The Azerbaijani Style Metaphysical Poetry: Chess in the Poetry of Khāqāni and Abraham Cowley
Kamran
Ahmadgoli
Kharazmi University, Tehran
author
text
article
2017
per
This article tries to deal with chess-related expressions and metaphors and their complexities in the poetry of the renowned the twelfth-century Azerbaijani-style poet Khāqāni and the seventeenth-century Metaphysical poet Abraham Cowley. Based on such concepts as T. S. Eliot’s ‘unification of sensibility’ and ‘objective correlative’ and a comparative conceptual analysis of the Azerbaijani-style and metaphysical poetry in their historical context, it is shown that the two poets, though far removed in time, enjoyed the same intellectual and poetical strategies in presenting their ideas and would employ abstruse chess conceits in an attempt to act upon what the eighteenth-century English critic Samuel Johnson depreciatively calls ‘the most heterogeneous ideas yoked by violence together’ and what the modernist poet T. S. Eliot would appreciate as 'a fusion of thought and feeling'. The result is a kind of poetry in both poets which is intellectually challenging and emotionally engaging.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
13
32
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_99999_b4e7fb60895e8414878e185bf83897bc.pdf
The Uncanny History and Unrepresentability of Subject formation in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale
Roya
Elahi
Ph.D. Candidte, Islamic Azad University, Tehran Central Branch
author
Amirali
Nojoumian
Associate Professor , Shahid Beheshti University
author
text
article
2017
per
The Uncanny whose presence at least refers back to Freud's 1919 essay of the same title has been reconsidered by critics in recent century. The uncanny is no more attributed merely to the realm of aesthetic or psychology as Freud attempted to explain. It is rather an interdisciplinary issue to discuss our modern anxieties such as migration, gender, history, etc. Margaret Atwood (1939- ) is a contemporary Canadian writer who has reconsidered history. What makes her different from other writers is the way she rereads history. This article is an attempt to study The Handmaid's Tale, her 1985 novel through the uncanny. In her novel, history is a narrative whose uncanny reading foregrounds the unrepresentable realities in relation to subject formation. Through the uncanny, history which has been taken for granted as a familiar, clear and unchangeable "fact" becomes a strange, ambiguous and alternate "sign". The theories of Sigmund Freud and Jean-François Lyotard are mainly consulted to delineate the uncanny and history and their tendency to foreground the unrepresentabilities of subject formation. In Atwood's novel, Language and memory function as two significant uncanny issues whose indecisive and abeyant nature shun any historical "fact" to actualize as a familiar, clear and unchangeable given. This in turn, keeps the reader incessantly in the state of indecision and ultimately renders the process of subject formation as unrepresentable.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
33
55
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100030_19f9a13d6b53923240a74df1ba4c75ff.pdf
Word Order and Constituent Structure in German
Kaveh
Bahrami
Assistant Professor of ShahidBeheshti University
author
text
article
2017
per
Erich Drach is the first linguist to present the pattern of sentence components in German more than eighty years ago. From then on, on the one hand, a simple Dahl pattern at first and on the other hand language developments, led linguists to develop this model. The pattern presented by this German linguist today has to contain complex models of German language. In this paper, in addition to introducing this template, we introduce a variety of sentences in German and the arrangement of structures in this model. We will also try to show compulsory and optional placement of structures in each of the sites specified in this template. The results of this study show that all model positions should not be occupied. The position of the verb and the sentence type is in the basis of the base or the follower in determining the position and arrangement of the structures.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
57
76
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100036_4d24e5867e783594f0971cd3ed2a0e7f.pdf
A Haunted Narrative: Signifying Trauma of Displacement in Lahiri's Trilogy of "Hema and Kaushik" in her Unaccustomed Earth
Bahareh
Bahmanpour
Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch (IAUCTB)
author
Amir Ali
Nojumian
Shahid Beheshti University (SBU)
author
text
article
2017
per
The present article is based on the hypothesis that immigration, in all shapes or forms (either as a forced exile or a voluntary displacement), is an unsettling and traumatic experience which leads to the formation of traumatized subjectivities. This trauma (also referred to as "diasporic trauma" or "trauma of displacement") is, like many other types of trauma, transgenerational: that is, it affects not only the lives of the first-generation diasporic subjects but also the diasporic experience of their descendants by problematizing any illusory sense of a coherently hybrid self. Since from the view of many trauma theorists, literature (from autobiography and testimony to fiction and poetry) highlights the problematics of the representation and the narrativization of trauma; the present article, then, aims to explore the possibility and the means of the literary representation of trauma of displacement in diasporic literature. Employing the Post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory of trauma within a diasporic context, it thus opens up new avenues to offer a psychoanalytic study of the diasporic trauma in Lahiri's trilogy of "Hema and Kaushik" (including, "Once in a Lifetime," "Year's End," and "Going Ashore") from her Unaccustomed Earth (2008) through the lens of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's theory of hauntology—particularly their notion of the phantom, the two processes of introjection and incorporation, and the crypt. Drawing on the dead-mother metaphor around which the whole trilogy revolves as well as underlining the notion of afterwardsness which is circuitously performed within the unconscious structure of the whole text, it thus argues that trauma of displacement whose psychoanalytic pain amounts to that of being ripped off the mother's womb and a life-long exposure to the phantom of an absent/present mother is so disconcerting and deep that it takes it about a generation (if not more) to be resolved and to be possibly put to rest. This possibility, of course, can be only opened up if the diasporic subject has, often transgenerationally, acknowledged, claimed, and confronted the phantom of the loss of the motherland and has even begun a belated mourning process for it. This process, however, as Lahiri's texts suggest, does not often run smoothly since the diasporic subject constantly, though unconsciously, incorporates (rather than introjecting) that constitutive element of loss at the core of his/her subjectivity by activating a series of defense mechanisms, erecting dysfunctional crypts, and getting stuck in a vicious circle of acting-out (rather than working through).
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
77
97
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100038_e2f0d86cc16a2fa219aa840558321bbc.pdf
An investigation of the prevalence and difficulty of reading comprehension's sub-skills by the G-DINA model
Zahra
Javidanmehr
Shahid Beheshti University
author
Mohammad Reza
Anani Sarab
Shahid Beheshti University
author
text
article
2017
per
Reading comprehension is one of the most important skills of English language, specifically in academic settings. This skill has been investigated time and again from different perspectives, of which educational measurement is the focus of the present research. This study aims at defining these underlying sub-skills, examining their prevalence and difficulty, and estimating the difficulty of the items of a large-scale exam. The G-DINA model (Ma & de la Torre, 2017), which is a cognitive diagnostic model, was selected as the statistical method of data analysis. To this end, the subtest of reading from National University Entrance Exam, master's level, was selected. The underlying sub-skills of the test were extracted through three main sources of concurrent literature, students' think-aloud protocols, and expert panel's judgment. The extracted sub-skills along with the students' scored responses were used as the input for the GDINA package in R programming software. Four sub-skills were defined for the test and the outputs related to attribute/sub-skill prevalence, sub-skill difficulty, and item difficulty were reported in CDM framework. In the end, the probable reasons for the obtained outputs were discussed in the context of reading comprehension.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
99
118
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100041_ba5e0dce4b05804ddb82cc5c12ac3955.pdf
The Mirror of Consumption and Media in American Postmodern Fiction: A Baudrillardian Reading of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho
Mohsen
Khaleseh Dehghan
Islamic Azad University
author
Bakhtiar
Sadjadi
Kurdistan University
author
text
article
2017
per
The present paper seeks to argue that consumption and media wield an unparalleled influence over contemporary American society, in a way that these drives constitute the primary means through which identity is constituted. Closely referring to Jean Baudrillard’s critical concepts, the present research contends that the fictional characters of Bret Easton Ellis, particularly in American Psycho, are prone to this postmodern world, where all experience via consumption has become fathomless, and traditional notions of identity have been changed. Ellis’ characters oscillate between the extreme poles of violence and ennui as they do their best to prevent their psyches from collapse amidst the surrounding turmoil caused by excessive consumption. Neither one of these alternatives results in any relief. In this type of literature, the protagonists are immersed in the contemporary world of consumption and the mass media. In fact, primary interest here is on the effects of this immersion in the world of commodities on the major characters, and their reactions in the selected novel. Accordingly, dependence on possessions by the characters of the novel in order to isolate themselves from the threatening disorder of the post-modern world is the major concern of present study of the novel.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
119
140
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_99996_c9c123776b5b73b2caacf040a4a224d4.pdf
Motivational Beliefs: Impact on the Capacity to Employ Self-Regulatory Strategies among University EFL Learners
ُSeyed Abolghassem
Fatemi Jahromi
Shahid Beheshti University
author
Ali
Derakhshesh
Shahid Beheshti University
author
text
article
2017
per
Currently well-developed lines of theory and research on self-regulated learning (SRL) consider learners’ motivational beliefs as a precursor to the use of strategies. In accordance with this, the purpose of the present study was to explore the predictive power of five motivational factors (task interest, outcome expectation, self-efficacy, goal orientation, and causal attribution) in language learning on undergraduates’ potential to utilize self-regulatory strategies. To this end, data were collected from 308 university students representing a variety of proficiency levels. Participants answered the Persian version of a newly developed instrument called Self-Regulated Language Learning Questionnaire (SRLLQ) which comprises a Motivational Beliefs and a Self-Regulatory Strategies dimension. Results from multiple regression analyses showed that only goal orientation, outcome expectation, and self-efficacy were strong predictors of students’ capacity to use self-regulatory strategies. Although only three motivational beliefs had significant predictive effects, generally this finding lends credence to the key role that motivational beliefs play in directing and controlling learners’ effort to learn, which in turn leads to improved academic performance. Based on the findings, several recommendations are made for guidance to stakeholders in promoting learners’ second language (L2) achievement in the context of universities.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
141
168
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100004_c540cc0852118a225ee28de9d2ba811f.pdf
The Translocality of Home in Mohja Kahf's Diasporic Discourse
Ensiyeh
Darzinejad
PhD student Tehran Central Azad University
author
Leila
Baradaran Jamili
Assistant Teacher of English Literature at Borujerd Azad University
author
text
article
2017
per
The concept of home is pivotal in diaspora studies. Mohja Kahf (1967- ), the Syrian Muslim novelist residing in the United States, challenges the fixity of home in her diasporic novel, The Girl in Tangerine Scarf (2006). The efforts of her heroine, Khadra, to find home in the fixed geographical territories, such as Syria, United States, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, are futile. She finds out that as a diasporic subject, instead of trying to satisfy her desire for home, she has to please her homing desire. Taking part in the community of Muslim religious rituals such as Haj pilgrimage and congregational prayer enables her to create a translocal space for herself. This space is engendered round the pivotal point of religious belief and the plurality and multiplicity of transnational Islamic community. The present study regards translocality as a solution to the challenge of home in diaspora. James Clifford, Avtar Brah, Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta, and Tim Oakes and Louisa Schein are among the main theoretician of this research.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
169
186
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100007_8bc4d0669650766480695b5dec823042.pdf
Ideology and Interpellation of Black Americans' Community in Amiri Baraka's "In Memory of Radio": Althusserian Reading
سید شهاب الدین
ساداتی
دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی رودهن
author
علیرضا
جعفری
دانشگاه شهید بهشتی
author
text
article
2017
per
Abstract
The present research attempts to study Imamu Amiri Baraka’s well-known poem “In Memory of Radio” with the help of Louis Althusser’s definition of “ideology”, “interpellation”, “repressive state apparatuses”, and “ideological state apparatuses”. According to Althusser, ideology is “a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”. In other words, individuals make an “illusion” in their relationship to reality or “ideology distorts our view of our true ‘conditions of existence’”. In Baraka’s “In Memory of Radio”, media (radio) as “ideological state apparatuses” interpellates White and Black American people and makes them ideological subjects whom without any resistance accept the dominant class’ ideology. Young Baraka as the poet (persona) has a sad view toward his childhood (when he listened to radio programs eagerly) and sarcastically criticizes radio programs during the previous decades because they supported the standards of white society and defended them secretly. Althusserian analysis of the poem shows that “ideological state apparatuses” act symbolically in the form of radio programs.
Keywords: Althusser - Ideology - Ideological State Apparatuses - Amiri Baraka - Interpellation
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
187
208
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100011_e345aab170e40417814d302e55ea880b.pdf
Cultural-environmental Discourse in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
دیانوش
صانعی
دانشگاه ازاد اسلامی واحد تهران مرکزی
author
جلال
سخنور
دانشگاه ازاد اسلامی تهران شمال
author
text
article
2017
per
Cultural-environmental Discourse in Margaret Atwood’s
The Handmaid’s Tale
The present article approaches Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, (1985) to incorporate a variety of related discourses that enter into a dynamic relationship with current ecocritical theoretical discourses. In a futuristic society, the pollution of natural world along with the growth of religious fundamentalism results in the sterility of most the members as the manifestation of entropy. It also suggests how the author’s conception of gender-environment connections correspond to the ideas held by ecofeminists. In this story, the patriarchal monopolization over women and nature points out wherever women are degraded, nature is exploited too The specificity of Atwood’s interest in environmental issues creates a symbiotic relationship between nature and culture as connected entities that constantly shape and reshape each other. Generally speaking, this study examines ecological values as well as the ideological vehicles for any position on the interactions in human-environment to reflect how literature participates in and interacts with the entire ecosphere. Atwood’s survived character in the novel is a woman who imagines herself in relation to nature and resists the controlling aspects of culture through narrating her story.
Key Terms: Ecocriticism- Ecofeminism-Entropy-Margaret Atwood-Survival-
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
209
232
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100014_11775cabfcb8793f91eb9618d7547b80.pdf
Fatherland and Postspace in Andre Dubus III’s The House of Sand and Fog
Zahra
Taheri
University of Kashan
author
text
article
2017
per
This article focuses on the notion of space and its influence on the social and cultural polices in Andre Dubus III’s bestselling novel, The House of Sand and Fog, through the perspective of cultural geographoy. Deploying Harvey and Upstone, the writer has tried to elaborate whether the disruption of geographical and cultural borders in recent decades has modified the general conception of “space,” or it still pursues a Euclidean one. To this end, notions of “Euclidean space,” “postspace,” and “place” have been studied. It is argued that, despite the demystification of notions like “nation,” “cultural purity,” “social heterogeneity,” and the racial and cultural diversity in recent decades, the West still followes in the tradition of Euclidean conception of “space” which emphasizes borders and boundaries. As a result, the binary of “us vs. them” is forgrounded wihin the borders of empire, and discrimination, a cultural one, becomes a prevalent practice. This paradox is addressed while postmodenism has been founded on a new conception of space as “postspace” which, accordingly, upsets the hierarchies of imperialism and liberal humanism.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
233
257
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100017_a41b260ddba086362a5cb319ea74c971.pdf
The study of the production of meaning in the narrative discourse systems of the novel “and if it was true” by Marc Levy, based on the model of the study of Greimas
ali
abasi
shahid beheshti university
author
mitra
moradi
shahid beheshti university
author
text
article
2017
per
Algirdas Julien Greimas, French semanticist, had made a lot of efforts to provide a coherent model for studying the narration. According to him, what is important in recognizing literary text, is not an effective mechanical analysis, but we must look at the process of producing the text up to the transfer and reception of meaning. That is, we should study the discourse systems of the text, which include three types of intelligent, emotional and eventional.
In this study, we will examine the process of producing the meaning in the narrative discourse systems based on the model of the study of Greimas by analyzing the semantics of the novel “and if it was true” written by contemporary French novelist Marc Levy, and we are going to answer the question: How action, state and unexpected flows create the discourse of “and if it was true” and create a variety of intelligent, emotional and eventional systems. This novel, due to it’s narrative logic,can be analyzed from the point of view of intelligent, emotional and eventional discourse systems.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
259
278
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100020_54f08a97493df2786a7cedbeb37e47c3.pdf
Interaction or Conflict: Dominant Cultural and Subordinated Voice in Saul Bellow’s Works A Cultural Materialistic Approach
Abbas
Goudarzi
Faculty Member of Islamic Azad University, Hamedan Branch
author
Alireza
Jafari
Faculty Member of Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran Iran
author
text
article
2017
per
The present paper means to study the cultural tension between the dissident voice and dominant discourse in a selected number of Saul Bellow’s novels. To this end, the theoretical framework of Cultural Materialism is applied based on which there exists tension in the relationship of every literary work with its cultural context in which it is produced. The dominant cultural system, however, has to keep its upper status through retrieving and restating its beliefs and ideologies by making them ever acceptable and logically sound to the subjects. As the main player in the field of cultural interactions, the dominant system also has to face and make peace with the new and dissident voices which may present a threat to its stability. This, the dominant system, achieves through containing the dissidence within itself.
In Bellow’s works, dissidence is especially noticeable as he comes from a religious-cultural background (he was from an immigrant Jewish family) whose many values are in sharp contrast with those of the reigning cultural system of American society. Due to this discrepancy and contrast, the writer has set out to present a voice of dissidence through being critical of the sociocultural milieu and taking up a seemingly different way of fiction-writing.Thus, the main focus of this study is to approve of the fact that despite Bellow’s desire for being different from and dissident to the cultural system, his voice is actually contained within and subordinated to the larger community’s perspectives and ideological practices and is even retrieving and reproducing them, because, as Cultural Materialism argues, text is bound with the context of its production and can barely go or act beyond its precepts.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
279
296
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100023_6dfe0d1f172df8e63e94ee7de7fa5a66.pdf
Structurallists and Poststructuralists on Narrative Space: The Shift from Character to Reader
Sayyed Rahim
Moosavinia
Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz
author
text
article
2017
per
The recent experimental spatial turn in geography has developed a plethora of interdisciplinary theories of space. Concerning this turn, studying space, which had previously been subordinated to the study of time in narrative, necessitates the examination of space in the context of poststructuralist narratology rather than classical narratology. The reconstruction of the structure of space in the temporal continuum of the textual language is limited and depicted in the mind of the reader in association with his or her spatial experiments. Regarding the few Persian studies about place, space, and literary geography, there is no examination of the effects of the experimental spatial turn in the structure of space in narrative. The present research in narratology, whilst comparing the proposed spatial terms of the structuralist and poststructuralist studies, attempts to shed light on the importance of the character and reader in the overall structure of the space that has been influenced by the suggested experimental turn.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Shahid Beheshti University
20087330
14
v.
19
no.
2017
297
316
https://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article_100027_c63dc80c4f2dfe7f1abcd6ef373ab582.pdf