The Serious Century and Hedayat's Grim Laughter

Perhaps inspired, more than anything else, by The Blind Owl's famous opening lines, the reception of the novel has so far been dominated by a dark view of the narrative. However, subtle inter-textual links and formal patterns in the narrative could help to read a radically subversive laughter in it which targets the novel's predecessors and readers equally and concurrently. This article engages the aesthetic qualities of the novel and attempts to account for and emphasize the literariness of the text in interpretation. By singling out a few inter-textual links and elaborating upon them in detail, the narrative's parodic laughter, its significance and the way it can change our appreciation of the novel are discussed.</jats:p

Translation historiography in the Modern World

Nearly all scholarly works about the encounter of Iran with European modernity emphasize the role of translation not only in introducing new literary forms into the Persian literary system, but also in becoming the main engine of change and modernization of the culture. This paper concerns itself with this constructivist narrative of the available historiographical discourse and the translational environment between 1851 and 1921 in Iran. After describing the field of translation in the period in question, I challenge the uncritical conception of translation as a positive force by, on the one hand, investigating hypothetical cultural and linguistic implications, and on the other hand, questioning the power of translation per se, as ascribed to it in the above mentioned historiographical discourse, in socio-cultural modernization. This will prioritize the individual and cultural translational effects over the supposed institutional ones.</jats:p

Introduction: Comparative Literature beyond Eurocentrism

This introductory essay discusses the Eurocentrism of Comparative Literature and argues that as an effect of the structures of the modern humanities, the study of non-European literatures has been mostly consigned to area studies and not literary studies departments at universities. Therefore, despite the efforts to overcome this condition of the field, including the rise of World Literature since the turn of the 21st century, scholarship has reproduced the status quo to the extent that World Literature also remains a largely Eurocentric project. We argue that revisionist efforts have so far operated within the European theoretical space and referred to a limited number of languages. The essays collected in the present issue address this problem and propose diverse solutions for overcoming the Eurocentrism of the discipline.</jats:p

JWL: From Persian to World Literature

status: publishe