نامه فرهنگستان
سال سیزدهم شماره 2 (پاییز و زمستان 1392)

Literature has been the perpetual site of myths. Myths have penetrated from among the ancient national cultures into texts and have resumed their lives in different forms. Out of these texts, "children's literature" that originally included stories and legends for kids has always been, due to its intrinsic characteristics, the proper form for the mythic content. From this point of view, the story of "Little Red Ridinghood "—which, far beyond a simple story for children, is an embodiment of the European myth of the "werewolf"— can be a proper subject for a cultural and comparative study. The reappearance of this story and myth (the myth of the werewolf) in a contemporary cinematic work is good cause for the researchers to take a second look at it in this article. The approach adopted in this article is a comparative analysis of two different waysof artistic expression-- the literary and the cinematic-- considered to be one of the often debated subjects in comparative literature today. The basic question is what thematic and conceptual changes the story has undergone during its evolutionary journey from an ancient tale to a cinematic product. What is the origin of these changes and how can they be understood? In order to find a response to these questions, the psychoanalytic concepts of Jung and Freud, and also the theories of some comparatists have been helpful to us; the reader can hence reach a more comprehensive understanding of modern man's complicated way of thinking.

The close bond between science and technology most often brings about chances and challenges the recognition of which can be of great help to researchers and scholars in these areas. The domains of literary criticism and comparative literature share such a great extent of grounds and notions that the border between them is sometimes difficult to define. One of the common grounds between literary criticism and comparative literature is the Reception Theory. By using the descriptive and analytic methods in this article, the researchers try to find the roots and principles of this theory, and to differentiate between its position in literary criticism and comparative literature. The results reveal the Reception Theory has been capable of filling the basic gap that exists in the literary criticism regarding the role of the reader; at the same time, the theory can help enrich the French and the American schools of comparative literature.

Goethe the German scholar and poet and Emerson the American poet and philosopher were among the literary figures that had been influential not only in the literature of their own countries but also in the world literature as well. Lots of similarities could be traced in their attitudes, yet one of the most prominent aspects shared by these two major figures had been their appraisal of Hafiz’s thought and poetry. Both of them took formative steps to introduce Hafiz’s poetry to the western literature. The present study takes the views of the comparatist S.S.Prawer and focuses on Hafiz's influence on Goethe and Emerson, on their efforts to affect Hafiz's reception in western literature and also on the way Hafiz’s thought and poetry were received and approved by the German and American literature. Thus, the impact of Hafiz’s thought and poetry upon Goethe and his enthusiasm for this Persian poet are presented first. Then, the researcher proceeds to show the way Emerson got to know Hafiz through Goethe’s guideline; finally, Goethe's and Emerson's different perspectives regarding the recognition and reception of Hafiz in western literature will be investigated. Goethe's main motivation behind imitating Hafiz was to find a pattern for composing love poems, while Emerson was in search of a thought that could, besides admiring peace and beauty, respond to the spirit of freedom-seeking, individual independence and the national identity of his contemporary society; therefore, he introduced Hafiz to the Americans in terms of his own culture and nationality. What Goethe and Emerson did led to the popularity of Hafiz not only as a poet, but as a grand scholar in the world literature.

In this research, Ulrich Weisstein's notion of "influence" in comparative literature has been utilized to show that Ahmad Mahmoud’s Derakht-e Anjir-e Ma’abed has been influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. Furthermore, by focusing on fantasy as one of the most important common points between the two texts, and by emphasizing distinct structural functions of fantasy in the two novels, the researchers try to underline Mahmoud's originality and to reveal that the relationship between Mahmood and Hawthorn is different from what Weisstein's calls "imitation." The emphasis on this difference is meant to show the originality of Mahmoud's novel within its historical context as a postmodern work. Both novelists apply well-known narrative techniques, such as attributing the narrative to superstition and using a subjective narrative voice to describe fancy occurrences; and therewith they keep the readers in permanent doubt concerning the natural or supernatural quality of the fantastic events. However, towards the close of Mahmoud’s novel, this narrative technique changes and the marvelous events are presented as undeniable facts. In this study, the different structural function of fantasy in Mahmoud’s novel has been explained in terms of its postmodern poetics. As a postmodern narrative, Mahmoud’s novel blurs the boundary between history and tradition, fact and fancy, and natural and supernatural; and unlike Hawthorne’s, it is not committed to the representation of objective reality.

Ghazal, one of the most beautiful poetic forms in Persian poetry that has taken root throughout the world, is, according to historical narratives, much older than the English sonnet. Both forms are considered as distinctive literary forms and follow poetic rules and regulations that are rarely observed in contemporary verse. In the present research, after a brief introduction to the emergence of the Persian ghazal in American literature, the similar and dissimilar points of the two will be counted. The researchers will proceed to investigate how the English sonnet with its age old history has submitted to the Persian form and why American poets have preferred it to the sonnet form. The main issue in this article is to reveal how much ghazal has affected the intellectual atmosphere of the contemporary American poetry and criticism, and how congruent the two sides have become. It follows from the argument that if there is a difference between the two parts, it is not because of ghazal's nature but because of the way it is read and interpreted. The findings confirm that in spite of the common complexities between ghazal and sonnet, and despite the binding rules, the Persian form has been much more appealing to contemporary American poets.

Heroes are created by the images that we make of them. In this article, with an interdisciplinary approach and with regard to the postcolonial theories, the researchers try to analyze the images of the soldier/hero circulating in the verbal and visual media of the 19th and the 20th centuries. Thomas Edward Lawrence in the movie Lawrence of Arabia directed by David Lean has changed into a 'heroic knight,' not unlike Don Quixote. He is different from the Victorian heroes: while the Victorian soldier/heroes were flat characters and in sharp contrast with their oriental other, Lawrence, the twentieth century British hero, has a complicated interaction with the oriental subalterns. Lawrence is a developing character that maintains the differences and at the same mingles with Arabs and is inspired by their energy and liveliness. The dynamics of the soldier/hero's character development has been analyzed in this article.