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Treating the Fiction of Forms: Metafiction in John Barth
Issue:
Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2014
Pages:
1-5
Received:
5 December 2013
Published:
10 January 2014
Abstract: The essay depicts John Barth´s sophisticated dealing with the fiction of forms. By referring to short stories from his 1968 collection Lost in the Funhouse, and especially to “Life-Story”, Barth´s approach of creating metafiction as response to supposedly exhausted literary topics is highlighted. Fiction, consisting of forms as equivalent of existence in being, and consisting of thoughts as equivalent of essence in being, cannot basically change until essence in being itself will change. As forms will only repeat again and again, Barth challenges the reader by having him witness the demanding process of creating a work of art. Varying the kuenstlerroman, he anticipates identity issues of subsequent decades as well as issues of being and art.
Abstract: The essay depicts John Barth´s sophisticated dealing with the fiction of forms. By referring to short stories from his 1968 collection Lost in the Funhouse, and especially to “Life-Story”, Barth´s approach of creating metafiction as response to supposedly exhausted literary topics is highlighted. Fiction, consisting of forms as equivalent of existe...
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Sexism or Gender Differentiation and Class Differentiation in George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man
Fatemeh Azizmohammadi,
Zohreh Tayari
Issue:
Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2014
Pages:
6-9
Received:
19 November 2013
Published:
30 January 2014
Abstract: Before surveying the gender differentiation and class discrimination in Arms and the Man, it will be useful to know something about the Victorian period in England, in which the play was written by George Bernard Shaw. In this period, people live in harsh condition and modernism arrived in England. Working classes tried to develop their social class and condition, but the outstanding idea of that time was: each person who was born in social class can’t change his or her class. There were many differences between high and low class of society. For example, the theater was only belonged to the educated people and common people were not allowed to go to the theater or a person from low class can’t marry to one from high class. Here George Bernard Shaw as an active member of Fabian society, destroys all of these convictions and insists on the equality of people’s income and right especially equality of man and woman in society. The aim of this paper is to study class and gender differentiation in George Bernard Shaw’s play, Arms and the man and find the disadvantages of these differences in society.
Abstract: Before surveying the gender differentiation and class discrimination in Arms and the Man, it will be useful to know something about the Victorian period in England, in which the play was written by George Bernard Shaw. In this period, people live in harsh condition and modernism arrived in England. Working classes tried to develop their social clas...
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Metatextuality of Transnational Marriages in Updike’s Terrorist
Riyad Abdurahman Manqoush,
Ruzy Suliza Hashim,
Noraini Md. Yusof
Issue:
Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2014
Pages:
10-15
Received:
9 January 2014
Published:
20 February 2014
Abstract: In this paper, we intend to analyse an American novel, John Updike’s Terrorist (2006), with the aim of examining its critical standpoint of the American women’ marriages to Muslim migrants. This essay explores the reasons which lead Updike to refuse this social hybridity and how that refusal disseminates biased attitude against the Muslim Americans in general. Having appropriated Gerard Genette’s theory of metatextuality to frame our analysis of the novel, we argue that metatextuality refers to the texts’ explicit or implicit critical treatment of one another. Our analysis of Updike’s metatextuality of the transnational marriages concludes that Updike is extremely biased against the Arabs and Muslims because his refusal of these marriages concentrated merely on American women who marry Arab and Muslim migrants. He develops dialogues to expose the Arab Americans as having a strong Islamic identity which, as he claims, provokes them to reject the US liberal life and oppose the US policy and history. In addition to that, the novel reveals that American transnational matrimonies to Arabs result in confused American identities that live in-between spaces; they are neither Americans nor Arabs and their loyalties lie with the religion and culture of their Muslim fathers, not of the American mothers. This suspicion is intended to expose the Arab and Muslim Americans as dangerous for the US security. It also uncovers the author’s ideology which stands against the Arabs and Muslims.
Abstract: In this paper, we intend to analyse an American novel, John Updike’s Terrorist (2006), with the aim of examining its critical standpoint of the American women’ marriages to Muslim migrants. This essay explores the reasons which lead Updike to refuse this social hybridity and how that refusal disseminates biased attitude against the Muslim Americans...
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History as Rhetoric, Fable, and Literary Genre
Alejandro Cheirif Wolosky
Issue:
Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2014
Pages:
16-23
Received:
11 December 2013
Published:
20 February 2014
Abstract: This article provides an insight into the notion of history as a literary genre. It argues that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the concept of “history” was mostly employed in its plural form: “the stories” and not “history” were the predominant form of the concept of history. These “stories” were related to the ancient Ciceronian rhetorical and moral tradition of history as Magistra Vitae (history as life's teacher) and were considered part of the so-called belles-lettres or “literature”.
Abstract: This article provides an insight into the notion of history as a literary genre. It argues that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the concept of “history” was mostly employed in its plural form: “the stories” and not “history” were the predominant form of the concept of history. These “stories” were related to the ancient Ciceronian rhetor...
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A Psychological Study of Margaret Drabble’s The Red Queen (2004)
Usha Rani Gupta,
Sharanpal Singh
Issue:
Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2014
Pages:
24-28
Received:
24 January 2014
Published:
20 February 2014
Abstract: This study is about the psychological problems of women in contemporary society as illustrated in Margaret Drabble’s selected novels. Judith Butler’s gender and performativity theory will help us to understand psychological problems of women in a better way. Moreover, the postulates of Butler’s gender performory help women to come out of their psychological problems. For this purpose, we have selected Drabble’s the Red Queen (2004). This study leads us to the conclusion that women are stressed and depressed because of performative norms that are assigned to them by culture and society.
Abstract: This study is about the psychological problems of women in contemporary society as illustrated in Margaret Drabble’s selected novels. Judith Butler’s gender and performativity theory will help us to understand psychological problems of women in a better way. Moreover, the postulates of Butler’s gender performory help women to come out of their psyc...
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