نشریه نقد و نظریه ادبی
سال ششم شماره 1 (پیاپی 11، بهار و تابستان 1400)

Adopting a new historicist methodological approach, this paper examines the representation of the various classes in 7th-century Iranian society in Sa’di’s Golestan against the background of contemporary conflicting discourses about social class. It connects the disruption of contemporary notions concerning social order, as well as the attribution of new meanings to existing signifiers, with the displacement of the center of power in the 7th century AH. The paper also suggests that Golestan’s resistance to certain discourses and groups indicates the emergence of new centers of power and new discourses in society.  On the other hand, in line with the principles of new historicism, the paper shows how the lower strata and silenced minorities in society appear in Golestan and rise from objecthood to subject status and sometimes actually use the same ideology that places them at the bottom of the social ladder to resist their leaders. Due to the intertextual approach in this article, other texts are also used for comparison and analysis. The method adopted is, moreover, based on Foucault’s theory of power and resistance.

Paratextuality is a fundamental concept in the process of discovering the significations of literary texts, which, according to Gerard Genette, includes signs that guide the reader to the contents of the literary text. Among all types of paratext, titles as the most prominent one in terms of extensivity and variation of function, have a high potential for analysis based on Genette’s theories. This paper has analyzed the titles of the most famous classical works in Persian literature from the 5th to the 15th century AH, classifying their titles in five categories: genre, character, author, technique and direct titles. In this categorization, technical titles are subdivided into two types: rhyming and metaphorical. The metaphorical sub-category has also two kinds: discursive and extra discursive. In general, metaphorical titles are more complex and thus make more compact semantic signification in comparison with the rhyming type. In a stylistic perspective, the titles of the first period are simple and short, whereas in the periods that follow, we find more complex and difficult titles. Moreover, due to the literary capabilities of authors, generic evolutions and contents of the literary texts, other titles emerge which extend vertically, not horizontally, and induce semantic implications. Generic displacement and appearance and disappearance of various genres are another property which can be perceived from the titles. The present study shows that in comparison with elements relating to character and place, the element of time has a far less influence in the process of choosing a title. Moving toward atomistic views instead of holisticism, pursuing a kind of conflict between myth and history, absence of the individuality of the author as an active identity, and removing history from the titles of literary works are among the other issues derived from the analysis of the titles of classical Persian literary works.

Through the genealogy of novelistic prose, which is a ground for polyphony, an objection to idealism and cultural monophony in every society, Mikhail Bakhtin examines the phenomenon and notion of “carnival”. According to Bakhtin, a novel, just like carnivals of old times, as the domain of togetherness of all dominant and submissive voices, is the presence of all rejected forms of human beings and languages and ideas, and is a domain where democracy is manifested along with freedom from every constructed hierarchical subjugations. In his theory of the carnivalesque, the novel’s capacity to oppose any dominion along with a capacity for critical thinking, lies the ability to construct a network of polyphonic items, grotesque realism, vulgar language, alienation, crowning and eviction. Through developing indeterminate subject, threshold chronotope and contrastive plot, Shahram Rahimian, in his novel Doktor Noon Zanash ra Bishtar az Mosaddeq Doost Darad (Dr. N. Loves His Wife More than Mosaddeq) manages to create a carnivalesque universe which challenges many ruling discourses and constructed norms. This article starts with a brief introduction to Bakhtin’s carnivalesque theory and offers a re-reading of the abovementioned novel through this theory. The findings of this critical view on the novel confirm the dominance of the discourse of “commitment” in Iranian contemporary history, the development of self-consciousness in the reader towards the possibility of subjectivity and his/her ability to leave behind the boundaries of dominion, and the interaction between society’s political sphere and critical thinking.

In discourse analysis, Grice’s inference theory – particularly, his ideas on implication – is quite helpful in determining the speaker’s intention as well as discovering and justifying the relations between discourse and its illocutionary force in verbal communication. Likewise, Grice’s verbal implications can be useful in interpreting and analyzing literary texts which are filled with figures of thought and words and sentences which usually have implicit and metaphorical meanings. Following Grice’s inference theory and his cooperative principles, this paper studies the quality of deviation from standard language norms and it’s transformation into mystical and literary language in a ghazal of Hafiz in order to calculate and infer the implicit meanings within a methodic and systematic framework. Therefore, at first, Grice’s theory and concepts such as conversational implicatures are presented and further elaborated on with a discussion of appearance appropriateness in classical rhetoric. Then, adopting a descriptive-analytic method, the first ghazal of Hafiz is studied, and the intentions beyond his words are extracted. This analysis shows that this ghazal does not feature Grice’s cooperative principles, and has deviated from standard language norms. Thus, Hafiz has used words and sentences in other meanings, and has created a mystical-literary language in a syncretic ghazal. The present paper’s main contribution is the justification and explication of Hafiz’s mystical language in the ghazal in question using reliable devices in pragmatics.

Plot is a set of sequences of events within the framework of a causal system. The present study argues that “narrative ornament” is a phonetic or semantic element in excess of the plot; it is also for the aesthetic enrichment of the narrative, and if removed, it does not distort either the plot’s causal system, or the central core of the story. The counterpart of a “narrative ornament” is a “plot-making figurative device,” which cannot be removed from the plot. The aim of the present study is to introduce these figurative devices which are not purely aesthetic elements, but, rather, form the structure of the plot in children’s stories. The paper aims to find out if the definition of figures of speech can be semiotically generalized to plot-making figurative devices. In this regard, the study first describes the three elements in Peirce’s semiotics, i.e., “the sign, object, and interpretant”. Then, using a descriptive-analytical method, and making reference to a brief list of figures of speech, the article expands the definition of figures of speech to the semiotic definition of the plot-making devices. The present study for the first time highlights the narratological and non-rhetorical function of literary embellishment. Since the traditional poetry-related categorizations of figures of speech cannot be applied in the analysis of the narrative text, a study of figures of speech in narratives seems to be of great significance in literary criticism.

Ideology is the essential belief of a group with special political, social and religious opinions. This study follows Van Dijk’s discourse analysis approach which introduces the distancing strategy to explain the ways in which writers promote the positive characteristics of “us” by marginalizing the positive characteristics of “them”. Historical accounts in educational textbooks are, likewise, a place for the representation of such ideological constructs which are hidden in the accounts and narratives of the realities of the past. The present paper studies Persian and translated history textbooks (on the Samanid, Ghaznavid, Saljuqid, and Qarakhanid periods) in which the gender differences between men as “us” and women as “them” can be detected. The findings of the paper indicate that, firstly, both Iranian and foreign authors have mentioned few names of or roles for women, and, secondly, both groups of writers only emphasize the role of women in connection to marriage, and, thus, ignore the important part women played in Iranian history. This biased representation of women in history textbooks, which, ultimately, favours men, affects the students’ perception of gender roles.

Drawing upon such theoretical principles as intertextuality, transtextuality, and hypertextuality, the present article seeks to introduce the notion of transnarration and its various kinds and applications in narrative genres. Put another way, the purpose of this narratological study is to define transnarration and transnarrative travel, and discuss their stratifications and categorisations in various forms of narrative. Here, the central questions are: what are transnarration, transnarrative travel, and their different kinds in narrative genres? How can the characteristic features of transnarration be traced and analysed in genres that incorporate micro or macro narrations? To answer these questions, the present study makes frequent use of key terms associated with intertextuality, Genette’s hypertextuality in particular, as well as of narrative elements, characters specifically, in an attempt to illustrate and exemplify different manifestations, categorisations, and sub-categorisations of the notions in question. The article divides transnarrative travel into outwardly (bilateral and unilateral) and inwardly (in even and uneven narratives) and argues that transnarration is, in effect, the textual and semantic expansion of a narrative and its penetration into another via the intertextual transportation and the simultaneous appearance of major or minor characters. The paper demonstrates that the character’s reciprocal or one-sided travel from a hypotext into a hypertext, from a hypertext into a hypotext, among even or uneven narratives within a single narrative work, from a main to a frame story or among possible stories in a multi-plotted and metafictional narrative work are all manifestations of transnarration and transnarrative travel.

The widespread use of prose in written and spoken language has not led experts to regard it as an equivalent of verse. On this basis, we do not yet have a specific definition of prose. Perhaps the reason for this shortcoming is either the difficulty of defining this kind of speech or its existential self-evidence. But philosophers, rhetoricians, orators, stylists, critics, and linguists have, more or less, tended to describe, and sometimes define, prose. Adopting a descriptive-analytical method, the present article has tried to offer a logical definition for prose after introducing the existing definitions. Having assessed the views of the predecessors, the article concludes that prose is “connected speech”, but the feature that distinguishes prose from verse is that in prose only the phonetic-syntactic rules of language dictate the order of the discourse, whereas in verse, meter and rhythm are loaded with rules that determine the arrangement of words. Moreover, the paper discusses rhythmic prose, prose poetry and rhyming prose in terms of their prosaic and verse properties.

Employing a descriptive-analytical method, this article, first of all, deals with some of the criticisms on the methodology of “applied psychoanalysis”. Then, discussing Pierre Bayard’s idea of “applied literature” and, at the same time, referring to the 17th seminar of Jacques Lacan, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, the paper points out that the terms “applied psychoanalysis” and “applied literature” seem to presuppose an external relationship between literature and psychoanalysis. On the contrary, Felman’s notion of “implication” is based on a simultaneously internal and external relationship between the two domains. In this way, the article highlights the weaknesses of Bayard’s idea and the stronger foundation of Felman’s arguments. Finally, in the context deliberately created for the conflict between these positions and points of view, the paper returns to some other aspects of Lacanian ideas such as the description of the term extimité and his subtle use of the English word “without”, asking whether it can be said that psychoanalysis is not “without” literature.

This study aims to investigate and analyze the consequences of trauma through the lens provided by Slavoj Žižek. 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. Žižek 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.

The linear style has been the common approach of literary historiography from the past to the present. Despite its educational value and facilitating the learning of literary history, this method cannot be an effective method for accurate literary historiography, and ultimately leads to incomplete and ambiguous reports about literary events. The present article examines some of the weaknesses of this method in the study of the history of literature and identifies five common shortcomings that exist in contemporary literary historiography: Failing to describe gradual changes in literary works and traditions Failing to identify multiple relationships between literary events Symbolically interconnecting points of rupture Homogenizing different historical periods regardless of the actual contribution of each Determining the beginning and end of literary events contrary to historical facts.

Narratology considers the element of character to be the drive behind roles and actions in a narrative. The sociological theory of “symbolic interactionism” is also concerned with how actions occur. Employing this sociological approach, we can expand the critical method of narratology and introduce new aspects in sociological studies of narrative texts. Using the “self” theory in the sociological approach of “symbolic interactionism”, this article discusses the types of action and the types of character in Bozorg Alavi’s Cheshmhayash (Her Eyes) and Esmael Fasih’s Del-e Koor (The Blind Heart). Therefore, the narrative style of the two authors in the production of character is analyzed and compared. The article considers the narrative character as “self” in the symbolic interactionist theory. The novel Cheshmhayash has two types of active and passive “collective self”. The active “collective self”, in a concerted effort, narrates the story in opposition to the political structure. Thus, the novel’s “self” is marginalized in political relations. It narrates the first and second halves of the Pahlavi period. Characterization in Del-e-koor is determined by a “social me” and form a violent and self-serving “collective self” at the core of the society depicted in the novel. The active characters’ individualistic opposition to this “collective self” leads to their marginalization in the novel’s social life.