Saeid Behnoud; Negar Sharif; Zahra Bordbari
Abstract
Introduction: As the investigation of the Wessex’s paratextual material reveals, Hardy’s insightful conviction on the primacy of emotional reasoning over logical cognition in the mind’s nexus informs his predetermined intentionality in assigning the impressionistic elicitation of affective ...
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Introduction: As the investigation of the Wessex’s paratextual material reveals, Hardy’s insightful conviction on the primacy of emotional reasoning over logical cognition in the mind’s nexus informs his predetermined intentionality in assigning the impressionistic elicitation of affective responsiveness as the ultimate mission of his literary compositions. Accordingly, the Wessex novelist develops a sophisticated fabric of interconnected narrative strategies to effectively evoke and enlist the subject readers’ empathetic identification with the desolately suffering protagonists. Since humankind is condemned to the inflictions of a sinisterly indifferent universe in Hardy’s fixated philosophy, the affective investments of his impressionistic narratives purportedly aim at the altruistic propagation of empathetic compassion to rectify moral degeneration. However, it is critical to reconsider the functional basis of the Wessex’s methodical dominion on emotional susceptibilities in the scope of contemporary research in affective narratology since the instrumental capitalization on affective realism harbors grave capacity for engraving the intended versions of perceived reality. Background of the Study: The recent investigations carried out in the multidisciplinary scope of neuroscience attest to the pre-eminence of emotional susceptibilities over reasoning faculty in the mind network revolutionizing the conventional theories on the cognitive function in the reality perception process. The revitalized focus on the overarching emotional orientation of the mind’s cognitive performance extends to literature in the sub-domain of affective narratology and informs the analytical research on its function and impact in narratives by such renowned scholars as Suzanna Keen. In Empathy and the Novel, Keen discusses the stylistic features and strategic techniques that elicit empathetic responsiveness in the narrative discourses leading to the subject readers’ affective identification with the represented fictional characters or situations. “Narrative Empathy Theory” and “Introduction: Narratives and Emotions” incorporate Keen’s evaluation of the role of discursive elements such as characterization style and narrator’s function in the empathetic enlistment process and provide innovative concepts in the categorization of the various strategies of empathetic evocation in the narrative discourses that perform as “ideoartistic battlefields”.Methodology: The theoretical framework and the discourse analysis procedures in affective narratology are informed by the current research in the interconnected branches of knowledge. The remarkable investigations of such prominent scholars as Suzanna Keen in affective narratology challenge the long-established emotion-reason binary by emphasizing the determining primacy of emotional susceptibility in the reciprocal interaction of the mind nexus’s cognitive and affective faculties in forming the interpretation gestalts of literary narrative discourses. Investigating the process of the Wessex’s affective impressionism through the analytical discursive reassessments in light of the latest neuro-scientific theories is crucial in uncovering the functional bases of Hardy’s methodical efficiency in the strategic capitalization on the audience’s empathetic identification.Conclusion: The saturated impressionism of the Wessex narratives is significantly enforced by the remarkable correspondence of the interconnected discursive strategies with the latest findings on the primary role of the mind’s affective faculty in shaping perceptions of reality. The stylistic assessment of Hardy’s narrative techniques to capitalize on empathetic identification indicates the substantial correspondence of his realistic representations with the principles of affective realism in present-day theories. The compelling urge on the subject readers’ affective susceptibilities is emphatically enforced through the discursive applications of the parallelism between the mind’s inner emotional valences with the projections of the outer world, their reciprocal interdependency in the forming the gestalt of a perceived cognitive reality and the consequent conception of the intentionality of an outer sentiency. However, the Wessex’s overwhelming investment in affective impressionism alarmingly facilitates the channeling of the dark ideological propositions of a sinister philosophy through the self-prophesizing transfigurations of reality that can act as deterministic forces in fashioning the individuals’ reciprocal interactions with the socio-cultural context.
Niloufar Aminpour; Jalal Sokhanvar; Zahra Bordbari
Abstract
Judith Butler efforts to highlight the significant role of the cultural heterosexism in the construction of female gender identity and roles by referring to repetitive acts through abjection, continuity among sex, gender, and sexual desire, interpellation, and exclusion of female gender . Tennessee Williams ...
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Judith Butler efforts to highlight the significant role of the cultural heterosexism in the construction of female gender identity and roles by referring to repetitive acts through abjection, continuity among sex, gender, and sexual desire, interpellation, and exclusion of female gender . Tennessee Williams in his masterpieces depicts the method of gender constructedness years before Butler and beyond her theory. This research intends to study the nominated plays by Williams and Butler’s theory of female gender construction to reveal a better understanding of female characters and a more genuine understanding of the manner of cultural heteronormativity in such constructedness. Butler argues that parodic acts terminate in the binaries of man/woman, male/female, and masculine/feminine which reassures the bipolarity of the heterosexist cultures. In the plays, the concept of abjection can be traced, for both heterosexual and homosexual female gender identity and roles. According to Butler, the male gender subject is the only accountable case that are not the constituent part of cultural constituent in defining the inferior female gender identity. The situation of female subjects in these plays demonstrates that female gender individual has a share in the construction of heteronormativity. Some female identities receiving and doing the reiterative cultural acts, take the function of the hegemony of heterosexism and behave other female gender identities as the minor personalities who should be defined as the lower-rate gender identity and roles; besides, the identical female individual represents heteronormativity and restricts herself in the binaries to construct her own gender identity and roles.
Bahman Zarrinjooee; Seyed Vahid Abtahi
Abstract
John Barth, among postmodern American novelists, is apt to be called the reviver of Pyrrhonist tradition in the Twentieth century. In his creation of Pyrrhonist characters, he criticizes the American value system and the empty life of contemporary man in a broad sense. The End of the Road, Barth’s ...
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John Barth, among postmodern American novelists, is apt to be called the reviver of Pyrrhonist tradition in the Twentieth century. In his creation of Pyrrhonist characters, he criticizes the American value system and the empty life of contemporary man in a broad sense. The End of the Road, Barth’s second novel is a successful example in which the marry traits of a protagonist give their place to the mean qualities of an antagonist. In the novel, the anti-hero characters suffering from a mental paralysis under the title “Cosmopsis” resort to “Mythotherapy” which means nothing but a distortion of identity. Among the consequences of this treatment are, of course, “Decidophobia” and “hyperbolic Cartesian doubt.” Interestingly, Barth’s description for the irrationality of such a man corresponds to the definition of rationality in Pyrrhonism. On this basis, the main question of the research arises from the fact that Barth’s views are an embodiment of those historical thoughts regarded as Pyrrhonist skepticism, which have been developed through ages by different forms. Apart from the historical impressions on the formation of modern skeptical philosophy which was flourished first by Cartesian doubt and developed by Hume’s empiricism the research also examines Barth’s postmodern-skeptical cosmology which derives from his obsession with identity and meaning. The overall point inferred by the researchers is that how Barth in The End of the Road indicates human decisions rely most on “emotions” rather than “reason” and that the rationality of man take him nowhere but in itself.