between dream and reality and resulted in the construction of a meta-reality: the prominent role of sleep and revelation in the text, the effect of drug use on narrative actions and special emphasis on the madness of the main character are major features that have contributed to the surreal atmosphere of the narrative.

Postmodernist theories are divided into two main groups. The first group includes the theories of people like Barry Lewis and David Lodge who present a list of postmodern style components (uncertainty, paranoia, temporal disorder, etc.). In the second group, the most significant theory has been proposed by Brian McHale, who uses the concept of "dominant element" in Russian formalism to explain postmodernism. McHale considers the characteristic feature of postmodernism to be ontology (as opposed to epistemology, which is the dominant element of modernism). Ontology examines the nature of existence: questions raised in ontology concern existence and beings. In order to answer ontological questions, Cahill believes, the world must be understood first; however, modern works refuse to give a definite answer to this question and make the reader experience a kind of ontological uncertainty. One instance of such categories is the blurring of the real and imaginary worlds in postmodern stories. Benefiting from Brian McHale's theory, this research is looking for ontological components in Nabokov's Pale Fire. Findings indicate that Pale Fire is written in a postmodern style and is a complex and difficult novel whose author is well capable of utilizing his polyphonic technique, uncertainty, temporal and spatial disorder, paranoia, etc.

Forugh Farrokhzad, the representative of modern Iranian poetry, and Virginia Woolf, the representative of modern British fiction, have shown their readers the inner world of individuals in their poetry/ fiction. Enough similarities between these two works enable us to analyze both in an impressionistic context. The femininity of the text, the twenty-four-hour length of the narration, the resonant presence of the clock to separate the world of reality and mentality, the personal look at the surroundings, and the lack of coherence in the narrative structure are some of the common features between these two works. Using library resources, we have comparatively analyzed these two works by adapting an impressionistic outlook. The two simultaneous areas of internal and external timing, the stream of consciousness, pretended impressions of phenomena, associations, the confusion and thoughts of death and the discontinuity of the narrative serve as the bases of comparative reading of these two works. Findings suggest that continuous shifts from the objective to the subjective mind have endowed the narratives with a special chronology that has resulted in the duality of internal and external timing. At times, they have also led to anachronisms. The external time is the field of inevitable presence of the character in public while the inner time is the field of impressions of that presence and the representation of its memories.

Many philosophical and aesthetic concepts, despite their initial simplicity, are presented in the form of anonymous assertions in the field of criticism and literary theory. One of these concepts is critique of taste which, especially after the spread of academic criticism and the subsequent neglect of traditional methods of criticism, including the critique of taste, was looked down upon due to its inability to evaluate scientifically and methodically. Thereafter, it was bitterly criticized as a reliable touchstone and a trustworthy method of criticism and was, therefore, abandoned. In order to critically examine the negative and derogatory view toward critique of taste, in this article we have tried to analyze the differences between the critique of taste and academic criticism. By criticizing the opinions of followers and critics of both groups, it becomes evident that contrary to the popular opinion, critique of taste is not completely personal, subjective and devoid of criteria. On the other hand, scientific/objective criticism is found to be tainted with ideological, biased and intuitive outlooks. Findings suggest that despite the rejection and ridicule of critique of taste, firstly, many opponents of critique of taste are also caught up in it, and secondly, there are no precise criteria for distinguishing critique of taste from the so-called academic criticism. This is because the concept of taste is a complex historical concept and includes various features.

Intertextuality is a new approach to reading and criticizing literary texts. According to this theory, each text is formed by borrowing from previous texts. In other words, no text is produced independently. Gérard Genette, a theoretician in this field, proposes three types of links between literary pieces: explicit and announced, non-explicit and undeclared, and implicit between two or more texts. Since mystical texts present a more coherent and precise communication, the theory of intertextuality can be applied very effectively to such texts. Ghazali's Sawānih and Fakhreddin Iraqi's Lama’at are two of the well-known mystical texts. Discovering the relationship between these two texts, hence, helps us know the characteristics of some works that are influenced by mystical texts. In this article, a descriptive-analytical method is used to find examples of Ghazali’s influences on Iraqi based on the theory of intertextuality. Findings suggest that in writing Lama’at, Iraqi is independent in terms of language, but he has made intertextual use of Sawānih’s structure and content: He has added points to the original writing and has altered several points from Sawānih, interpreting various parts of the former piece, deleting some parts, and adding some others.

Malek osh-Sho'arā Bahār is considered to be one of the masters of Persian ode, but his masnavis were a strong means for him to depict various personal, social, political, historical and critical concerns. Since Bahar's masnavis constitute a significant volume of his poetic works (348 pages), his artistic personality and poetic performance cannot be properly evaluated if these masnavis are neglected. In the present research, while discussing the poet’s art of masnavi writing, fourteen of his masnavis are briefly introduced and his "Prison Poems", which are the most detailed Persian prison poems, have been examined and analyzed using descriptive and structural analysis method. This research attempts to show that Bahar has expressed his interest for innovation in poetry in masnavi writing. Moreover, in his use of a language influenced by street language and terms and phrases of spoken language, he created a moderate level of literary elements such as simile, allegory and allusion in these masnavis. However, description, narrative, simile, allegory and its types, especially proverbs, irony and allusions, are the most important literary elements in his "Prison Poems". Apart from their literary value, “Prison Poems” contain first-hand information about political strife and arrests of opponents and critics of the government and the state of Iran's prisons; in general, they are historically and sociologically valuable for the study of Iranian society in the previous century.