The Immigrant Experience in V.S. Naipaul\u27s The Enigma of Arrival and Z. Smith\u27s White Teeth: An Exploration of Homi Bhabha\u27s Postcolonial Theory

V.S. Naipaul and Z. Smith, prominent postcolonial authors, reflect the condition of the immigrants suffering from cultural shock, hybridity, fragmentation and mimicry in the postcolonial Western societies in their novels, The Enigma of Arrival and White Teeth. The former portrays the desperate condition of an author doing his best to create his work in the post‐war West, in London and New York, trying to overcome his hybridity and adaptation problems due to his cultural background, and the latter sheds light on the cultural distress of two families from Bangladesh, immigrating to London, by stressing the conflicts between the Westerners and the Easterners and between the first and the second generations of immigrants. Thus, these two novels highlight the immigrant experience illustrating the impact of power relations between the former colonized and the former colonizer upon their relationship in the postcolonial era. In this study, the problems of immigrants in the post‐war West in these novels will be analysed in the light of Homi Bhabha\u27s postcolonial theory, which puts forward such concepts as hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence, cultural differentiation and otherness. In this regard, Bhabha\u27s theory will be adapted into these novels to identify cultural problems of immigrants in these works

The Change in the Reflection of Gender Roles from Proto-Science Fiction to Science Fiction with the Rise of Feminism: Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World and Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars

Before the rise of feminism, women were oppressed in the field of literature, particularly in science fiction. Despite this prejudice, Margaret Cavendish played a very important role in producing proto-science fiction with her utopian fiction, A Description of a New World Called the Blazing World, though gender problem can still be observed in the work. After the rise of feminism, with Mary Robinette Kowal’s science fiction, The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel, female characters, who are more active in science and technology, are depicted, even if these women still struggle with patriarchal values in a different context. Therefore, the aim of this article is to compare and contrast The Blazing World and The Calculating Stars by discussing the ways these two female writers try to achieve destroying the gender-based stereotypical roles in the field of science and technology. Consequently, what will be stressed is the change in the portrayal of gender roles within the transition period from proto-science fiction to science fiction, therefore it will be emphasized that proto-science fiction written before the feminist movement cannot overcome gender inequality in science and technology, whereas science fiction produced after feminism can break the gender-based barriers in these fields

Gender and Detective Literature: The Role of Miss Marple in Agatha Christie’s The Body in the Library

Considering the rise of detective fiction in the twentieth century, it is clear that Agatha Christie plays a very important role in the development of detective novels. As a female author, she achieves producing distinctive works and creating remarkable sleuths. Although her works reflect the conventional characteristics of detective narrative, what makes her fiction distinguished is the female sleuth Miss Marple, who is an unconventional character in terms of her position in Christie’s writings. Particularly, in her The Body in the Library, the character, Miss Marple, comes to the fore as an amateur investigator, who surpasses the power of patriarchal society. Her appearance among the male sleuths changes the route of the investigation when she accomplishes attaining the truth about the murder and revealing the mystery of crimes. In this sense, in a male-dominated setting, Miss Marple establishes order and morality in society and proves that women are as intelligent, reasonable and challenging as men. In this paper, Christie’s contribution to detective fiction by means of her character, Miss Marple in The Body in the Library, will be highlighted. Moreover, the stratagems Miss Marple employs to solve the uncertainties about the criminal case will be explored so as to emphasize the conflict between women and men not only in society but also in the field of criminal investigations, therefore together with her talents in the field of criminal cases, her struggles with the patriarchal values will also be discussed in this study. Thus, in this paper, Miss Marple’s efforts to enlighten the murder, her overcoming the prejudice against women and her prevailing over male-domination will be analyzed.

The postmodern reflections of modern theories : the role of the reader in the reader response literary theory

From the second half of the 20th century, it can be expressed that a paradigmatic change took place in the field of literature. This change came into view when the new role of the reader was discovered and when a new definition was put forward about the reader, who was generally ignored by the literary theorists and critics until that time but in fact who has played the most important role in literature from the very beginning. The reader, who had a passive status in front of the author and the literary work s/he produced, has gradually acquired an active position since the ircumstances of the period were appropriate. From 1970s, a vast number of new perspectives and philosophical understandings dealing with the readers new role came to the fore. Each of these perspectives, particularly those emerging in Germany, America and France, under the effect of the philosophical traditions leading them to emerge, introduced a different reader model. In this study, three of these different reader models have been analysed in order to discuss how they describe and define the concept related to the reader. By dwelling on these three different perspectives, what is questioned in this article is whether or not these understandings have contributed to the "postmodern reader" model which has been employed to define the position of the reader, who has a significant role nowadays in identifying the literary texts.20. yüzyılın ikinci yarısından itibaren edebiyat alanında önemli bir paradigma değişikliğinin gerçekleştiği söylenebilir. Bu değişiklik genel olarak edebiyat kuram ve eleştirilerinin o güne kadar ihmal ettiği ancak en başından itibaren edebiyatın en önemli parçası olan okurun yeni bir yönüyle keşfedilmesi ve yeniden tanımlanmasıyla gerçekleşir. Yazar ve onun yazdığı metin karşısında o güne kadar edilgen bir rol biçilen okur, dönemin koşullarının da elverişli olması nedeniyle aşama aşama etken bir role büründürülür. 1970'li yıllardan itibaren ise okurun bu özelliğini ele alan bir dizi yeni bakış açısı ve yaklaşım ortaya çıkar. Özellikle Almanya, Amerika ve Fransa'da ortaya çıkan bu yaklaşımların her birisi beslendikleri felsefi geleneğin etkisi altında farklı bir okur modeli geliştirirler. Bu çalışmada bu farklı okur modellerinden üç tanesi incelenerek okur kavramı ile neyi veya kimi kastettikleri üzerinde durulmuştur. Bu üç farklı yaklaşımın ele alınmasındaki amaç ise, günümüzde edebiyat metnini anlamlandırmada etken bir rol üstlenen okuru tanımlamak üzere kullanılan "postmodern okur" modeline katkılarının olupc olmadığını sorgulamaktır