Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the merging boundaries of “Self” in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing, a novel written in 1972. Atwood explores the inner conflict of the protagonist and pursues the gender roles and discriminations towards women. The narrator is suppressed in the wilderness, ...
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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the merging boundaries of “Self” in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing, a novel written in 1972. Atwood explores the inner conflict of the protagonist and pursues the gender roles and discriminations towards women. The narrator is suppressed in the wilderness, and during her journey, she is looking for her past. The novel shows that the fractured sense of self such as interpersonal relationship, self-image, and identity begins from childhood. More specifically, the novel attempts to search for the identity and survival of the self in a postmodern society. The main objective of this study is to identify the mental, psychological, and spiritual boundaries of self in this society. Moreover, the research takes a feminist approach to explore the ways the narrator utilizes to build and preserve the boundaries of self, which resulted in the self-realization at the end of the novel. These practices include turning in to the feelings and emotions, seeking support from others, considering the past and childhood life, and improving self-awareness and self-care. Moreover, we categorized and elaborated the boundaries of self in three separate categories: female subjectivity, fake identities and ideology, and landscape, nature, and cultural aspects. Atwood illustrates the subjugation of nature and women by the Western culture throughout a journey to the past and to the forgotten territories of the protagonist’s psyche paralleling them with the remote Canadian forest areas and taking advantage of narrative strategies that contribute to the psychoanalytical theme of the novel.
Farzad Kolahjooei
Abstract
This paper depicts the lived experience of the black characters in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners with regard to the concepts of self, mind, and body. Reading Selvon in the light of Fanonian concept of epidermalization and Freudian notion of melancholia, the current research argues that the ...
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This paper depicts the lived experience of the black characters in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners with regard to the concepts of self, mind, and body. Reading Selvon in the light of Fanonian concept of epidermalization and Freudian notion of melancholia, the current research argues that the black immigrants suffer from a traumatic state of mind, which results in self-contempt, psychic disintegration, and physical disorientation. This article especially focuses on the black characters’ fascination with the white world and its cultural values to argue that the otherness assigned to the black people by the whites throughout history is strongly felt in the novel in a way that none of the black characters is able to truly manifest his/her black spirit. In its conversation with the current body of research on the topic, this paper foregrounds the black characters’ sense of lost in the metropolitan life of London to eventually argue that Selvon’s characterization moves in opposition to his empowering narrative techniques and linguistic strategies.
Mehrdad Bidgoli; Shamsoddin Royanian
Volume 15, Issue 21 , October 2019, , Pages 57-96
Abstract
Emmanuel Levinas, the lesser known twentieth century philosopher, had been influenced by art in his philosophizing before he proposed his new ideas in 1961. Not only was he influenced by art, but paradoxically by literature and a number of great literary figures. Thinkers like Dostoevsky, Gogol, Cervantes ...
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Emmanuel Levinas, the lesser known twentieth century philosopher, had been influenced by art in his philosophizing before he proposed his new ideas in 1961. Not only was he influenced by art, but paradoxically by literature and a number of great literary figures. Thinkers like Dostoevsky, Gogol, Cervantes and other universally-acclaimed figures, consciously or unconsciously, had their hands in his philosophy and he himself pointed to this fact in an interview with Philippe Nemo. But Shakespeare is the one to whom he alluded with specificity. Especially at the outset of his philosophical career from 1947 to 1961, he referred to Shakespeare and his Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet in such a way as if they serve as a direct impact on his philosophical thoughts. Thus, the inspiration he receives from literature seems to be worthy of a further study and analysis. Therefore, this article aims at studying the impact of literature and especially Shakespeare on Levinas. After a brief introduction, the study considers Levinas’s allusions to Shakespeare in various parts of his oeuvre, with an emphasis on Time and the Other. Through such a dialogue, Shakespeare’s position for Levinas will be discussed and his significance for him will be exposed.
Dominik Carnox –Torabi; Monireh Akbarpouran
Volume 13, Issue 17 , October 2017, , Pages 79-99
Abstract
Imagology, as un approach in Comparative Literature for the study of images and representations of the alien ("other") in a literary work, may have a special relation with Epic genre; because only in this genre, representation of Other necessarily accompanies rejection, fear and exaggerated humiliation; ...
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Imagology, as un approach in Comparative Literature for the study of images and representations of the alien ("other") in a literary work, may have a special relation with Epic genre; because only in this genre, representation of Other necessarily accompanies rejection, fear and exaggerated humiliation; and in the trilogy of reactions to the alien, defined by Daniel Henri Pageaux, i.e. xenophobia, xenophilia and xenomania, this representation is placed in former category. The Epic genre, in fact, is an identity-based genre that, highlighting the differences and conflicts between Us and the Other, covers up the internal contradictions and conflicts and reconstructs social identity. This identity is certainly defined in relation to an otherness which monsters and ogres are examples. In this article, we would analyze the poetic of Other representation in the epic genre, study the mechanism of exclusion and deformation of the alien, and examine its relation with the intrinsic properties of epic.