Suchergebnisse

Anushiravani's essay is a historical and critical survey of comparative literature in Iran that discusses its present challenges and potentialities for development in the context of new directions in the field. It is divided into three parts; the first examines the origins of comparative literature in Iran. The second deals with the present state of comparative literature programs and journals at Iranian universities and academic centers. This section investigates the main challenges facing this discipline in Iran. The last part speculates on the future trends and directions of comparative literature in Iran in the light of younger scholars' and graduate students' interest in interdisciplinary studies, translation, and world literature.

This article was a study of different but synchronized discourses mirrored in Tennessee Williams's Hollywood adaptations in the 50s. It discussed the effect of artistic agencies of censorship on the hows and whys of Willaims's adaptations. Most notably, PCA and HUAC were in charge of cultural and political regulations that no Hollywood film was immune from. Until the early 60, HUAC and PCA imposed religious values to supplant Communism, happy ending to replace the intellectual fad of pessimism and strict dressing code to restore the innocence of the Freud-conscious moviegoers. However, these agencies were not omnipotent. The voice of those discourses that the agencies were fighting against were heard in Hollywood. Hollywood achieved the subversion with the help of William's controversial plots albeit tamed by some reinforcing discourses of optimism and diluted religious values.

This essay investigates the dynamics that led to the literary reception of Ernest Hemingway before the Islamic Revolution in Iran. This article deploys reception studies as a branch of Comparative Literature with a focus upon conceptions of Siegbert Salomon Prawer and the practical method of George Asselineau to unearth the ideological, political, and historical milieu that embraced Hemingway's literary fortune in Iran. This investigation, unprecedented in the study of Iranian literature, discusses how and why Hemingway was initially received in Iran. As such, the inception of literary fortune of Ernest Hemingway in Iran is examined by the contextual features, Persian literary taste, and the translator's incentives that paved the way for this reception. This article also uncovers the reasons for the delay in the literary reception of Hemingway in Iran and discussed why some of Hemingway's oeuvres enjoyed recognition while others were neglected by the Iranian readership.

Multitudes of intermedial Shakespearean adaptations have captured Iranian theatrical stage, cinema or radio as the Bard's texts are frequently modernized, transfigured and indigenized especially since 1975. Hamlet works well in the mechanisms of temporality, spatiality, power, control and sexuality, socio-political discourses, economic upheaval, female self and gender struggles even in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Hence, Iranian directors such as Varuzh Karim-Masihi and Arash Dadgar as well as the British director Gregory Doran have re-interpreted this text based on new ideological grounds in which the characters are at times similar or different. In this article, the transformation and characterization of major characters, especially female ones such as Gertrud/Mah-Tal'at and Ophelia/Mahtab, are analyzed based on Hutcheon's Adaptation Theory and Foucault's surveillance to see how they are represented in an Asian society whose Islamic ideology necessitates a unique transcultural, transhistorical rendition. The comparative study of these works reveals that since Shakespeare's era, women's social representations have gone under great changes although the governments' surveillance has largely increased.

Regarded as one of the twentieth century's most eminent authors, Saul Bellow (1915 – 2005) has had a huge influence on other artists. His works address the disordering nature of modern civilization, and the ability of humans to find their way in this disorder and achieve greatness and/or awareness. His sixth novel, Herzog (1964), has been regarded as a classic by many critics. The novel centers on a middle-aged college professor who is entangled in a traumatic situation and undergoes a severe identity crisis. The Iranian film Hamoun (1989) is a free adaptation of this novel. Its director, Dariyush Mehrjoui (1940-) is a well-known Iranian filmmaker who has been regarded as a master of adaptation in Iran. In this film Mehrjoui tries to portray an Iranian intellectual in a situation similar to that of Herzog, rendering through this character the complex socio-political and cultural situation of post-revolutionary Iran. The present paper focuses on the ways Mehrjui manages to achieve this aim, with the objective of offering insight into the political and cultural atmosphere of the modernized and post-revolutionary Iran.

Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby has been adapted many times by different directors. However, the two prominent adaptations standing out throughout history are Jay Clayton's 1974 adaptation as the most sincere rendering of the book, and the recently adapted movie by the Broadway director, Baz Luhrmann. The latter adaptation is important in that it has been accomplished in the age of technology, in 3D format, and at the time of the new readings, i.e. cultural or new historical readings, of the novel. This paper is an endeavor to analyze the movie through John Fiske's theory on media studies. Also, an effort has been made to see whether in this new adaptation, the idea of the new studies of the novel have been shown by the director, or else the movie is a mere representation of struggle for money discussed by the traditional Marxist scholars, metaphorically playing the old tunes.

This paper sets out to investigate Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, a liminal work written in-between cultures, in the light of Homi Bhabha's concept of the third space as a site of transformation and transvaluation. It is argued that Tan's novel is implicated in unexpected forms of resistance as a result of its placement in the borderland of cultures. Thus, exploring the discursive fissures and ideological ruptures inscribed in the novel, the authors seek to bring to fore how the very mainstream accounts of Chinese culture and orientalist archive of knowledge in which the work is embedded are contested in the third-space enounters between subjects of different cultures. Orientalism, Western feminism, American Dream, and multiculturalism are some of the major discourses whose truthfulness and serenity are shown to be precarious and open to questioning, hence the recuperation of the subaltern's voice through this contrapuntal reading.

Coleridge's radical and colonial interests can be explored in his 1790 poems as sites of power and resistance. As a product of the complex discursive web of the 18th century, the Orientalist Coleridge could not act out of such historical forces as colonialism that had gone into shaping him and his poetry. Although he attacked European corruption and desired a revolutionary figure such as Mahomet to make a return to Abyssinia as home to true Christianity, Coleridge perpetuated the prejudice of Christianity's superiority over Islam. Disillusioned by the French Revolution, Coleridge created Mahomet to replace Napoleon to pave the way to Abyssinia where true Christianity began. This study is an attempt to show that Coleridge's radical interpretation of Mahomet, and desire for the Abyssinian maid and a Pantisocratic setting are all ideologically-shaped discursive practices within the context of 18th century colonialism. With such political elements as colonization in mind, a better historically-engaged understanding of Coleridge can be achieved.

From an Orientalist viewpoint, Coleridge and his poems were shaped by the discursive web of the 18th century culture, and he was not free from the worldliness of historical forces. However, it is not difficult to see resistance towards dominant ideologies in his poems. One example is Coleridge's sentiment towards the systematically-misrepresented Islam and its prophet. Coleridge's radical interpretation of Islam in the 1790s made him feel the need, with Southey, for a model of moral regeneration after observing European corruption and having lost his radical interest in the millennial politics of the French Revolution. The radical act of composing "Mahomet" signifies Coleridge's endeavor to change the distorted image of Mahomet and Islam that to him was the beginning of the Unitarian revolution and the symbol of the revolutionary France. However, he perpetuates the prejudice of Christianity's superiority over Islam as a deviation of the true religion introduced by Christ. Coleridge's approach is imaginative reconciliation of Christo-Islamic inspirations to offer his political thoughts and avoid identification with English Unitarianism.

Background The burden of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is rising globally, with substantial variation in levels and trends of disease in different countries and regions. Understanding these geographical differences is crucial for formulating effective strategies for preventing and treating IBD. We report the prevalence, mortality, and overall burden of IBD in 195 countries and territories between 1990 and 2017, based on data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017. Methods We modelled mortality due to IBD using a standard Cause of Death Ensemble model including data mainly from vital registrations. To estimate the non-fatal burden, we used data presented in primary studies, hospital discharges, and claims data, and used DisMod-MR 2.1, a Bayesian meta-regression tool, to ensure consistency between measures. Mortality, prevalence, years of life lost (YLLs) due to premature death, years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) were estimated. All of the estimates were reported as numbers and rates per 100 000 population, with 95% uncertainty intervals (UI). Findings In 2017, there were 6·8 million (95% UI 6·4–7·3) cases of IBD globally. The age-standardised prevalence rate increased from 79·5 (75·9–83·5) per 100 000 population in 1990 to 84·3 (79·2–89·9) per 100 000 population in 2017. The age-standardised death rate decreased from 0·61 (0·55–0·69) per 100 000 population in 1990 to 0·51 (0·42–0·54) per 100 000 population in 2017. At the GBD regional level, the highest age-standardised prevalence rate in 2017 occurred in high-income North America (422·0 [398·7–446·1] per 100 000) and the lowest age-standardised prevalence rates were observed in the Caribbean (6·7 [6·3–7·2] per 100 000 population). High Socio-demographic Index (SDI) locations had the highest age-standardised prevalence rate, while low SDI regions had the lowest age-standardised prevalence rate. At the national level, the USA had the highest age-standardised prevalence rate (464·5 [438·6–490·9] per 100 000 population), followed by the UK (449·6 [420·6–481·6] per 100 000). Vanuatu had the highest age-standardised death rate in 2017 (1·8 [0·8–3·2] per 100 000 population) and Singapore had the lowest (0·08 [0·06–0·14] per 100 000 population). The total YLDs attributed to IBD almost doubled over the study period, from 0·56 million (0·39–0·77) in 1990 to 1·02 million (0·71–1·38) in 2017. The age-standardised rate of DALYs decreased from 26·5 (21·0–33·0) per 100 000 population in 1990 to 23·2 (19·1–27·8) per 100 000 population in 2017. Interpretation The prevalence of IBD increased substantially in many regions from 1990 to 2017, which might pose a substantial social and economic burden on governments and health systems in the coming years. Our findings can be useful for policy makers developing strategies to tackle IBD, including the education of specialised personnel to address the burden of this complex disease.