In ‘Degeneration’ (1892), Max Nordau included Émile Zola in his theory that fin-de-siècle artists were a danger to society. According to Nordau, the ‘false science’ in Zola’s Naturalist novels would erode social progress in their alleged preoccupation with disease, sexual deviancy and amorality. This article proposes that degeneration is, how…[Read more]

Haussmann’s re-building of Paris in the 1850s and ’60s had created an ordered city. However, the bourgeoisie used the new urban configurations as a weapon against the lower classes. This article describes the spaces of the underground and the overground: the underground is the metaphorical and literal rubbish heap for those in the lower parts of…[Read more]

A series of sketches written in 1924 during an ocean crossing from New York to Tilbury, “Passage to England” was published only in 1998 by the Thomas Wolfe Society and is hardly Wolfe’s most popular or most accomplished work. Nonetheless I always felt that Passage to England had something unique and idiosyncratic and that despite a certain a…[Read more]

This digital book is a companion to Of Sunken Islands and Pestilence: Restoring the Voice of Edward Taylor Fletcher to Nineteenth-Century Canadian Literature. It is intended as an aid to readers, in particular students and scholars, who wish to know more about Fletcher’s works. The ideas that drove Fletcher’s creative works are on display here,…[Read more]

In this article, I examine two recent memoirs of Zen students that speak openly about the aberrant behavior of their teachers. These memoirs are Natalie Goldberg’s The Great Failure (2004) and Shozan Jack Haubner’s Single White Monk (2017). Both of these authors consider the scandals surrounding their teachers as an opportunity for spiritual gro…[Read more]

This article explores the tradition of Bacha Posh in Afghan culture as depicted in Afghan-American Nadia Hashimiʼs debut novel The Pearl that Broke its Shell (2014). In this novel, Hashimi shows how Afghan girls are obliged to cross-dress and live dual lives as boys for several years to lay claim for their rights to education and freedom of…[Read more]

In The Night Watchman (2020), Louise Erdrich continues to blur the lines between history and fiction as she has done in several of her novels. Erdrich introduces the reader to several magical elements that appear to be entirely real: two ghosts, a dog that talks, and an unearthly powwow with Jesus as one of the dancers. The main objective of this…[Read more]

Analizamos el contexto e ideología de la película de ciencia ficción ‘El Origen del Planeta de los Simios’ (2011), con especial atención sobre el juego intertextual de precuelas y secuelas, y sobre las inquietudes ideológicas manifiestas en lo relativo a las relaciones raciales y al evolucionismo.…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Resumen comentado del artículo de Norman N. Holland “Unity Identity Text Self”, un clásico de la teoría de la recepción literaria desde el punto de vista psicoanalítico. He reescrito el título original en mi propio título de una manera que clarifique más las relaciones que busca establecer Holland entre estos cuatro término…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Nos comportamos en sociedad de maneras que potencien nuestra autoestima, eligiendo las estrategias adecuadas para ello. Algo en esta línea había argumentado Mark Twain en su sarcástico ensayo ‘What Is Man?’ —pero ahora los sarcasmos de Twain parece que tienen respaldo científico en la psicología evolucionista. Así comenta…[Read more]

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), the father of American free verse, and Nima Yushij (1897–1960), the father of Persian New Poetry, each played a central role in his respective poetic tradition. Whitman’s free verse and Yushij’s New Poetry are the results of translating the discourse of democracy to a literary discourse. In this way, there are multipl…[Read more]

Through the case of Emerson’s appropriation of Persian poetry this volume provides a thought-provoking example of how the literary founding father of a nation is cosmopolitan and receptive of foreign cultures in what might seem a purely “nationalistic” agenda. It will appeal to those in the field of Persian literature, comparative liter…[Read more]

A sharply critical response to Shelby Steele’s first book, The Content of Our Character.

Spanish abstract: La película ‘Contagio’ (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2011) pertenece al género ‘catástrofe – multiprotagonista’, aquí potenciado por varias circunstancias. La catástrofe es mundial y creíble, una epidemia de una gripe mortífera, como la Peste Negra, o como la Peste Escarlata de Jack London. Y la catástrofe se difunde por las relacione…[Read more]

First translated into Persian in 1949, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is among the most popular works of American fiction in Iran. Although the anti-US policy of the post-1979 political system has tried to erase the manifestations of the previous period’s American influence, Iranian interest in Huckleberry Finn has been inc…[Read more]

نوگرایی شعری در کشورهای مختلف با پذیرش والت ویتمن، پدر شعر آزاد امریکا همراه بوده‌است. روندی مشابه در شعر فارسی نیز مشاهده می‌شود. آشنایی فارسی‌زبانان با ویتمن به زمانی برمی‌گردد که شعر فارسی در آستانة تحول بود. نخست یوسف اعتصام‌الملک در سال ۱۳۰۱ بخش کوتاهی از شعر ویتمن را ترجمه و در مجلة بهار منتشر کرد. بعدها پروین اعتصامی در شعر «جولای خ…[Read more]