Nahid Shahbazi
Semnan University, English Language and Literature, Faculty Member
The present study offers a reading of "The Snake Stone," penned by Mahmũd Etemādzāde aka. Beh'Āzin (1915-2006), as a tale of fantasticgrotesque. With a preliminary discussion on the grotesque and fantastic in relation to non-western... more
The present study offers a reading of "The Snake Stone," penned by Mahmũd Etemādzāde aka. Beh'Āzin (1915-2006), as a tale of fantasticgrotesque. With a preliminary discussion on the grotesque and fantastic in relation to non-western literature, the historical background and the interrelationship of the two modes are briefly sketched through. This is followed by a brief review of Beh'Āzin's writing style. The snake, as the main motif of the story, is then discussed as a grotesque motif, and snake stone is dealt with concerning common beliefs and superstitions in popular culture. In a combination of theory and discussion, the story is read through its elements of the grotesque and its fantastic aspects. The study is an analytical library-based research, in which the grotesque is both traced in the narrative mode of the text and in its use of language and certain rhetorical devices. The main aim of discussing "The Snake Stone" as a tale of the fantastic-grotesque is to highlight how this theoretical frame can help to shed light on the socio-cultural aspects of the work and how the link between the author's ideology and the narrative intricately reinforces the reading beyond the story world. Accordingly, the narrative depicts a miniature of a society where suppression, greed and superstition can be detrimental.
Research Interests:
This study is prompted by Jacques Derrida’s idea of “arche-violence” to highlight the necessity of dismantling the concepts that are taken for granted and regarded as established and immutable. The aim is to draw upon Derridean... more
This study is prompted by Jacques Derrida’s idea of “arche-violence” to highlight the necessity of dismantling the concepts that are taken for granted and regarded as established and immutable. The aim is to draw upon Derridean arche-violence and feminist discourses inspired by his ideas in order to explore the root causes of gender-based violence and to examine the ways in which linguistic structures of power solidify rape culture in Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women. Because of the abundant violence committed against women in early modern English society, arche-violence can be aptly discussed in the context of Jacobean drama to expose what stimulus in this period prompted rape representations and by extension, all rape depictions in cultural products. Regarding the popularity of stage productions in Jacobean England, the exploration of the cultural context in which rape narratives were written reveals the cultural understanding of the female gender in Women Beware Women and the ways in which arche-violence acts out to support the offensive representations of women.
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Ahmad Shāmlū (1925–2000), modern Persian poet, is among those creative writers who showcase their mastery of language in translation as well. Among his translated works, which encompass both verse and prose, his translation of Margot... more
Ahmad Shāmlū (1925–2000), modern Persian poet, is among those creative writers who showcase their mastery of language in translation as well. Among his translated works, which encompass both verse and prose, his translation of Margot Bickel’s Pflücke den Tag (1982) and Geh deinen Weg! (1989) is specifically noteworthy for tremendous success and high reception in the TL context, which is arguably beyond that of the original from a literary and critical perspective. As the analysis of sample poems from the two collections reveals, Shāmlū’s skilful rendition has actually produced poetry in the TL. Away from marginalizing the pivotal role of translation in cross-cultural literary exchanges, this study reflects on the critique of literature in translation and literary reception as prone to downplaying or magnifying the significance of SL text in TL critical and receptive evaluations. The paper initiates with an overview of the status of literary translation and its interface with comparative literature, and then briefly reviews two world-famous works of poetry translation and their reception in host cultures to set them as the background for the argument to be made about Shāmlū’s translation of Bickel’s works. Key words: Margot Bickel; literary reception; poetry in translation; Ahmad Shāmlū; world literature
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Translation of Four Poems from
A Fire for another Fire (1995) by Shahram Sheydayi
With Commentary
Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature, 2022
A Fire for another Fire (1995) by Shahram Sheydayi
With Commentary
Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature, 2022
Research Interests:
At first glance, heteronyms may be considered as imaginary names, a kind of poetic signature. However, unlike pseudonyms, heteronyms are names given to fully developed characters that, in spite of being imaginary , possess nearly all... more
At first glance, heteronyms may be considered as imaginary names, a kind of poetic signature. However, unlike pseudonyms, heteronyms are names given to fully developed characters that, in spite of being imaginary , possess nearly all human qualities such as physical features, biog-raphies, world views, writing styles, etc. – characters that, surprisingly enough, are capable of having views in sharp contrast to those of the author who has created them. Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), arguably one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century as well as one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language, is the writer credited with the development, naming and introduction of this concept into literature. However, considering the whole body of works produced by the Irish Nobel laureate W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), strong heteronymic qualities can also be discerned in a number of his works some of which produced about twenty years before Pessoa even started his career as a writer. Through a close examination of some of Yeats's poems and other works, especially his short stories and the prose masterpiece A Vision, the present paper aims at illuminating the origins of the concept under study, as well as presenting its readers with the reasons why certain characters in some of Yeats's works go beyond mere masks and personae and fulfil the criteria to be considered as heteronyms. In those days they were men of one idea, but now we are more nervous, more developed, more sensitive; men capable of two or three ideas at once… Modern men are broader-minded (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Idiot, 1868)
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Throughout its long history, the grotesque has been mostly been discussed for the various, even opposing, types of representation it has been depicted and traced through. As an aesthetic category of art and literature, it has constantly... more
Throughout its long history, the grotesque has been mostly been discussed for the various, even opposing, types of representation it has been depicted and traced through. As an aesthetic category of art and literature, it has constantly given rise to critical studies of both diverse and complementary nature about a mode which is very often taken to be incomprehensible, misunderstood, absurd, or appalling. While a considerable amount of misunderstanding is related to the definition of the mode, the inherent confusion has to do with different categories of the grotesque as well as overlaps with similar modes and genres. As such, the grotesque has been debated not only in relation to other modes and genres but also with regard its own varying types of representation. Reviewing some of the relevant works and key notions, I initially focus on the definition of the grotesque by reviewing major elements of the mode and then make a proposition regarding the categories of the grotesque. Sketching out earlier studies, I discuss the grotesque with regard to certain distinguishing features which help to categorise its varying types and situate it among neighbouring modes.
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The subject matter and imagery prevalent in Ian McEwan's early fiction are shockingly unpleasant and justifiably notorious for their portrayal of grotesqueries to the extent that their significance has been ignored or undermined compared... more
The subject matter and imagery prevalent in Ian McEwan's early fiction are shockingly unpleasant and justifiably notorious for their portrayal of grotesqueries to the extent that their significance has been ignored or undermined compared to his later more successful works. In the present study, we discuss these grotesque representations and their implications in a number of his short stories from the two collections of In Between the Sheets (1975) and First Love, Last Rites (1978). Our discussion of the grotesque body in the aforementioned stories relies on a synthesis of Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of grotesque realism and John R. Clark's view of the modern satiric grotesque, which involves grim laughter and degradation reinforced through scatological imagery. We thus argue that the loss of a communal and regenerative sense of human existence in the modern life style can explain the sadism, masochism, violence or fatality prevalent in contemporary fiction as exemplified in McEwan's short stories.
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Speculative fiction is able to foresee the changes of the environment and social strata via imitation of future society (Gough, 2003; Otto, 2012). With the same intention, Margaret Atwood makes use of an alternative natural medication,... more
Speculative fiction is able to foresee the changes of the environment and social strata via imitation of future society (Gough, 2003; Otto, 2012). With the same intention, Margaret Atwood makes use of an alternative natural medication, maggot therapy, as an important recuperative method to cure physical lesions and injuries in The Year of the Flood (2009). Historically, although once a common practice among healers of antiquity, maggot therapy has since been discarded from medical context, partly due to its carnivorous and parasitic nature. The present paper intends to discuss the implication of this kind of natural therapy and its sense of monstrosity and grotesqueness as presented in Atwood's novel. In using this therapy as motif, the novel illustrates the grotesque through exaggeration and gory and monstrous features, which lead not only the characters but also the readers to experience disorientation due to the unfamiliar state of savagery. With a focus on relevant theories of the grotesque, the study aims to highlight how the monstrosity inherent in maggot therapy renders the grotesque in this novel, that is, by juxtaposing savagery and culture and evoking repulsion and attraction.
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In his seminal work, Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida puts forward the notion of arche-violence. In Derrida’s view, the physical acts of violence all originate in a general, abstract violence which Derrida calls it the “first violence.”... more
In his seminal work, Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida puts forward the notion of arche-violence. In Derrida’s view, the physical acts of violence all originate in a general, abstract violence which Derrida calls it the “first violence.” He claims that violence, in all its forms and manifestations, begins with language. This originary violence is an indispensable part of language functions by bringing difference into play, which in turn constructs oppositional poles. These differences and oppositions by influencing all interpretive systems establish violence in society as we understand it. The aim of this paper is to draw on Derrida’s arche-violence and the feminist discourses being inspired by his theories in order to explore the root causes of violence and oppression against women. Accordingly, the main concern of the present study is that violence against women has its root in language and the culture originating from that, and investigating individual cases of violence from a psychological perspective actually hinder finding the proper solution to this individual and social issue.
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Magical realism, as a narrative mode or genre in adults’ literature, has been in vogue since its revivifying with the publication of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). However, the depiction of the genre in... more
Magical realism, as a narrative mode or genre in adults’ literature, has been in vogue since its revivifying with the publication of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). However, the depiction of the genre in children’s and juvenile literature is a new trend; the presence of its elements have been traced and proved feasibly applicable in the interpretation of recent children’s fiction such as David Almond’s Skelling (1998). In this regard, the main concern of the present article is to sift the characteristic features of magical realism within Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002) through the application of Wendy B. Faris’s theoretical framework of the genre therewith Tzvetan Todorov’s definition of the fantastic in order to introduce the novel as an exemplar of magical realism in the domain of children’s literature.
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This article examines Toni Morrison's Recitatif and Alice Walker's Everyday Use as post-colonial texts. Morrison's short story moves beyond the postcolonial aftermath to maintain pre-colonial cultural conventions. The discussion begins... more
This article examines Toni Morrison's Recitatif and Alice Walker's Everyday Use as post-colonial texts. Morrison's short story moves beyond the postcolonial aftermath to maintain pre-colonial cultural conventions. The discussion begins with how Recitatif is considered within the field of postcolonial studies, demonstrating such postcolonial concepts as diaspora, nativism and chromatism. The study also focuses on Alice Walker's short story Everyday Use, and discusses how various forms of Filiation/Affiliation and Synergy contribute to the conventions of pre-colonial culture. Everyday Use aims precisely at ethical propensity within colonial circumference. Thus, Walker self-consciously illustrates the level of its pre-colonial features, which expose the colonisation dispersal of identity.
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The grotesque is the territory where reality and fantasy are intrinsically interwoven. In Mervyn Peake’s short story, ‘Danse Macabre’, the weird play of crossing the boundaries between life and death is enhanced by objects (here, clothes)... more
The grotesque is the territory where reality and fantasy are intrinsically interwoven. In Mervyn Peake’s short story, ‘Danse Macabre’, the weird play of crossing the boundaries between life and death is enhanced by objects (here, clothes) developing a life of their own. The matter-of-fact tone of narration lulls the reader’s mounting anxiety, while maintaining a contradictory sense of repulsion and attraction as the story line proceeds. Objects taking on independent life and the fusion of organic and inorganic (characteristic motifs of the grotesque according to Kayser) are the two main elements in this tale, in which the clothes provide a most weird image of death.
"""Despite its apparent precision in meaning, realism as a once-held literary school of thought provokes controversies regarding its basic definition and the works attributed to it. This is particularly the case with the postmodern use of... more
"""Despite its apparent precision in meaning, realism as a once-held literary school of thought provokes controversies regarding its basic definition and the works attributed to it. This is particularly the case with the postmodern use of the term, most specifically in relation to fiction, with realism generally asserted as the traditional language of the genre. This paper is an attempt to discuss the implication and tenets of realism, its progress and changes, in selected works of post-war British fiction. Accordingly, Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, and Ian McEwan’s Atonement are dealt with to trace realism within their respective modes of new realism, fantastic-grotesque and postmodern metafiction. Having survived the early twentieth century allure of modernism, realism has gradually evolved into a new identity capable of emerging in and mingling with new modes prevalent in postmodern fiction. Owing to the spirit of the time immediately following the Second World War and the particularities of different authors, the postmodern realism has gone beyond a mere portrayal of the objective world and is in demand of a refreshed understanding of the new outlooks contemporary realism has the potentiality to offer."""
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" Themes of sexuality, particularly in excessive and extraordinary forms, can readily merge into the grotesque to ameliorate their depiction and thematic impact. Ian McEwan’s early fiction best exemplifies such inclinations. The... more
" Themes of sexuality, particularly in excessive and extraordinary forms, can readily merge into the grotesque to ameliorate their depiction and thematic impact. Ian McEwan’s early fiction best exemplifies such inclinations. The psychologically violent and excessive world of McEwan’s early fiction is basically conceived in the milieu of sex and through grotesque representations. In this relation, the present work selectively focuses on “Solid Geometry” from First Love, last Rites (1975) and “Reflections of a kept Ape” and “Dead as they Come” from In between the Sheets (1978) to illustrate the implication and range of the grotesque in McEwan’s short fiction. The selected stories are discussed for their portrayal of the grotesque, as represented through transgressive partnership and deviant sexuality. The portrayal of sexuality in McEwan’s early short fiction offers a variety of the grotesque types of narrative mingling the mode both with the fantastic and the caricature."
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This paper sketches out a brief discussion of comparative literature, making references to a number of prominent comparatists in different periods of the evolution of the field. The discussion mainly falls into two sections dealing with... more
This paper sketches out a brief discussion of comparative literature, making references to a number of prominent comparatists in different periods of the evolution of the field. The discussion mainly falls into two sections dealing with the history and basic tenets of comparative literature. The various trends of comparative studies are aimed at a condensed survey in three successive phases dominated by French school, American school, and the new voices since the last two decades of the 20th century advocating cultural, postcolonial, and translation studies. Surviving through various literary periods of diverse social and aesthetic context, comparative literature has proved its viability as a discipline capable of framing a vast range of literary studies and critical analyses.
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This study is prompted by Jacques Derrida’s idea of “arche-violence” to highlight the necessity of dismantling the concepts that are taken for granted and regarded as established and immutable. The aim is to draw upon Derridean... more
This study is prompted by Jacques Derrida’s idea of “arche-violence” to highlight the necessity of dismantling the concepts that are taken for granted and regarded as established and immutable. The aim is to draw upon Derridean arche-violence and feminist discourses inspired by his ideas in order to explore the root causes of gender-based violence and to examine the ways in which linguistic structures of power solidify rape culture in Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women. Because of the abundant violence committed against women in early modern English society, arche-violence can be aptly discussed in the context of Jacobean drama to expose what stimulus in this period prompted rape representations and by extension, all rape depictions in cultural products. Regarding the popularity of stage productions in Jacobean England, the exploration of the cultural context in which rape narratives were written reveals the cultural understanding of the female gender in Women Beware Women and the ways in which arche-violence acts out to support the offensive representations of women.
Research Interests:
در میان مطالعات موجود در زمینه گروتسک، تعداد آثار نظری متمرکز بر این مقوله ادبی و هنری که به زبان فارسی تالیف یا ترجمه شده باشند، بسیار اندک است. در ترجمه کتاب حاضر که از مجموعه اصطلاحات ادبیِ انتشارات روتلج (2013) است، دو نکته مورد توجه... more
در میان مطالعات موجود در زمینه گروتسک، تعداد آثار نظری متمرکز بر این مقوله ادبی و هنری که به زبان فارسی تالیف یا ترجمه شده باشند، بسیار اندک است. در ترجمه کتاب حاضر که از مجموعه اصطلاحات ادبیِ انتشارات روتلج (2013) است، دو نکته مورد توجه بوده اند. از لحاظ زمانی، موخر بودن این کتاب به طبع حائز اهمیت است. همچنین، تا حدی مشابه با گروتسک (1972) اثر فیلیپ تامسن، این اثر از جنبه محتوایی به بررسی مشخصه های اصلی گروتسک همراه با مروری اجمالی بر نظریات موجود می پردازد. اهمیت چنین مطالعاتی مفید بودن آنها هم برای افرادی است که در این زمینه دارای دانش و تخصص هستند و هم افرادی که در پی آشنایی اولیه با مفاهیم مربوط به گروتسک هستند. کتاب شامل نه فصل و یک بخش پایانی است. پس از معرفی چند مشخصه اصلی و پرداختن به ریشه واژگانی این سبک در فصل اول، برخی نظریه پردازیها در زمینه گروتسک به طور اجمالی در فصل دوم مطرح می شوند. در فصول بعدی، دیگر ویژگیهای گروتسک مورد بحث قرار می گیرند که با نقد مختصری از نمونه آثار مرتبط با گروتسک همراه هستند. در فصلهای هشتم و نهم، نمود گروتسک در دو حوزه مطالعات تراجنسی (کوئیر) و پسااستعماری در نمونه آثار ادبی و هنری مربوطه بررسی می شود. در بخش پایانی جایگاه گروتسک در دنیای امروزی با توجه به پدیده جهانی شدن مطرح می گردد.
Research Interests:
کتاب حاضر، درآمدی بر نقد ادبی در قرن بیست و یکم، مجموعه ای از مقالات است که به معرفی، بررسی و نقد اجمالی برخی نظریات و رویکردهای نقد ادبی در سرآغاز قرن جدید می پردازد. این مجموعه دربرگیرنده چهارده فصل است که در چهار بخش کلی تر دسته بندی... more
کتاب حاضر، درآمدی بر نقد ادبی در قرن بیست و یکم، مجموعه ای از مقالات است که به معرفی، بررسی و نقد اجمالی برخی نظریات و رویکردهای نقد ادبی در سرآغاز قرن جدید می پردازد. این مجموعه دربرگیرنده چهارده فصل است که در چهار بخش کلی تر دسته بندی شده اند. آن چه این کتاب را از حیث محتوی نسبت به بسیاری از کتابهای تدوین شده پیشین در زمینه نظریات و رویکردهای نقد ادبی غرب متمایز میسازد، گذر از دغدغه های کلی گرایانه ای است که نظریات نقد ادبی را تا حد زیادی در دام سیر تحولی آن در قرن بیستم محدود نگاه داشته اند. بدین شکل که بیشتر کتابهای تدوین شده در زمینه نظریه های نقد ادبی حتی تا دهه حاضر ماهیتی درزمانی دارند و بیشتر به مرور تاریخچه نقد ادبی در قرن بیستم میپردازند
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