نشریه نقد زبان و ادبیات خارجی
سال نوزدهم شماره 29 (پاییز و زمستان 1401)

Textbooks are the basis of school education and the main sources of information for teachers and students. Many researchers emphasize on the fact that textbooks have a lot of problems and shortcomings in terms of social, cultural, educational and linguistic aspects. Grammar teaching is one of the most important issues in language instruction. Thus the purpose of this research is to evaluate and analyze the grammatical content of Iranian junior high school English textbooks in the framework of Keck and Kim (2014) Pedagogical Grammar.Study Questions:1. To what extent do these textbooks comply with the principles of pedagogical grammar?2. According to the principles of pedagogical grammar, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the textbooks?Literature Review: Theoretical framework of this research is Keck and Kim (2014) Pedagogical Grammar. According to them the most important principles of pedagogical grammar are as follows:1. Learners' attentional resources are limited, thus stimulating their attention to the maximum, leads to better learning of language and consequently grammar.2. Paying attention to the relation between form, meaning and use is a necessity of pedagogical grammar.3. The preparation of the content of pedagogical grammar should be based on the linguistic corpora of the target language.4. In compiling the content of pedagogical grammar, the instruction of both grammar and lexical items must be considered.5. To consider the processing and learning abilities of the learners is important.6. Grammar instruction must be done both explicitly and implicitly.7. The use of different types of corrective feedback is very effective in grammar teaching.8. Intensive and extensive instruction of grammatical structures is helpful in language learning.9. The role and importance of language learners in learning grammar by other language learners is significant.10. The content of pedagogical grammar should be designed based on meaningful communication exercises and tasks. After extracting and introducing the principles of pedagogical grammar, a checklist based on them was designed which measures the compliance of the grammatical content of the books with the mentioned approach.. After the checklist items were developed, 15 experts in the field of English language teaching and linguistics were asked to express their views on the checklist and its items in detail and determine the content validity ratio and content validity index of the items, based on the Likert scale. In total, the necessity and relevance of 42 out of 50 initially designed items were confirmed. The score that these books have obtained out of 210 total score is 135, which is approximately 64% of the total score. Therefore, the compliance of the books with the principles of pedagogical grammar is above average. A qualitative analysis also revealed that in compiling the books, observing the principles of• implicit and explicit grammar teaching,• attention to lexis-grammar interface,• intensive and extensive instruction of grammatical structures,• form, meaning and use relation,• attention to learning and processing abilities of learners,• the use of various tools to draw the learner's attention to grammatical structures,are its strengths ando non-compliance with the communicative language teaching principles,o scanty and inappropriate input,o lack of attention to the linguistic corpora of the target language and unrealistic input,o inattention to the important of corrective feedback,o insufficient attention to the significance of learners in learning the grammatical points by their classmates ando insufficient attention to the importance of morphologyare the weaknesses of these books.

Game of Thrones is the first book of Song of Ice and Fire series by American author George Raymond Richard Martin; a fictional-epic story set in the realm of Westeros. The main line of story is the struggle and war to reach the Iron Throne, during which several other stories are born. What distinguishes its plot is the existence of chaos in the system of government that seeks a unified leadership over this chaotic world. This research traces Nancy Katherine Hayles and Edward Lorenz’s chaos theories in the novel–as a complex and chaotic system—, shows various forces that dominate time, place, and characters who make the end of the story unpredictable. It shows the "Butterfly Effect" in the story, and since events in the history of this complex system are repeated, the role of “Fractals” is identified. The researchers show the structure of this novel is full of chaos and disorder and the author tries to create order from these irregularities.Background of the Study: A collection of analytical readings edited by James Lowder on Song of Ice and Fire entitled Beyond the Wall (2012) examines Martin’s fantasy collection. This anthology provides a way to explore Martin’s multifaceted world. Moreover, different works have been conducted on the series from romanticism to psychological reading. However, there is not a single work from chaos perspectives. Therefore, the present research can fill the existing gap in these fields. This research reads Martin’s Game of Thrones through an interdisciplinary method based on Catherine Hayles and Edvard Lorenz’s theories of chaos. Martin’s works are implicitly chaotic in nature; the narrative forms problematize the linear structure and coherence presenting multiplicities of point of views that serve to augment individual insights, a carefully crafted and cohesive drama about the prevalence of disorder in life. The other major concepts of chaos like “Butterfly Effect” and “Fractals” which are overarching patterns, probable and possibly deterministic but not predictable, lied underneath the texts. The researchers aim to apply the principles of the chaos theory to the novel and explore the changing nature of this system in which truth, precision, and predictability cannot be obtained. Reading Game of Thrones—having a non-linear history, full of complexity, entanglement of stories and variety of characters—based on chaos theory facilitates a more complex understanding of the oeuvre. Westeros’ chaotic world with its protective Wall functions as a closed system. However, chaos is an inevitable phenomenon that takes place due to reliance on the initial condition. Based on the “Butterfly Effect”, the smallest change in the system can cause the greatest events. Westeros is full of unpredictabilities in which consequences surprise the characters and the existence of “Fractal” adds to the complexity of chaos. History repeats itself with the same pattern for the characters; they are living in a deterministic system in which their destinies have already been decided through complex relationship.

The present study examines Louise Erdrich's novel The Round House in the light of Patrick Colm Hogan’s affect notions of narrative concerning the emotional experiences of the subjects. This paper attempts to trace the concepts of affect, emotional narrative, eliciting conditions, simulation, modulation and rationalization of emotion in Erdrich’s novel in order to explore how emotions are simulated, modulated and rationalized in the narrative, particularly, in what affects the narrative and the subjects in fiction. The present paper, specifically, demonstrates how Erdrich’s mentioned novel acts as an example for the affect study and narrative of emotion that vocalizes the suffering and violence against the women in the Native American population of the Ojibwa, and consequently the whole population, the ones which have not been divulged due to social and ontological factors. Erdrich's novel is an attempt to narrate the painful experiences of women, which of course embraces men and the entire population and history of the Indians.Background of Study: Louise Erdrich’s fiction explicitly articulates conceptions that highlight the contemporary Native Americans’, specifically Ojibwas’, concerns primarily with the themes of history, land, love and hate, violence, injustice and survival. They illustrate the impacts of a devastating experience that disturbs the subject’s self and identity, a traumatic experience that has the capacity to remain overwhelmingly present. Her narrators range from the single to the multi-ones, reflecting the past through the present experiences and the affect on the subjects and their emotional concerns and obsessions. In order to survive, the subjects either surrender their emotions or endeavor to maintain their positions or ignore their emotions and flee their history, land and geography and real selves. The emotional narrative of events, such as the rape of the mother of the Indian family, along with the parallel elaborations of the violence against three other women in the community, is central in RH. The spirit and emotion of the Ojibwa are blended in her work, seeking the desire to alter the situation for the better. This study examines the ontological and epistemological paradigms in the life and history of Native Americans that have been silenced or rarely addressed due to social and ontological factors. The study thus investigates the ontological and epistemological paradigms in Native American life and history experienced by Ojibwa survivors. In addition, it argues how emotionalogy works for the minority subjects and how the notion of affect in terms of Hogan’s theory is traceable in Erdrich’s novel. In The Round House, the affected women and survivors are haunted with the emotional memory vocalized by the single adult narrator to reflect the past trauma in order to bring great changes for the women as well as the whole nation. Erdrich’s goal is to gain ontological and epistemological rights to the Native American community. The purpose of the present study is to read the impact of Hogan's emotion and emotion on Erdrich’s attempt to obtain ontological and epistemological improvements for Native American society. Erdrich initially as a Native women and subsequently as an Indian author goes through a battle for portrayal of the women condition in the reservation. Such battle is Erdrich’s style of modulation for relieve the painful emotions elicited not only in the women spirit and body but the whole generation. Erdrich’s fiction is her tool to gain modulation in the present collective and improve the life condition for the next generation, the modulation that fosters the ontological and epistemological emotions and values.

With the beginning of the 20th century and the continuation of the scientific and investigative attitude in the field of Islamology in the 18th and 19th centuries, orientalists and Islamologists started scientific and practical translation of the Qur'an. The translation by Hartmut Bobezin, a German orientalist and religious scholar, is one of the leading translations of the current century, which was translated directly from Arabic into German. In the translation of the holy books, especially the Holy Quran, due to the fact that the divine word is interpretive and has various layers of meaning, in order to express the deep meaning of the Quran, in addition to the science of translation, knowledge and awareness of the wisdom of the Quranic verses, as well as the translator's understanding of the interpretations of the verses, are necessary. The purpose of this article is to criticize and examine Bobzin's Quranic translation from a text-oriented or audience-oriented point of view, based on the equivalents of the analysis and evaluation of the translated texts by Werner Koller in comparison with the Quranic translation of Rückert (19th century) and Rudi Parte (20th century), asking the question whether Bobzin's translation was a successful translation from a communicative reader-oriented perspective (functional equivalent) in terms of explaining the Qur'anic meaning and spiritual effect, and to what extent the morphological-syntactic and rhetorical structure of the Arabic language (formal equivalent) was transferred to the standard language of the destination. The result of this research is to confirm the accuracy of Bobzin's Quranic translation.

Background of the Research:

 Robert von Ketton first translated the Qur'an into Latin. In 1543, Swiss theologian Theodor Bibliander published a more complete translation of the Qur'an based on Ketton's translation in Basel, Switzerland. The first translator of the Qur'an in German is Salmon Schweigerr. The German priest David Friedrich Megerlin is the seventh translator of the Quran and the first translator of the Quran from Arabic to German, who first translated the Quran from Arabic to German in 1772. In the current century, with the increase in Muslim immigration to European countries, figures such as Adel Theodor Khoury, a Lebanese theologian and Islamic scholar, Murad Wilfried Hoffmann, a German lawyer and diplomat who converted to Islam in 1980, and Hartmut Bobzin published more complete translations of the Quran, which have received much attention. Argument& DiscussionThe first question that is usually asked in the translation process is the purpose of translation. Translation as a purposeful process plays a significant role in establishing communication and interaction between different linguistic communities and is the most important tool in transferring and adapting linguistic concepts. Albert Naida, one of the contemporary theorists of Bible translation and a believer in formal-dynamic balance, considers translation to be the re-expression of a message from the source language in the form of its closest and most natural equivalent to the target language, observing the meaning in the first step and observing the writing style in the second step.The Swiss linguist and theoretician who believes in establishing balance in translation, Werner Koller, believes that the translator should determine the type of balance according to the type of text and his/her reading of the text. There are five types of textual balance: 1- Balance on the content level of the text 2- Balance on the semantic level of the text 3- Balance on the level of the text type 4- Pragmatic balance 5- Formal-aesthetic balance. Koller believes in three models for the analysis of the translated text: 1- Text analysis. 2- Comparison of translations 3- Evaluation of translation in terms of translation quality in choosing words to convey meaning and aesthetic sense

In the examination of Quranic translations of the last fifty years, it seems that the criterion of translations is its reader-centeredness. In Bobzin's translation, the expressiveness of the expression, the naturalness of the language structure, and the comprehensibility of the text message, which are among the priorities of dynamic translation, are well taken into account. The translator has tried to be faithful to the original text, while using the words, to choose equivalents that are closer to the target language in terms of maintaining the balance in the content and meaning of the text, as well as the formal-aesthetic balance, and the German-speaking reader can accept the translation. Based on Werner Kolor's evaluation model, Bobzin's translation can be considered a successful translation in terms of the quality of the translation in the selection of suitable and equivalent words to convey the meaning and aesthetic sense, and his translation style is an example of the "content-to-content" translation.

This research aims to investigate the effects of geography in the reconstruction of subjectivity and also shows that there is a mutual relationship between spatiality and subjectivity. The theoretical framework is mainly based on Henri Lefebvre’s theories of space which represent a reconciliation between mental space and real physical space. On this account, the study relies primarily on Inaam Kachachi’s novel-The American Granddaughter- and Lefebvre’s spatial triad. In investigating the geo-effects on subjectivity-formation, the characters’ inner struggle, their spatial reproduction, and the creation of the third mental space will be explored. The colonial role of homeland in the creation of mental geography, and the characters’ various postcolonial responses will be discussed further. The article finally indicates that geographical expectations and norms can act as colonial forces which control the characters’ will and determination and eventually lead them to the production of mental geography.Background of the study: This article focuses on The American Granddaughter and it is designed to study the novel by demonstrating the geographical effects on subjectivity formation. It, also, shows that spatiality can be viewed as a colonial power that manipulates the minds of people and controls everyday life practices. Inaam Kachachi, an Iraqi journalist and author, officially presented herself to the literary society in 2005 with the publication of her first novel, Heart Springs. Her second novel, The American Granddaughter, was a depiction of the American occupations of Iraq through the eyes of a young Iraqi-American woman who returns to her birth country as an interpreter for the US Army and witnesses emotional outbursts, familial conflicts, and the fall of the country of origin.

The present study applies an interdisciplinary approach that integrates perspectives from different fields of knowledge; i.e., spatiality, immigration, and subjectivity. Lefebvre’s space is a social product and is reproduced through human interactions, relations, and intentions. His spatial triad, i.e., private, public, and mental spaces can affect positively and negatively the reproduction of both space and subjectivity. According to Lefebvre, a social space contains a diversity of networks and interactions which can help spatial growth. Not only can people bring a set of concepts and change spatial representations, but also they can neither be separated from spatiality nor interpreted separately. Through this interdisciplinary study, the readers are given a chance to understand the effects of spatial mechanisms on both an immigrant’s mentality and her/his self-reformation. Because of spatial confirmation, an immigrant adjusts her/his subjectivity/self-representation to new forms of challenges and norms in a receiving country. When the new self-images cannot be matched with the homeland’s doctrines, an immigrant starts creating a mental geography. Furthermore, this study indicates how Kachachi merges the spatial images of an immigrant and her/his rooted-images into mental images by which she/he can be attached to her/his homeland and can forget the pain of being known as the Other.

The American Granddaughter offers a site to study the dynamic relations between spatiality and subjectivity. The use of mental space gives a chance to the characters to survive and attach to the remnant of past memories. In addition, the readers can understand the characters’ decisions and suffering better. Kachachi employs a multitude of variations on the characters’ voices as a postcolonial reaction to indicate the social aspects of spatiality and subjectivity; both are social products and have a transient nature

In the present study, we investigated how the type of teaching method can affect the level of language anxiety of foreign language students. The purpose of this research is to find the answer to the basic question of how to use the best teaching method in the language class by controlling anxiety. Background of the Study: According to MacIntyre and Gardner (1994), "Language anxiety is a feeling of tension and fear that is specifically related to the context of the foreign language, including speaking, reading, listening comprehension, and learning." In 1978, Scovel decided to review all the studies on anxiety and its effect on learning a foreign language. His studies have shown that the effects of anxiety on learning a foreign language have long remained unclear. While some researchers have argued that there is no relationship between anxiety and performance in a modern language classroom setting, others have argued the opposite, that there is both crippling anxiety and beneficial anxiety. This argument was advanced by Tobias in 1979 and 1986, followed by McIntyre and Gardner (1994) who stated that disabling anxiety negatively affects learner learning and performance in the classroom. For this purpose, a group of 40 male and female students at the pre-university level (beginner level) were selected as the statistical population. Sampling was done randomly. To begin with, French language training was conducted for two weeks (the first two weeks) with this group through the (traditional) grammar-translation method. At the end of two weeks, the FLCAS (Foreign Language Class Anxiety Scale) questionnaire was administered to this group. In the next two weeks (the second two weeks), the type of teaching method was changed from grammar-translation to the action approach, in accordance with the educational process completed in the previous two weeks, and after the end of these two weeks, the students were again tested for anxiety. The results show the fact that there is a significant relationship between the type of educational method and the level of stress of language learners and the level of anxiety of language learners during learning with an active approach is high (pre-test). In the third two weeks, we continued to teach the learners using the action approach and with the support and intervention of the empowerment course of anxiety control, and once again we took the anxiety test from the learners (post-test).  Based on the results of this research, in general, the grammar-translation method significantly reduces the anxiety of learning a foreign language due to the use of the mother tongue in language teaching, and the action approach, despite all the advantages listed in the book Integrated Reference Framework for Languages, increases the level of anxiety in language learners. This is where strategic courses such as empowering anxiety control using a cognitive psychological method based on improving the mindset of language learners can help them change their behaviors and beliefs and thus deal with their anxiety while learning with communicative and action approaches which are among the best methods of language learning), to deal with anxiety. The results of the descriptive statistics of the students in the pre-test and post-test showed that in the pre-test of language anxiety (mean = 130.55) the students had a higher anxiety average than in the post-test (mean = 65.10). Also, based on the results of paired t-test, (t (39) = 14.14, probability = 0.000) it was concluded that the students had a significantly lower mean in the language anxiety post-test. The effect size index of the T-statistic is 14.17 equal to 0.940, which shows a large effect size. The results of this research provide a new look at the role of language education, which aims at comprehensive education. This means that education should pay attention to the mind and heart in the classroom and in addition to language content, content related to emotional-cultural and social strategies should be included in it.

despite the popularity of realistic historical novel in the nineteenth century, especially in works by Sir Walter Scott, as the prime genre for the representation of bourgeois class and its value system, it is the postmodern version which has surpassed its ancestor and put this literary genre once more back into popularity. However, this return is not as innocent as that of an offspring to his predecessors. It involves a harsh critique of the past and the disclosure of “history” as mere construct, despite its “totalizing” claim.Background of Study: Alongside Lyotard’s seminal work, The Condition of Postmodernism and Hutcheon’s A Poetics of Postmodernism, as two major critical works deployed in this study, the article considers Sublime Desire by Elias as well. It also utilizes A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Guattari to elaborate on the notion of mosaic and assemblage. Furthermore, it has used Barton Thurber’s article, “Scott and the Sublime,” to discuss the relation between the historical novels and the notion of sublime.Methodology and Argument: through the perspective of left thinkers such as Hutcheon, Lyotard, and Deleuze, the writer tries to discuss how the American historical novel, which once established itself as a primary literary genre to undertake the mission of history making in the United States, has recently been used to unsettle the glamorous history by paying tribute to the voices gone silent through the white’s oppression and violence. Tuned into the liberal humanism, the historical novel, in fact, denies American nation its heterogenic nature to preserve the binary of “us” versus “them” intact while trying to keep its democratic face. However, with the arrival of postmodernism and the challenges posed to “grand narratives,” history proved the most problematic narratives whose critique redefined the way the world was once interpreted. Questioning the univocality, teleology, and linearity imposed on history, postmodernism revealed the heteroglossic, multilayered, circular nature of history which have been overshadowed by the liberal humanistic discourse. Such features put history in close relation with the concept of romance and fantastic and gave rise to a literary genre called historical romance. Set along with romance, the official history was, thus, reduced to a narrative among other ones and the hierarchical outlook was collapsed with the emergence of other narratives competing for the same attention and worth. The result was the replacement of the notion of history with “histories” and a rewriting of the past and what had been the established truth of a nation’s history. This act per se led to the emergence of meta-historical novels which focus on the discursive formation of the official history and the uncertainty surrounding the reality of the past which resemble the notion of sublime.  The meta-historical romance or the postmodern version of the conventional historical novel is, in fact, a counter part to once realistic, linear, teleological, and mono-vocal works of the nineteenth century. In other words, this new version goes in tandem with the postmodern notions of fragmentation, mosaic, assemblage, non-linearity, and multi-perspectivism which deny an established, universal, and totalized version of reality and pave the way for the oppressed and stifled voices which were subject to the hierarchies of liberal humanism. In that way, these kinds of novels try to approach the history again and redefine the already-established, oppressive narratives. Since this redefinition turns the established history into a “construct,” one cannot grasp the reality of history any more, as one cannot comprehend the notion of sublime. It is out there, but out of touch. This fact welcomes heterogeneity and lets go of a hierarchical social structure for a horizontal one.

Introduction:

In the paper collocations are introduced and their significance in teaching foreign languages is discussed. During the last decades there has been a growing attention to word combination and its significance in teaching foreign languages. Word combinations, of course, include free word combinations, fixed word combinations and even idioms. But collocations are different from all other forms of word combinations. In spite of this fact collocations are mostly ignored in the text books of Russian language in Iran.Background of the StudyIn Russia word combinations in Russian language were in the center of attention from 19th century. But the first famous linguist who determined so called “complex word combinations” was Filip Fortunatov. He used this term to differ this kind of word combinations from complex words. But the word “collocations” for the first time was introduced in A Dictionary of Linguistic terms by O. Akhmanova in 1966. Then collocations were fully discussed in a small, but comprehensive book by E. Borisova in 1995. From then Borisova’s book has been the main source in all discussions about colocations. In Iran M. Bateni was the first linguist who tried to describe the meaning and function of collocations in Persian language. After several decades also by him the first dictionary of English and Persian colocations was written. In their article Valipour and Rahbari discussed the verbal Russian colocations. They demonstrated that in Iran not much effort has been made to study collocations in order to use them in teaching Russian language.

Methodology:

In this corpus-based study the syntactic and lexical-semantic patterns were used to determine syntactic structures used in Russian attributive and genitive collocations and in their Persian equivalents. The research carried on by using a corpus containing approximately 400 Russian collocations, which have either attributive (Adj. + N.) or genitive (N. + N.) structures. Some famous and common classifications of collocations are analyzed. As the result of the analysis the classification, in which collocations are classified from the syntactic point of view into two groups a) verbal collocations and b) nominal (attributive and genitive) collocations, is proposed as the more proper one in teaching foreign languages. The main question of the research is that how much synonymous Persian and Russian collocations coincide and in which degree it is necessary to include collocations into the programs of teaching Russian to Iranian students. The structural (syntactic) and lexical-semantic features of collocations are discussed and it is demonstrated that from both structure and lexical-semantic points of view which correlation is there between Russian and Persian collocations. The obtained correlation shows that while attributive collocations dominate in Russian collocations, but their Persian equivalents mainly have genitive structure. On the other hand, lexical-semantic analysis proved that there is a little concordance between Russian and Persian collocations. The amount of non-concord pairs of Russian and Persian collocations was highly more than concord ones.

Conclusion:

The practical conclusion of the article is showing necessity of including the collocations as a separate subject in Russian language curriculum. The authors also proposed that the subject should lead to develop 3 following skills among students: 1) the skill of recognizing collocations (fixed word combinations); 2) the skill of recognizing the agreement (concordance) or disagreement (non-concordance) of Russian collocations with their Persian equivalents: 3) the skill of changing the structure of colocations (from genitive to attributive, while translating from Persian into Russian and from attributive to genitive, while translating from Russian into Persian), where this is necessary.

In order to insist upon discursive reconfiguration of violence in Shakespeare’s comedies, critics bring examples of civic and political violence, and matrimonial/domestic and erotic manipulations in plays’ real and fantastic worlds. In plays such as The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the manifests of non-physical violence could be identified in an epitomical manner, and afterwards one could see how such manifests of violence could be recognized in Shakespeare’s other comedies.

Considering the reconfiguration of violence and elimination of physical violence, the present study reads violence in Shakespeare’s aforementioned comedies as a discursive violence. For devising a definition of this kind of violence, it uses Slavoj Zizek’s ideas on the issue of violence and how he defines violence discursively. In his definition, Zizek discriminates between the objective violence, which comes from impersonal, exclusive, systematic and so-called objective nexuses of power and subjective violence, which comes from subjective rendition of each individual from implementation of violence in sites for which objective violence has not defined any containment strategy. In the case of subjective violence, intentions and motivations behind violence are murky and uncontainable, giving its operation the necessary fluidity. While discussing the manifests of subjective violence, the present study finds instances of what Zizek calls to be antimonies; discursive points around which two rational arguments can be represented without any promise of resolution.Literature ReviewIn the first part entitled “Objective and Subjective Violence in Shakespeare’s Comedies”, the study discerns between two kinds of violence in Shakespeare’s comedies through the utilization of Zizek’s notions on violence in Violence: Six Sideway Reflections. In “The Antimony of Victimization in Shakespeare’s Comedies”, the study utilizes Zizek’s notion of antimony next to notions of other critics such as Dympna Callaghan in Shakespeare without Women, Natasha Korda in “Household Kates: Domesticating Commodities in The Taming of the Shrew, Emily Detmer in “Civilizing Subordination: Domestic Violence and The Taming of the Shrew”, Michael Taylor in “The Darker Purpose of A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Lisa S. Starks-Estes in Violence, Trauma and Virtus so that a less optimistic interpretation of seemingly emancipative and empowering moments for the marginalized characters – or the plays’ others – could be represented, which in turn, could show the workings of non-physical yet effective violence and subjugation against such characters. Finally, in “Discursive Laughter in William Shakespeare’s Comedies”, the present study brings Edward Berry’s discussion of Carnivalesque and Hobbesian laughter and locate Shakespearean laughter in the middle of them.

In the present study, it is indicated that the domain of the marginalized characters of Shakespeare’s comedies is in a site where the objective violence has no authority and it is subjects themselves that need to inflict the violence on them on the basis of their rendition of it. Zizek observes that these renditions are affected by what is not included in the symbolic order of the objective violence and that is why Petruchio starts not behaving in a physically violent manner, Shylock is not treated in a conventional legal term and Hermia and Helena are not contained through rational means of recuperation. It is as if all of these characters need to be dealt within antimonic sites where every possibility of resilience and liberation can be recuperated through subjective interpretations of the suppressors.

Historiographic metafiction, as one of the postmodern writing styles, reminds the readers of its being fictional as it does not claim of any representation of reality and thus it challenges the historical truth. In fact it presents history in a slightly different manner than how it actually happened or conceived. Linda Hutcheon, the Canadian critic, as one of the most significant postmodern theoreticians, defined hysterographic metafiction as works which use historical background while having some postmodern techniques. This study applies her theory to The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. Using techniques such as intertextuality, parody and irony, Allende has rewritten turbulent Chilean history in the twentieth century and especially the events before, during and after President Salvador Allende’s time in office and the 1973 coup. Meanwhile she casts a doubt on the truth of some historical events, which establishes the work as a historiographic metafiction rather than a purely magic realistic text.

Despite Margaret Atwood’s well-established literary reputation and her influence as one of the most important figures in Canadian literature, her short stories have been neglected in favor of her other writing and treated as less important and mere preparatory exercises compared to her major novels and poetry collections. The short stories Polarities and The Man from Mars that are analyzed in this article are from the Dancing Girls (1977) collection. The theme of alienation and existential dread is acutely palpable in these stories. Here, Atwood depicts the unraveling of its characters when faced with existential crises they cannot resolve; making the works of the Scottish psychiatrist, Ronald David Laing and the French philosopher, Simone De Beauvoir especially suitable for the analysis of these stories.Background of the Study: Most of the previous research on Atwood’s short stories have focused on feminism, gender theories and body politics. Ronald David Laing in his book, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, Laing describes ontological insecurity as a condition in which the individual lives in constant fear of losing his sense of self. In order to preserve his autonomous self, he interacts with the world through an external false self and hides his true feelings and thoughts inside. Over time a psychosis can erupt in such an individual that can develop into schizophrenia because he is no longer capable of distinguishing between the outside real world and his troubled inner world and its delusions. Laing argues that a schizoid’s apparently abnormal behavior and speech are ultimately understandable as an attempt to communicate worries and concerns that have been ignored and stifled for so long, because their expression in the environment that the individual lives was not possible or permitted.Simone De Beauvoir in her book, The Ethics of Ambiguity, argues that genuine freedom comes from a combination of several aspects of life. One must combine a passion for developing one’s own set of values with a concern for others, seeing those around us as equally free and worthy of living a life that best suits them. One must also embrace the excitement that comes with the uncertainty of the life an adventurer. She sees man’s genuine freedom in concrete goals and projects that are responsibly carried out. Compared to the novel, the short story is a genre that is often ignored by critics and readers because it is assumed that the complexity and creativity of storytelling is not possible in the limited space of a short story. But Atwood is among the writers who draws the reader's attention to the importance and potential of this marginalized genre and shows that the shortness of the story does not reduce its depth and complexity. Using Ronald Ling's theories, we find out that the consequences of a world in which people neglect themselves and their inner needs lead to their painful isolation and complete loss of identity. Through De Beauvoir’s theories, we realize that the ambiguity hidden in the existence burdens man with a heavy responsibility. In her short stories, Atwood shows the complexity of her characters' lives. They find themselves alone and helpless in an alien world struggling with insoluble existential, unable to face human responsibilities, and their lack of awareness of their needs pushes them towards the abyss of psychological disintegration.

The purpose of the current research is to study the psychological and less branched aspects of one of the most prominent novels of the late nineteenth century England, namely, The Picture of Dorian by Oscar Wilde. Regardless of its Gothic aspect and its moral and artistic aesthetics, this novel is a work with psychological approaches that can be interpreted and analyzed based on psychologist theories such as Freud, so after expressing Freud's concepts and theories about personality structure, in a descriptive way - An analysis was done to analyze and explain their relationship with different dimensions of characters in the novel. The findings of the research showed that the main essence of the story is the combination of different aspects of the human personality structure and their conflict, which leads to the dominance of the institution over me and the ignoring super-ego due to the destructive emotional relationship that is formed between id and ego. Nevertheless, the ultimate superiority is with super-ego. Based on this, the characters of the novel are in a way the embodiment of Freud's personality structure theory; Dorian Gray is id, Henry is ego, Basil is super-ego, the painting is another representation of super-ego and the dark room where Gray hides the painting is a symbol of Gray's subconscious mind. The most used defense mechanisms are projection, rationalization and suppressionBackground of study:Sigmund Freud's views on the recognition of personality and the structure of the human mind are very outstanding and wonderful. His ideas in this field have also influenced literature and caused psychological criticism of literary works. Psychological criticism is one of the widely used criticisms that is used in the review and evaluation of literary texts and has a special place in literature.Freud's theories on the structure of the human mind and personality are among his most important views, which were very influential in the development and evolution of literary criticism and gave it direction. According to this view, the mind and personality of each person consists of three parts: Conscious, semi-conscious and unconscious. Based on the unconscious, Freud divided the human mind and personality into three parts: id, ego, and superego.Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is one of the outstanding figures of English literature, who has portrayed a new and rare subject with precision and artistry in her only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.The basic point in the field of analysis of literary texts with the approach of psychological criticism is that the work must have the context and capability of psychoanalytical criticism so that the researcher can properly criticize it. In addition to mixing the human desire for immortality with moral and artistic values and scary themes, this work is a psychological work in which the author has depicted the human psyche and the conflict of internal forces in the form of different characters. Literary criticism from the perspective of psychology examines the work from various aspects such as the author's personality, content and text, the effect on the reader and how the work was created; But what is most important in literature is the study of the work itself from any point of view. In other words, the most use of psychoanalytic criticism in literature and art is the application of psychological principles in the work itself The current research is based on the psychoanalytical analysis of characters and events related to them by adopting a descriptive-analytical approach and using the method of data collection using library sources and authentic documents. Spreading the psychological parts of a character in the form of multiple characters has made the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray capable of psychological criticism and analysis. The three structures of a person's existence,: id, ego, and superego., which were Freud's intellectual achievement, exert their influence on the personality; id and superego  are constantly struggling and trying to overcome each other. ego tries to establish a balance between these two, if this effort is successful, the person will enjoy mental health, otherwise, one will prevail over the other and lead to personality disorders. The tension between three conflicting characters in the novel is a vehicle for visualizing the tension between three powerful human instincts. The controversial relationship between Henry and Basil is a diagram of the conflict between the two opposite poles of id and superego . Personality Gray  is the embodiment of all human beings who are constantly in the tension between the id and superego . Since the power of the Gray ego structure is weak , his personality system is exposed to damage with absolute desire towards the  id and in a gradual collapse, the arena of the union of the ego and the id becomes As a result, the two symbols of superego, namely Basil and  picture , are ignored, one by being killed and the other by hiding in a room that is the concrete manifestation of the unconscious mind, and its darkness and special space are parallel to the dark side of Gray psychosis.