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.
Historical novels are not only the legitimate progeny of a nation's becoming conscious of its own identity, they also contribute to fortify that nationalist discourse. In a sense, the very beginning of the historical novel is entwined with the emergence of a widespread consciousness about the idea of nation(-hood); nevertheless, studies of the historical novel (and its relation and contribution to national identity) have remained under-investigated. The abiding aim of the present study is thus to examine this relationship, to draw attention to historical and cultural dimensions of Englishness. The present paper examines the influence of national ideology on fictional historiography, and focuses on the ways some English novelists, during the Victorian era, have reflected upon their Englishness.Keywords: Englishness; the nation; history; the historical novel; the Victorian era.Representations of the past play a vital role in establishing images of identity-and indeed, identities of both place and people.-Andrew Higson, Film England (2010: 191) Since the rise of the English novel in the early 18 th century, an interest in history and the historical has been recognizable. It was partly due to the fact that before the emergence of the novel 'historiography' has been the most important prose genre. Yet, while a historian may make general statements about periods or characters to examine the nexus of past events and the processes of their development, the novelist will make particularized statements, re-imagining, in an inexhaustible manner, what it might be felt like living in the past, in another era. For example, the "I" that opens Daniel Defoe's classic Robinson Crusoe (1719)-set "in the year 1632, in the city of York"-particularizes the geographical and the historical reality of 17 th -century England:
The present article discusses how terrains of belonging are constructed and articulated textually through historical novels which bring the past into the present, and link the national identity of people to memories of their ancestors, to their nation’s glorious past. The rise of the historical novel in Iran was concomitant with Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which was hailed by many a critic and historian as a major time of sociopolitical awakening which contributed to protecting the cultural legacies of the past and keeping aglow the propitious light of belonging and nationhood. Historiography has been a fecund ground for Iranian fiction-writers in which to retrieve a sense of national identity. This article aims at showing how Persian historical novels foreground the symbiotic relationship between remembering and belonging, and open up texts to their national significances.
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