نشریه پژوهش ادبیات معاصر جهان
سال نوزدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 71، پاییز و زمستان 1393)

In the present paper, we strive to investigate the mutual relationship between the descriptive components of “self” and its relation to “other” in a foreign culture in the works of Le Clézio. This “other” culture stems from the identity philosophy of “other personality”. We will also try to show Le Clézio’s descriptive aesthetics, using his works and a thematically analytic framework. From a universal viewpoint, Le Clézio’s writing style, which reflects the “viewpoint” of the author, depicts the art of “description.” It is a description that breaks limitations and turns to a man’s intact “mind.” This “self” of the author designs a free and liberating horizon before the “other personality,” using “nature and imagination.” On the other hand, the interactions of “other personality” reflects the dynamic discourse and turns to a knowledge for “human beings,” by separating itself from “self.” This knowledge is connected to “history” and man’s inner truths beyond the “realization” of “self.”

This article is an investigation of the theories of Derrida in Yazmina's Reza's Art. The deconstructive strategies which have been applied include the concept of the floating signifiers, differance, paradoxes, and decentralization. The question of the aesthetic values of modern abstract art has been raised in this study. But more importantly, the research shows that the author confronts us with miscommunication as shortcoming of language and therefore a rift in a longstanding friendship of the three characters of the play. The name of the play is Art, focusing on a white painting, but the color of this art is not determinate. Each character in the play observes the painting in a different color. It seems that color acts as a sign which is caught up in a chain of signifiers that never rests on a definite signified. In addition, it is shown how a centre is deconstructed; the white painting is the centre around which the relationship between the characters are centred but according to Derrida a text is replete with many other centres as well. Therefore, the researcher tries to change this centre and put Yvan, a character in the play, at the centre which can itself be deconstructed as the text is full of paradoxes. At the end, it is demonstrated that the text of this play is indeterminate without giving us any definite answers as the meaning becomes a floating sign.

Martin Amis is one of the prolific novelists and dominant voices of contemporary England who has been studied from different theoretical outlooks. One of his recent novels which has not been much critically studied is Night Train. What aggrandizes the novel is its involvement in ontological questions. Being a detective story which endeavors to undermine the very techniques of detective fiction, Night Train is under the control of a number of intertexts, the most dominant of which is astrophysics. Applying Jacques Derrida’s concept of Undecidability, the present author endeavors to find the narratological manifestations of the concept and analyze them in the novel. The result delineates that Amis, by applying some particular narratological techniques like baring the techniques of detective fiction and an indeterminate ending, has been able to reveal some of the concerns of contemporary man on the verge of his entering the third millennium.

In this article after the introducing the great American writer and psychologist Wayne Walter Dyer (1940) and his thoughts and worldview, we have compared Molavi’s and Dyer’s thoughts employing a comparative analytic method. The result of the research show that Molavi’s thought and worldview has either directly or indirectly influenced Dyer. Moreover intention has an individual concept in Mathnavi but according to Dyer is God’s will, known in Mysticism and Islamic culture as divine decree. The figures that Dyer presents for the power of intention such as: Love, Beauty, Kindness, and Creativity denote the names and attributes of God. Most of the meanings that are used in Dyer’s works are similar to mystical discussions in Mathnavi. Emphasis on Love as the greatest power of the universe and “Nafs” (ego) as the greatest impediment in connecting to the power of intention (Truth) is among the other main contents that are common in Molavi and Dyer’s worldview.

This essay will indicate that Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor inherently possesses cultural, philosophical, and literary paradoxes. To examine this, we will focus on these paradoxes in three domains. First, we will elaborate on some paradoxical themes, such as democracy, which stem from American culture. In the second domain, we will trace Melville’s inclination toward the representation of paradoxes in his ambivalent place within the American romantic tradition. Here, we will argue that since Melville belonged to the Dark Romantic movement, he disavowed Emerson’s optimism and sublime, and introduced man as a Manicheancreature who determines his destiny by choosing freely between good and evil.Billy Budd is generally known as a romance, but a close look at the work shows that the text is not faithful to the definition of the romance, since it is highly philosophical and this is beyond the capacity of the romance. This philosophical characteristic pushes Billy Budd towards the definition of the novel where man’s inner world is depicted. Thus, Melville employs an ambivalent literary form to manifest the ambivalent and paradoxical nature of American culture. To gain this objective, the essay will follow three theoretical domains: a historical-cultural reading of Billy Budd; an examination of the theory of American Romanticism, both Emersonian and Dark; and eventually, Henry James’s theory of the novel.

What is suggested in Genette’snarratological method in measuring the narrative speed does not seem adequate in stream of consciousness novels. In Genette’smethod, the time of reading the novel is not clear. If according to Paul Ricoeur, the formation process of the novel contains all the three stages of "pre configuration", "configuration" and "re-configuration”, the narrative speed in the novel Prince Ehtejab would be much slower than what is obtained through Genette’s method. Suspension and ambiguity can heavily reduce the narrative speed through interfering in the reconfiguration phase and enhancing the reading time. This paper studies the effect of suspension on the narrative speed and suspension and ambiguity in the novel Prince Ehtejab with a critical approach toward Gerard Genette's model.

Semiotics is broadly conceived of as the science of signs which deals with a wide variety of fields and scopes of thoughts, utilizing its own rubrics and principles. It is not exclusively confined to literature, but rather is applied to examine and analyze a wide array of texts and contexts. However, the semiotics of poetry which is the principal concern of the present study, in terms of its aesthetic message and its latent inner artistic codes, enjoys a notoriously complex semiotic system.The present article is a semiotic approach on two select poems by Akhavan Sales: “Angaah Pas az Tondar” (Thus, after Thunder) and “Geseye Share Sangestan” (The Tale of the Sangestan City). The poet is both the creator and innovator of signs and it is via these signs and existing inner relationships that meaning is conveyed to the reader. The kind of signs applied in these poems, their structural organizations, their syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships and the deft arrangement and assimilation of poetic images by the poet all together are targeted toward a poetic unity, enabling the poet to suggest and evoke his own sensual-psychological experience in the reader.

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is a French contemporary author who draws a cosmopolitan image of female character through his stories. In his first collection, “Odette Toulemonde and other stories”, his major characters are married women who belong to a lower social class and he tries to compare the definitions of a happy life among these women with those who belong to a rich social class. Schmitt has chosen two ways for presenting his characters: Direct and indirect. He has taken into consideration some elements including name and viewpoint. Since his main concern is the inner problems of his female characters, he doesn’t pay attention to their physical aspects. His detailed descriptions of the female characters present his expertise knowledge of the feminine world. In this article, we have tried to study Schmitts’ characterization from the point of view of Card.

In comparison with structure and thematic elements, the significance of story-telling in “Sindbad the Sailor” from The Thousand and One Nights, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, has not been taken into serious consideration by researchers. Every story as an ideological construct of discursive interactions, is a carrier of certain ideologies. Ideology has the power to shape identities, and creates the myth of the seaman as a national hero in the two mentioned texts. Since ideology is false consciousness, it can debunk the shaped myth as well. A comparative study of the two texts with emphasis on story-telling and its power to contain and carry certain ideologies would reveal that each story can create and debunk illusory concepts leaving the addressee of each narrator with a changed picture of the sea hero back from his sea voyage.

The present paper is a comparative study that relies on Tötösy de Zepetnek’s theory to compare the historical, cultural and literary contexts of the presence of birds and bird imagery in Attar’s “Mantiq- al- Tair” (The Conference of Birds) and Jeffry Chaucer’s “The Parliament of Fowls”. While Attar artfully employs birds and bird imagery to illustrate the inherent desire and thirst for a true disciple for full submission, devotion and obedience, Chaucer contemplates and reflects the nature and condition of his contemporary courtly love. Chaucer’s “The Parliament of Fowls” is based on courtly love and explores its cultural and historical aspects admiring and satirizing such kinds of love simultaneously. The findings of this paper demonstrate that despite the similar use of birds and bird imagery in their poems, both Attar and Chaucer have had different objectives that are the results of their different contemporary historical, political and cultural contexts.