The present article studies Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s novel Yusef ’s Days and Nights and attempts to provide a different reading of the novel through the application of C. G. Jung’s theories on the collective unconscious and archetypes. From Jung’s perspective, the collective unconscious is the reservoir of psychic energy and the source of all human memories; also, the archetypes are universal mental structures the recognition of which becomes possible through the symbolic interpretation of dreams, fantasies, myths, and rituals. “Shadow” is one of the most important archetypes that, according to Jung, is the dark half of our being. This shadow is our alter-ego, and it is only when we accept it as a part of our being that we can achieve psychic equilibrium and complete the process of individuation. The process of individuation, and indeed of the conscious mind’s coming to terms with the ‘self,’ usually begins with suffering. Although this initial shock is not often recognized, it is a kind of summoning. However, Yusef (the protagonist of the novel) follows the path of denial and his projections of his fears and anxieties gradually make the distinction between illusion and reality difficult for him. Therefore, the confrontation with theshadow, although difficult and perhaps horrifying, is a necessary step on the road towards mental and psychical maturity.
Sam Shepard’s Cowboys #2 (1967) belongs to his first period of play writing. In this phase, his works exhibit experimental, remote, impossible narrative/fictional worlds that are overwhelmingly abstract, exhibiting “abrupt shifts of focus and tone” (Wetzsteon 1984, 4). Shepard’s unusual theatrical literary cartography is commensurate with his depiction of unnatural temporalities, in that, although the stage is bare, with almost no props, the postmodernist/metatheatrical conflated timelines and projected (impossible) places in the characters’ imagination mutually reflect and inflect each other. Employing Jan Alber’s reading strategies in his theorization of unnatural narratology and Barbara Piatti’s concept of projected places, this essay proposes a synthetic approach so as to naturalize the unnatural narratives and storyworlds in Shepard’s play.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has often been considered as a political novel and an attempt to account for the dire consequences of the failure of the French Revolution. However, contrary to the common vogue for identifying Frankenstein's monster with the negative dimensions of political and revolutionary movements, a careful reading of the novel reveals a deeper problem hidden behind the figure of the monster. This study is an attempt to read Frankenstein in the light of the politico-psychoanalytical ideas of Slavoj Žižek in an attempt to prove the fact that the monster is Mary Shelley's fantasy construction in order to conceal the ontological antagonism which marks the socio-symbolic order. By drawing on Žižek's concept of fantasy and its role in obfuscating the fundamental inconsistency of the Other, the research has tried to disentangle the world of the novel from the horrible presence of the monster, by bringing to light a more frightening horror against which the monster turns out to be a protective screen, namely, the horror of the Real.
The present article is an attempt to offer a fresh critical reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Frost at Midnight" based on the theoretical ideas of Jacques Lacan on desire and subjectivity. Coleridge's desire for a unified subjectivity lulls him into the dream of a bright future for his son, while the only ethical thing for him to do, from the psychoanalytical point of view, is to accept the split and, having traversed the fantasy and subjectified the cause of this split, to take responsibility for his unconscious mind. It is no wonder, then, that the poem begins and ends with the description of “frost’s secret ministry”; after all, the endless pursuit of desire qua the Other in search of a lost object which would complete the puzzle of one’s life is no pursuit at all; the act of moving in a circle of course means there is no actual movement or change in location.
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