247 research outputs found
The Aesthetic Response: The Reader in Macbeth
This article seeks to explore the different strategies the Bard uses in order to
evoke sympathy in the reader for Macbeth who is so persistent in the path of evil. What
strategy does Shakespeare use in order to provoke such a deep emotional response from
his readers? By using paradoxes in the play, the Bard creates a world of illusion, fear and
wild imagination. The paradoxical world in Macbeth startles us into marvel and fear,
challenges our commonly held opinions, and reshapes our thought in the process (Platt
8). As the text involves the reader in the formation of illusion and the simultaneous
formation of the means whereby the illusion is punctured, âreading reflects the process
by which we gain experience. Once the reader is entangled, his own preconceptions are
continually overtaken so that the text becomes his present while his own ideas fade into
the past. As soon as it happens, he is open to the immediate experience of the textâ (Iser,
The Implied Reader 290). Mesmerised by Macbethâs powerful imagination and poetic
language, the reader engages in a dialogical interaction with the play and eventually
finds light in the murky world of the text. Regardless of Macbethâs diabolical world, the
reader ventures into it, shares it with him and ultimately wakes up from its dizzying
stupor. In reading Macbeth, the reader leaves behind the familiar world of his experience
in order to participate in the adventure the text offers him. The edifying effect of the
tragedy in the end is the reward the reader reaps after eventually waking up from the
nightmarish dream of the text
THE INFLUENCE OF HAFIZ ON WESTERN POETRY
This article examines the influence of the Persian mystic poet Hafi z on western poets. Interest in Hafiz started in England in the eighteenth century with the translations of Sir
William Jones. In the nineteenth century, the German translation of Baron von HammerPurgstall inspired Goethe to create his masterpiece Westöstliche Divan (West-Eastern Divan). The poetry of Hafiz evoked such passion in Goethe that he referred to him as âSaint Hafizâ and âCelestial Friendâ. Inspired by Westöstliche Divan, a number of German
poets including RĂŒckert and Platen composed volumes of poetry on the model of ghazal, the popular poetic form perfected by Hafi z in Persian literature. Prominent among the German thinkers influenced and fascinated by Hafiz was Friedrich Nietzsche who repeatedly mentioned him in his works. The influence of Hafiz stretched to America in
1838 when Ralph Waldo Emerson read Goetheâs West-Eastern Divan. In Hafiz, Emerson found a man who derived pleasure in the very elements which others found mean. Under the influence of Hafizâs Saki-nameh or the Book of Wine, he created his finest poem Bacchus which, according to Harold Bloom, set the terms for the dialectic of American poetry
THE CONTRADICTORY NATURE OF THE GHOST IN HAMLET
This article explores the contradictory nature of the ghost in Hamlet and shows how Shakespeare seeks to manipulate the readerâs response in Hamlet by using contradictions and ambiguities. The article also explores the ways in which the reader responds to these contradictions and reconstructs a palpable world in the impalpable world of the text. These contradictions compel the reader to participate in the composition of the text and make him keep changing his own approach to
the work with the result that the more he reads the play, the deeper he finds himself entrenched in contradictions. As he fails to grasp the logic of events, the reader relates his own world to the text instead of relating the events of the text to his world and recreates his own world. Therefore, he can easily detach himself from the text and let his imagination run loose as the play proves too vague for him to
comprehend. In reading Hamlet, the imagination runs wild and travels far beyond the text to an extent where the reader perceives things, which stand not within but utterly outside the text. Eventually, the reality achieved by the reader in the course of reading the play is only the reality which dwells in the innermost recesses of his
mind
Toward an Affective Problematics: A Deleuze-Guattarian Reading of Morality and Friendship in Toni Morrisonâs Sula
It might sound rather convincing to assume that we owe the pleasure of reading the novel
form to our elemental repository of physical perception, to our feelings. This would be
true only if mere feelings could add up to something more than just emotions, to some deep
understanding of the human. After all, a moment of epiphany, where we begin to realize
things that dramatically disturb our normal state of mind, is not just emotional, nor indeed a
simple moment. Despite its root in the corporeal, a mo(ve)ment of affective realization reaches
beyond the realm of the human and opens up the plane of virtual potentials. In this work, we
intend to map out the points and relations of affective singularity that pervade the narrative
of Toni Morrisonâs Sula (1973). Also, we will discuss how these mo(ve)ments of sensation give
form to Sulaâs and Nelâs experiences and contribute to an affective transformation in morality
and friendship
Focusing on Fundamentalism: The Triumph of Ambivalence in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Pynchonâs Against the Day: Bilocation, Duplication, and Differential Repetition
In Against the Day, Pynchon is obsessed with twoness, double worlds, as well as dual realities, and
like Deleuzeâs concept of repetition, these duplications and twinships are not merely repetition of the same, rather they allow for creativity, reinvention, and becoming. Pynchonâs duplication of fictional and spectral characters intends to critique the notion of identity as does Deleuzian concept of repetition. Not attached to the representational concept of identity as the recurrence of the same, Pynchonâs duplications decenter the transcendental concept in favor of a perpetual becoming and reproduces difference and singularity. Like Deleuze, Pynchon eschews an identity that is always guaranteed, and shows that the repetition of an object or a subject is not the recurrence of the original self-identical object or person. Moreover, Iceland spar, the mystifying calcite, with its doubling effect provides the reader with a view of a world beyond the ordinary, actual world, which is quite similar to what Pynchonâs novel does per se
Culture and Gender Representation in Iranian School Textbooks
This study examines the representations of male and female social
actors in selected Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbooks. It is grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis and uses van Leeuwenâs Social Actor Network Model to analyze social actor representations in the gendered discourses of compulsory heterosexuality. Findings from the analysis show that the representations endorse the discourse of compulsory heterosexuality which is an institutionalized form of social practice in Iran. Three male and three female students were interviewed to find out what they think about these representations. Their responses with regard to whether they think textbooks should also include representations of other forms of sexuality were non-committal and vague. To them LGBT people are the ââOtherââ practicing a form of sexuality that is not normal. Such exclusions could obscure the reality regarding the existence of such gender identities and represent the world in a particular manner
From Jyoti to Jasmine: Mukherjee's Quest for Hybrid Identity in Jasmine
Abstract: The present paper investigates the empowering force of
hybridity in female diasporant in Bharati Mukherjeeâs outstanding novel
Jasmine. The novel depicts Jasmineâs journey of transformation from a
passive, traditional girl at the mercy of fate in a village in India to an active,
modern, and most importantly cross-cultural hybrid woman in America. All
through the novel, her identity is transformed in line with shifts in her name
from Jyoti to Jasmine to Jazzy to Jane. Accordingly, she stands in-between two
cultures, shuttles between identities, welds opposing identities, enters the third
space and emerges as a hybrid. The present study in the light of Homi Bhabha's
insights seeks to demonstrate that immigrating, experiencing displacement and
in-betweenness, and being positioned in the third space pave the way for
Jasmineâs becoming a hybrid and being liberated. Besides, the study is to
depict by creating a hybrid character, Bharati Mukherjee, the author, alludes to
her own very hybridity
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