نشریه نقد و نظریه ادبی
سال ششم شماره 2 (پیاپی 12، پاییز و زمستان 1400)

Environmental problems and the destruction of natural resources have become a significant concern in the modern era. The study of different aspects of these problems and their association with the fields of social sciences and humanities draw our attention to the important role mankind plays in increasing and decreasing the rate of environmental damages. Pierre Schoentjes, an environmental theorist, highlights the pivotal role of language and literature in teaching social responsibility to the next generation so as to achieve sustainable development and enhance environmental protection. Ecofeminism is an intellectual movement that sees a connection between the exploitation, degradation and empowerment of women in society; hence, the elimination of gender discrimination and inequality is directly associated with environmental protection. The present study endeavours to examine how components of ecofeminism are reflected in Reza Amirkhani’s novel Rahesh. Building on Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis on the three levels of description, interpretation and explanation, we explore the relationship between environmental destruction and a tendency towards the dominance of men over women in a patriarchal system. The findings suggest that that a woman gives her body to the world to express her thought. The interplay between women’s body and the fabric of the world and the manifestation of the world in women is a symbolic message which represents how men are unjustifiably at the top of the power hierarchy in a patriarchal society. This, in turn, has led to ruthless exploitation of natural resources. 

In many studies, the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer has been contrasted with Derrida’s deconstruction so as to emphasize their differences and oppositions. Pointing out the conceptual congruence between these two important contemporary interpretative currents, the present study, while acknowledging the differences in the works and writings of Gadamer and Derrida, empathetically attempts to reflect on the similarity and convergence of the singularities of their thought. Therefore, this paper discusses and explores Gadamer’s and Derrida’s views on concepts such as language and sign, truth and meaning, interpretation, and method, and attempts to show that the two thinkers come together in terms of intellectual relations, as illustrated by principles such as: Being is divisive and different in itself, the rejection of the transcendental signified, the emergence of the most self-sufficient language in writing, the risk of the creation of ambiguity and deception by speech and writing, the disbelief in a unified interpretation and truth, the concrete, and fluid nature of understanding, the creation of meaning, and the rejection of method. Thus, this study attempts to rectify some of the common theoretical misconceptions about philosophical hermeneutics and deconstruction.

As metaphors are cognitively originated, examining a text’s conceptual metaphors yields a new understanding of its author’s cognition. Therefore, an analysis of the relationship between the conceptual metaphors in a text and the structure arising from those metaphors leads to a more precise understanding and a better explanation of the text, and facilitates the analysis of its semantic structure and its author’s worldview. Thus, the present article attempts to answer three key questions: What are the most important conceptual metaphors in Sawanih al-Ushaq? What relationships do exist between these metaphors? What are the characteristics of the structure arising from these metaphors? In an effort to answer these questions inductively, the conceptual metaphors in each chapter are separately examined and the most important metaphors in the text are identified based on the two criteria of ‘frequency’ and ‘position in the structure of metaphors’. The analysis shows that the conceptual domain of ‘love’ is the most important abstract conceptual domain which is comprehended with the aid of the conceptual domains of ‘bird’, ‘mirror’, ‘plant’, ‘derivation’, ‘sun’, ‘king’, and ‘destruction’. Among them, destruction has a special place as it can be used in order to comprehend the ultimate stage of love: annihilation. Destruction, as a megametaphor, is embodied by the conceptual domains of ‘intoxication’, ‘fire’, ‘war’, and ‘devouring’. Finally, the most significant conceptual metaphors in Sawanih al-Ushaq are: ‘love is the eternal part of human existence’; ‘love is a mirror’; and ‘love is destruction’.
 

Interdisciplinary studies and psychoanalytic criticism have recently opened up new horizons for researchers. The Thousand and One Nights has been evaluated in various ways so far, but what has been overlooked is the psychoanalytical dimension of the stories. The context of the “Story of King Shahryar and His Brother Shah Zaman” illustrates a problem unique to civilization, whose examination can provide the readers with insight into latent meanings. Although Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, used to read the works of poets and writers, including fantastic and suprarealist stories and claimed that he and those writers were both inspired by the same origin, albeit in two different ways (Shariat Kashani, 2014: 13), psychoanalytic criticism does not have the prominent place it deserves in contemporary literature, or is harshly criticized by those who do not support theorists such as Freud, Lacan, and others. The analytical power of psychoanalysis and its amenity to interpretation led us to decipher the core story of The Thousand and One Nights according to Lacan’s theories. Despite their difficulty, Lacan’s theories contain neither the misunderstandings around Freud’s concepts nor the sense of superiority one finds in Jung’s antirealist and mystical psychology. This paper deals with the origins of the story of Shahryar and his brother Shah Zaman from a Lacanian perspective.
 

As an important and comprehensive critical method, “critical aesthetics” of the Frankfurt School, deals with art and literature to show that the emergence of liberty in a capitalist society confronts certain obstacles that are manifested, in different ways, in economy, politics, ideology, art, culture and the media, and through an organized process, ultimately lead to the appearance of a consumerist society. According to Adorno’s and Marcuse’s sociological views, “negative aesthetics” analyzes consumerism in the West so as to challenge the anti-rationalistic aspects of a “unidimensional society.” These ideas finally lead to the emergence of a phenomenon known as “culture industry” which uses devices like the media and propaganda to deceive individuals. Therefore, the consumers are dominated by these devices and are deprived of their will and awareness. Marjan Shirmohammadi’s novel, Azar, Shahdokht, Parviz and the Others, presents an image of such a consumerist world which turns individuals into rivals over consumption. Using a descriptive-analytical method, the present study demonstrates that consumerism and commodification turn the characters into subjects in a world replete with consumerist objects and the prevalence of the cultural industry creates a deep rift between native and foreign cultures. As a result, concepts such as consumerism, accumulation and abundance, can be used to criticize the different dimensions of “negative aesthetics” in the false identities of the characters.
 

Individuality is a general phenomenon surrounded by a whole world of economic, social and other kinds of reality. An individual is, in every way, affected by the world, and affects it, in turn. The interaction is of a dialectical nature. An aspect of the dialectical attitude in the field of art and thought is the dominant role of the economic and social base in the creation of great works of art and literature. The dependence of the great works of art and literature on the economic and social infrastructures is undeniable, though it is highly complex, indirect and mediated, and does not reduce the relative independence of the literary work. According to the dialectical view, each phase of social history is accompanied by a great literary form, and the novel as a literary form in the age of Capitalism is described by the problematic hero. This article does not intend to accept or reject the dialectical view in literature; rather, it seeks to examine the role of this view in the emergence of new types in literature. The existence of the problematic hero in a longitudinal relationship leads to the emergence of a stigmatized type and a type with a sense of inferiority in literature. In other words, the problematic hero is the origin of both types in the contemporary novel.
 

Habsiyeh, a poem written in prison, is a kind in which the poet turns his experience of confinement and torture into artistic experience; however, the representation of the prison in habsiyeh is not the same in pre-modern and modern poetry. The pre-modern habsiyeh-poet is more of a fatalist and considers the current situation as predestined. Therefore, he identifies his agency with the situation he describes. Although habsiyeh is basically a type of protest literature, it is only in contemporary poetry that it is associated with the political subject. In contemporary poetry, the concept of prison has manifested itself in a different way with discursive implications and disjunctions. With the formation of the national state and the birth of the prison in the modern world, the concept of prison changes from a religious and individual matter to a political one. The history of the evolution of the institution of prison in the modern state is related to the discursive formation of the prison in contemporary poetry. The most important research hypothesis of the present paper is that the historical emergence of the political subject has led to the appearance of prison aesthetics. Therefore, using a genealogical approach, this article has followed two aims: The historical connection between the developments of the prison as an institution in modern Iran, and the representation of ideas and metaphors on the prison in Shamlou’s poetry as an example of a dissident poet. As the institution of prison has become more widespread and complex in modern states, prison metaphors have been overflowed with habsiyeh-poetry in protest literature. In Shamlou’s poetry, protest literature is related to the subjectivity of the poet. He does not limit the concept of prison to habsiyeh; rather, he connects prison metaphors to social symbolism. In other words, in Shamlou’s poetry, the concept of liberty has, in a complex way, extended the prison metaphors to poems other than habsiyeh as well.
 

Hegel, a German philosopher, and Bakhtin, a Russian literary critic, are the two thinkers who have placed the novel within the framework of their contemplation and have focused on the element of self-consciousness in the novel. In Hegel’s philosophy, in the course of the Spirit’s development towards freedom, the novel is the highest manifestation of the Spirit in artistic form, where the Spirit reaches one of the highest levels of self-consciousness. Moreover, due to its origins in the romantic era of art, the novel has heroes with self-consciousness. Bakhtin views self-consciousness in the novel from two perspectives: one is where he introduces the novel as a kind of self-conscious genre, and the other one is where he speaks about the self-consciousness of the novel’s hero. When Bakhtin introduces Dostoevsky as the creator of the polyphonic novel, he says it is the hero’s self-consciousness that gives Dostoevsky’s novels the quality of polyphony.  Yet, the talk of self-consciousness in the novel intertwines with the talk of homelessness in both thinkers’ discussions. In this paper, we have tried to show the position of each of the two thinkers with regard to this subject, their similarities and differences, and the dialogue between them.
 

The present paper aims at a critical study of the interpretive nature of Masnavi as a determining and dynamic dimension in literature. To orientate and validate this aim, we have specified Molavi’s interpretive approaches based on Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy and reflective phenomenology and have, thus, demonstrated how thought and reflection on interpretation have turned Masnavi into one of the most influential written texts, which displays the three characteristics of explication, understanding, and application. The authors hold that for the interpretation of any text, it is necessary to study the process of the formation of the text and its relation with oratory, dialectics, and de-application. Therefore, studying the elements of interpretation in Masnavi, the authors have shown that this work offers a thick description of understanding, and understanding has made its language dynamic, signifying, and self-sufficient. Consequently, as a classic and a reflection on the textual dimension, Masnavi encompasses discourse, rests on interpretation, and, in reading, forms an active and dialectical totality that gives the reader the opportunity for the understanding and reconfiguration of meaning. 

Intending to teach wisdom and relying on the concepts of wisdom, speech and immortality, Kalileh and Demneh seems to have evolved from previous texts. Kalileh and Demneh has so far been translated into different languages, with each translator writing his own introduction to the book. While reproducing the main themes of Kalileh and Demneh, each introduction has encompassed references common in the discourse and language registers of each period to the main text. Employing a descriptive-analytical approach, “mythological symbolism”, and  “intertextuality”, the present paper aims to analyze the traces of meaning in Kalileh and Demneh and show how  they are reproduced and transferred to the translators’ introductions. To this end, the author describes, analyzes and reviews the introduction sections of various translations of this book in relation to the main text of Kalileh and Demneh. The analysis reveales that, in addition or contrary to the main text, the introductions have tried to find a structural connection with the main text by repeating the traces of meaning of Kalileh and Demneh, and to contribute to its ever-lasting “wisdom”, so that each translation and its introduction has a different interpretation based on the discourse and the language conventions of each period. As a result, each introduction creates a new chain of signifiers, making the introductions an inseparable part of Kalileh and Demneh.
 

Post-Jungian criticism is an approach that has continued and developed Jungian criticism. Due to the ambiguity around Zal’s fate in the existing sources, and his reputation for immortality, the present paper has, for the first time, identified the narrative of the death of Zal in a manuscript of Shahnameh, and, then, analyzed the relationship between this new narrative and the myth of Zal in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and its sources. Because Zal’s immortality is important in Jungian criticism of this myth, the discovery of the story of Zal’s death is the most important reason for this paper’s Post-Jungian critical approach. The paper shows that archetypal images associated with the myth of Zal represent the character of an ancient shaman. This figure fulfills such functions as magic, mediumship between the nation and their totemic gods, witch doctor, spiritual healer and intuitive knowledge. From a Jungian perspective, the archetypal image of Zal’s personality gave him a complementary (secondary) role in the initiation of the hero (Rostam). But the post-Jungian approach replaces the old archetype of wisdom with the archetype of death and rebirth, and develops the core meaning of the myth of Zal to his initiation on the way to his unity with his totemic ancestor (Simorgh).
 

As feminist movements gained momentum in the second half of the twentieth century, many literary theorists set out to address the possibility and quality of feminine writing. One of them was Hélène Cixous, the French critic who introduced the theory of écriture féminine in her classic paper “The Laugh of the Medusa,” causing a lot of controversy in Western academic circles. In Iran, too, many researchers have dealt with écriture féminine to analyze it from literary and socio-moral perspectives. Nonetheless, for certain reasons, including the absence of a complete Persian translation of “The Laugh of the Medusa,” many studies conducted by Iranian researchers suffer from ideologically-laden or inaccurate readings of Cixous’s theory. The present study launches a critical examination of one of the most frequently read Persian articles on écriture féminine to identify certain established stereotypes in related theoretical Persian studies. The paper, then, attempts to resolve the ambiguities about écriture féminine within the context of Poststructuralist Feminism and by citing Cixous’s own words. Thus, the questions tackled by the present study are how écriture féminine has been received in theoretical Persian studies and whether these receptions have been accurate. In so doing, the study first provides a brief explanation of the main themes of Cixous’s paper and, then, the selected theoretical Persian studies are critiqued. The findings demonstrate that, contrary to conventional suppositions, not only is écriture féminine not limited to the writings of female authors, but it does not necessarily reject any such socio-moral institutions as marriage, pregnancy, and motherhood, either.