Sayyed Rahim Moosavinia is an professor of the Department of English Language and Literature, at Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz. He teaches different subjects there including research methodology, literature, and translation. He is particularly interested in Irish Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Orientalism, and Cultural Studies. Moosavinia has published dozens of journal and conference articles and books.E-mail: moosavinia@scu.ac.ir, moosavinia@yahoo.com orcid.org/0000-0002-0808-8743
Lord Jim is an attempt by Joseph Conrad to contemplate on the failure of the dreams of a man whos... more Lord Jim is an attempt by Joseph Conrad to contemplate on the failure of the dreams of a man whose romantic beliefs in classical heroism and manner of conduct finally brings about his bafflement. In fact, this writer is trying to mirror that one's lack of knowledge in case of the "how to be of life", or his inability to vision the modern world practically from an authentic viewpoint holds him from being conscious enough about his real existence, resulting in a tragedy: a death associated with ambiguity, absent-mindedness and fury. To be more specific, the present study intends to investigate Jim's Romance, his character-as well as that of the other important characters-and the strategies or techniques applied by Conrad, to reflect the failures of such a romantic viewpoint. "To be, or not to be: that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by oppos...
In light of the Bakhtinian heteroglossia and authorial hybrid construction, the present study set... more In light of the Bakhtinian heteroglossia and authorial hybrid construction, the present study sets out to argue how the assimilation of alien stylistics into the realm of social and ideological discourse may transcend the limits of the centralizing logos prevalent in the orthodox poetics. In so doing, first, an analysis of the Bakhtinian concepts is provided to renegotiate his argument on the aesthetic and rhetorical capacities of the prose fiction vis-a-vis the totalitarian poetic discourse. Accordingly, as an innovation, this study suggests that the subversive potentiality of a text stems from both its carnivalesque interrelatedness with a dominant culture and its capability to transcend the limits of the said culture and to revitalize its synchronic and diachronic affiliations to other cultures. To confirm this, a good array of examples is drawn from novelistic texts. In Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum, the protagonist’s mocking attitude towards centripetal fatherhood and his going a...
Houshang Golshiri is among the Iranian leading creative and imaginative fiction writers who manag... more Houshang Golshiri is among the Iranian leading creative and imaginative fiction writers who managed to open up new horizons in Iranian fiction. Hence he could be claimed to be an innovative avant-garde short story writer with unique stylistic characteristics. Although inspired by fiction writers such as Alavi, Sadeqi, Golestan and Sa'edi in the techniques of narration, Golshiri nonetheless stands out among his Iranian peers in creating the sense of indeterminacy, discovery, and the adequate use of polyphonic narration. Thus, he may justifiably be called a well-established paragon of the relevant views and techniques employed by the preceding generations. On the other hand, Golshiri's style in writing short stories (in terms of polyphony), itself based on Bakhtin's dialogical heteroglossia and uncertainty, seems to be worthy of investigating from post-modernist and phenomenological points of view. The present paper uses such a framework to analyze a corpus of eleven short...
Of the many dilemmas facing the assessment of literary competence, one is the extent to which lan... more Of the many dilemmas facing the assessment of literary competence, one is the extent to which language should constitute part of the target construct intended to be measured. Some argue for the construct-irrelevance of language and hence recommend that it be eliminated or minimized in favor of an exclusive focus on literary competence. In practice, this does not seem to be the case, as language proficiency considerations seem to creep into assessment, clouding assessment outcomes. The current study sought to examine students' perceptions of the degree to which knowledge of language constitutes part of the construct of literary competence in two departments of English and Persian literature. To this end, a total of seventy students in two poetry courses, one in the English department and the other in the Persian, responded to a questionnaire designed to gauge their perceptions of the extent to which language competence constitutes a component of the literary competence. Data were...
The aim of this paper is to examine Creon’s character in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone and view how Ano... more The aim of this paper is to examine Creon’s character in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone and view how Anouilh through his subtle changes has made a powerful ruler out of the ancient tyrant. Since Sophocles presented Antigone at the festival of Dionysus in 441 B.C , Creon became an example of a tyrant ruler. He is 1 known as a stone hearted ruler with a commonplace mind, and narrow sympathies (Winngton Igram, 1980: 127) The only motives he can understand are lust for power and greed for money. However, Jean Anouilh in the midst of World War II, surprisingly adapts Sophocles’ Antigone, and presents a different picture of Creon. Jean Anouilh sympathizes with Creon, and many critics especially the German audience came to admire him and saw him as the real hero of the play (Robert Loppe de, 1968: 79).
This study investigated the generic structures and linguistic features of English and Arabic acad... more This study investigated the generic structures and linguistic features of English and Arabic academic book blurbs from different disciplines. The study also examined appraisal markers in the blurbs within the appraisal framework to identify the main attitudinal markers that book blurb writers use to construe and negotiate attitudes with their intended readers. To carry out the aims of the study, 300 English and 300 Arabic blurbs from different disciplines in social sciences were selected. The findings of the study demonstrated that the generic structure of academic blurbs in English differ from that in Arabic. As for the appraisal markers, the findings revealed that both English and Arabic blurb writers widely deploy appraisal markers. The results showed that within the attitude category, appreciation markers were widely used and highly dominant. Within the engagement system, heteroglossic resources were higher than monoglossic ones and for graduation resources, they were widely use...
Budapest International Research and Critics Institute (BIRCI-Journal) : Humanities and Social Sciences, 2019
This paper attempts to analyze the mentioned novel based on postcolonial studies in Arundhati Roy... more This paper attempts to analyze the mentioned novel based on postcolonial studies in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. The concepts that can be mentioned in this novel are history, diaspora, hybridity, the role of women in Indian society, globalization, resistance and orientalism. These concepts are used from postcolonial theorists, Edward W. Said and Homi K. Bhabha.Prominent issue is the role women in Indian society, because there are several female characters, such as Ammu, Rahel, and so on in TGST. Economic growth causes change in Ayemenem. It becomes a globalized community. Postcolonial resistance is an important issue in the novel. When Roy uses English language which it is a colonial language, she does a kind of resistance against colonization itself. Roy refers to the children’s life as a means of resistance.
Edward Said is regarded as the originator of colonial discourse theory. He deploys Michel Foucaul... more Edward Said is regarded as the originator of colonial discourse theory. He deploys Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse to accomplish his project in Orientalism and emphasizes Foucault’s notion of discourse and its relation to power, rendering discourse a carceral system. Although Said explicitly expresses the similarity between Orientalism and Foucault’s discourse theory, it seems he implicitly suggests that the carceral quality of Foucault’s idea affects his formulation of Orientalism. This study examines the validity of Said’s understanding of Foucault and shows that Said’s construction of Orientalism is based on an imperfect image of Foucault. Argument here is to postulate that Foucault’s discourse theory provides space for resistance and his theorization of power helps the idea of struggle in discursive practices. Besides, Foucault himself is trapped in a discourse produced by Said. This study casts light on Foucault’s theory of discourse and modifies this misreading.
This study is an attempt at a colonial and postcolonial reading of Joseph Conrad s Lord Jim. It i... more This study is an attempt at a colonial and postcolonial reading of Joseph Conrad s Lord Jim. It is specifically focused on the narrative strategies used in the novel. In other words, it investigates the connection between the narrative strategy and a possibl s novel. For the introduction, a brief review is an analysis of the overall politics in Lord Jim. Finally, the study considers the employment of narrative devices and several narrative voices in Lord Jim. It goes on to distinguish between Marlow (the character-narrator of the story), the frame narrator, and other voices in the novel in order to shed light on the narrative structure and its relation to the colonialist discourse in the novel. In parallel with this examinatio s role as the s voice and other voices, is analyzed to see where he might stand in the narration of Lord Jim.
This study began with the supposition that teaching English drama through dramatic performance co... more This study began with the supposition that teaching English drama through dramatic performance could enhance English literature students' knowledge of drama at university level. The research was conducted over a whole academic semester with 60 intermediate students enrolled ...
Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a futuristic, science fiction novel that chronicles the ... more Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a futuristic, science fiction novel that chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans, projecting the United States’ colonial and immigrant past on to a symbolic future. Bradbury’s use of language is mostly picturesque and sensory. The present paper applies a text-oriented analysis of stylistic elements that construct meaning in the text and evoke the novel’s themes, using the analytic model developed by Leech and Short (2007). The study’s focus is on the lexical category—general lexicon, nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs—of chapters that are stylistically representative of Bradbury’s descriptive and metaphorically-rich style.
Lord Jim is an attempt by Joseph Conrad to contemplate on the failure of the dreams of a man whos... more Lord Jim is an attempt by Joseph Conrad to contemplate on the failure of the dreams of a man whose romantic beliefs in classical heroism and manner of conduct finally brings about his bafflement. In fact, this writer is trying to mirror that one's lack of knowledge in case of the "how to be of life", or his inability to vision the modern world practically from an authentic viewpoint holds him from being conscious enough about his real existence, resulting in a tragedy: a death associated with ambiguity, absent-mindedness and fury. To be more specific, the present study intends to investigate Jim's Romance, his character-as well as that of the other important characters-and the strategies or techniques applied by Conrad, to reflect the failures of such a romantic viewpoint. "To be, or not to be: that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by oppos...
In light of the Bakhtinian heteroglossia and authorial hybrid construction, the present study set... more In light of the Bakhtinian heteroglossia and authorial hybrid construction, the present study sets out to argue how the assimilation of alien stylistics into the realm of social and ideological discourse may transcend the limits of the centralizing logos prevalent in the orthodox poetics. In so doing, first, an analysis of the Bakhtinian concepts is provided to renegotiate his argument on the aesthetic and rhetorical capacities of the prose fiction vis-a-vis the totalitarian poetic discourse. Accordingly, as an innovation, this study suggests that the subversive potentiality of a text stems from both its carnivalesque interrelatedness with a dominant culture and its capability to transcend the limits of the said culture and to revitalize its synchronic and diachronic affiliations to other cultures. To confirm this, a good array of examples is drawn from novelistic texts. In Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum, the protagonist’s mocking attitude towards centripetal fatherhood and his going a...
Houshang Golshiri is among the Iranian leading creative and imaginative fiction writers who manag... more Houshang Golshiri is among the Iranian leading creative and imaginative fiction writers who managed to open up new horizons in Iranian fiction. Hence he could be claimed to be an innovative avant-garde short story writer with unique stylistic characteristics. Although inspired by fiction writers such as Alavi, Sadeqi, Golestan and Sa'edi in the techniques of narration, Golshiri nonetheless stands out among his Iranian peers in creating the sense of indeterminacy, discovery, and the adequate use of polyphonic narration. Thus, he may justifiably be called a well-established paragon of the relevant views and techniques employed by the preceding generations. On the other hand, Golshiri's style in writing short stories (in terms of polyphony), itself based on Bakhtin's dialogical heteroglossia and uncertainty, seems to be worthy of investigating from post-modernist and phenomenological points of view. The present paper uses such a framework to analyze a corpus of eleven short...
Of the many dilemmas facing the assessment of literary competence, one is the extent to which lan... more Of the many dilemmas facing the assessment of literary competence, one is the extent to which language should constitute part of the target construct intended to be measured. Some argue for the construct-irrelevance of language and hence recommend that it be eliminated or minimized in favor of an exclusive focus on literary competence. In practice, this does not seem to be the case, as language proficiency considerations seem to creep into assessment, clouding assessment outcomes. The current study sought to examine students' perceptions of the degree to which knowledge of language constitutes part of the construct of literary competence in two departments of English and Persian literature. To this end, a total of seventy students in two poetry courses, one in the English department and the other in the Persian, responded to a questionnaire designed to gauge their perceptions of the extent to which language competence constitutes a component of the literary competence. Data were...
The aim of this paper is to examine Creon’s character in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone and view how Ano... more The aim of this paper is to examine Creon’s character in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone and view how Anouilh through his subtle changes has made a powerful ruler out of the ancient tyrant. Since Sophocles presented Antigone at the festival of Dionysus in 441 B.C , Creon became an example of a tyrant ruler. He is 1 known as a stone hearted ruler with a commonplace mind, and narrow sympathies (Winngton Igram, 1980: 127) The only motives he can understand are lust for power and greed for money. However, Jean Anouilh in the midst of World War II, surprisingly adapts Sophocles’ Antigone, and presents a different picture of Creon. Jean Anouilh sympathizes with Creon, and many critics especially the German audience came to admire him and saw him as the real hero of the play (Robert Loppe de, 1968: 79).
This study investigated the generic structures and linguistic features of English and Arabic acad... more This study investigated the generic structures and linguistic features of English and Arabic academic book blurbs from different disciplines. The study also examined appraisal markers in the blurbs within the appraisal framework to identify the main attitudinal markers that book blurb writers use to construe and negotiate attitudes with their intended readers. To carry out the aims of the study, 300 English and 300 Arabic blurbs from different disciplines in social sciences were selected. The findings of the study demonstrated that the generic structure of academic blurbs in English differ from that in Arabic. As for the appraisal markers, the findings revealed that both English and Arabic blurb writers widely deploy appraisal markers. The results showed that within the attitude category, appreciation markers were widely used and highly dominant. Within the engagement system, heteroglossic resources were higher than monoglossic ones and for graduation resources, they were widely use...
Budapest International Research and Critics Institute (BIRCI-Journal) : Humanities and Social Sciences, 2019
This paper attempts to analyze the mentioned novel based on postcolonial studies in Arundhati Roy... more This paper attempts to analyze the mentioned novel based on postcolonial studies in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. The concepts that can be mentioned in this novel are history, diaspora, hybridity, the role of women in Indian society, globalization, resistance and orientalism. These concepts are used from postcolonial theorists, Edward W. Said and Homi K. Bhabha.Prominent issue is the role women in Indian society, because there are several female characters, such as Ammu, Rahel, and so on in TGST. Economic growth causes change in Ayemenem. It becomes a globalized community. Postcolonial resistance is an important issue in the novel. When Roy uses English language which it is a colonial language, she does a kind of resistance against colonization itself. Roy refers to the children’s life as a means of resistance.
Edward Said is regarded as the originator of colonial discourse theory. He deploys Michel Foucaul... more Edward Said is regarded as the originator of colonial discourse theory. He deploys Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse to accomplish his project in Orientalism and emphasizes Foucault’s notion of discourse and its relation to power, rendering discourse a carceral system. Although Said explicitly expresses the similarity between Orientalism and Foucault’s discourse theory, it seems he implicitly suggests that the carceral quality of Foucault’s idea affects his formulation of Orientalism. This study examines the validity of Said’s understanding of Foucault and shows that Said’s construction of Orientalism is based on an imperfect image of Foucault. Argument here is to postulate that Foucault’s discourse theory provides space for resistance and his theorization of power helps the idea of struggle in discursive practices. Besides, Foucault himself is trapped in a discourse produced by Said. This study casts light on Foucault’s theory of discourse and modifies this misreading.
This study is an attempt at a colonial and postcolonial reading of Joseph Conrad s Lord Jim. It i... more This study is an attempt at a colonial and postcolonial reading of Joseph Conrad s Lord Jim. It is specifically focused on the narrative strategies used in the novel. In other words, it investigates the connection between the narrative strategy and a possibl s novel. For the introduction, a brief review is an analysis of the overall politics in Lord Jim. Finally, the study considers the employment of narrative devices and several narrative voices in Lord Jim. It goes on to distinguish between Marlow (the character-narrator of the story), the frame narrator, and other voices in the novel in order to shed light on the narrative structure and its relation to the colonialist discourse in the novel. In parallel with this examinatio s role as the s voice and other voices, is analyzed to see where he might stand in the narration of Lord Jim.
This study began with the supposition that teaching English drama through dramatic performance co... more This study began with the supposition that teaching English drama through dramatic performance could enhance English literature students' knowledge of drama at university level. The research was conducted over a whole academic semester with 60 intermediate students enrolled ...
Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a futuristic, science fiction novel that chronicles the ... more Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a futuristic, science fiction novel that chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans, projecting the United States’ colonial and immigrant past on to a symbolic future. Bradbury’s use of language is mostly picturesque and sensory. The present paper applies a text-oriented analysis of stylistic elements that construct meaning in the text and evoke the novel’s themes, using the analytic model developed by Leech and Short (2007). The study’s focus is on the lexical category—general lexicon, nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs—of chapters that are stylistically representative of Bradbury’s descriptive and metaphorically-rich style.
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