https://fis.khu.ac.ir/ Fiction Literature and Interdisciplinary Studies en daily 1 Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0330 Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0330 https://fis.khu.ac.ir/article_3906.html The use of feminist approach has witnessed a significant rise in the contemporary works. Among the issues of the past, absence of women's voice and men's silence about the women is noting but disrespect for women. One of the theories of feminism is feminine writing and speech. According to Helene Cixous, in order for ecriture feminine to have its own characteristics masculine writing must be studied and, According to Jacques Derrida's binary oppositions, the attention must be turned on women rather men. This type of writing has existed in oral works and folktales of the past. The aim of this article is to show folktales as feminist texts and one of the results is the marginalization of men in many of these stories, because these stories are written from the perspective of women and are oriented to their benefit. This article deals with feminist theories such as language and writing or women's speech, referring to a few folktales, especially in Iran. https://fis.khu.ac.ir/article_3907.html Hossein Gholi Mosta'ān is the most prolific serial story/feuilleton writer in Irān. Most of Mosta'ān's stories have a love theme and a social perspective. These stories often have a central female character who is trapped in a burning love. Destiny takes its course. The society of Irān, which underwent extensive cultural changes during the Reza Shah period, is passing, causing Hossein Gholi Mosta'ān to worry. He considers these changes to be destructive for the society. His works try to provoke the audience, by showing the attraction of lust and the sinister destruction that follows, not to be deceived by the glamor of pseudo-modern society. Mosta'ān, in an empathetic stance with women, tries to save a society drowning in social corruption. But this sympathetic effort has gendered and sexualized language full of stereotypes. In this article, Mosta'ān's works will be analyzed from the perspective of egalitarian movements. In this article, concepts such as honor, fashionable society and women will be examined using library resources with a descriptive-analytical approach. The findings of the present study show that Mosta'ān's main concern is the fight against moral corruption and the prevalence of lust in society. Analyses reveal that the portrayal of women in Mosta'ān's works is limited to two types: heroines and deceived women. This duality reflects the author's stereotypical and patriarchal view of the "othering" of women. Overall, the findings of this research emphasize that Mosta'ān positions women in the subordinate role of the "Other," perceiving them merely as the "second sex" within a culture of honor. This approach fundamentally contradicts the theoretical foundations of feminism and the goals of egalitarian movements which advocate for the rejection of gender stereotypes and the achievement of full gender equality. https://fis.khu.ac.ir/article_3908.html This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to compare Albert Camus’s The Plague and Mahsa Mohebali’s Don’t Worry. The study posits that one of the points of convergence between these two narratives lies in their existentialist themes of crisis. Both texts are set against the backdrop of a critical situation: the events of Camus’s novel unfold in a "plague-stricken city," while those of Mohebali’s story take place in an "earthquake-stricken city." The plague and the earthquake carry symbolic dimensions, representing an existential crisis at the core of the city/world. As one of Camus’s characters remarks, everyone carries the plague within themselves, just as in Don’t Worry, the earthquake is not in the ground but in the minds of people. Both the plague and the earthquake symbolize the relationship between humanity and the world. According to Camus, the external world/city remains indifferent and silent to our meanings, rendering human efforts futile. Absurdity, in Camus’s view, is both a term for the fundamental state of a dying world and a name for the futility of human struggle to overcome this fundamental reality. The title Don’t Worry from the outset hints at an existential anxiety in the face of this indifference and resistance of the world. The contemporary individual no longer recognizes themselves in the city; human signs and meanings have been erased from its face. In Don’t Worry, reactions such as suicide, addiction, fleeing the city, and escapism point to this alienation between humans and the world, stemming from a kind of passive nihilism: the impossibility of decision-making. In the absence of moral heroes, Shadi (the protagonist) feels as though Jean Reno (a Hollywood actor) is watching her, as if she lives for those imaginary eyes. The characters in Don’t Worry have failed to break free from the myth of heroism and engage in struggle or resistance. Thus, while in Camus’s novel, the plague as a "shared fate" evokes a sense of solidarity, the characters in Mohebali’s story are trapped in an atomized and passive individuality: the simultaneous absence of self-creation and social solidarity. https://fis.khu.ac.ir/article_3909.html In his poem “The Fortress of Saqarim”, Nima Youshij — and likewise Ahmad Shamlu in his poems “The Message” and “The Crucified Man” — address, through a symbolic and allusive language, the relationship between the new generation and the generations that came before them in a narrative-poetic form. The Fortress of Saqarim reflects on the mistakes of the Constitutional Revolution and the Jangal Movement. Despite appearances and the seemingly personal tone of some sections, its underlying theme is social and historical. Speaking through three narrators, Nima revisits the past and identifies two main causes for the failure of the “fathers’” struggles: the treachery of companions and reliance on foreign powers. Ahmad Shamlu, too, in “The Message”, suggests that the narrator and his companions, who in their youth were indebted to their fathers, failed to truly continue and fulfill their path. In his poem “The Song of the One Who Departed and the One Who Remained”, the rebellious opposition between father and son turns into an inevitable reconciliation and belonging: father and son are, in essence, one and the same — two sides of a single coin, representing the human lineage that carries its bewilderment from one generation to the next. In “The Crucified Man”, Shamlu explores the theme of father and son through the story of Jesus Christ, offering a new interpretation of the Gospel that gives the story a philosophical dimension. In this poem, the “father” symbolizes dominant systems of thought and institutions of authority, while Christ embodies the individual self — crushed under the weight of those oppressive structures. https://fis.khu.ac.ir/article_11106.html The serial novel first emerged in the 19th century within the press of France and subsequently gained popularity in other countries. It appears that the rise of this genre in European countries as well as in the United States occurred under relatively similar conditions. However, considering the various differences between Iranian society and these communities, a comparative examination of the emergence of this genre in a historical context in Iran—a country often regarded as peripheral in the world of the novel—holds significant importance. This article first presents a concise overview of the state of serial novels in Western countries (including France, England, Russia, and the United States). Following this, through an archive-based study, we analyze the newspapers of Irān (Siri Jadid), Kooshesh, Shafaq-e Surkh, Eqdam, Setāreh-ye Irān , and Setāreh-ye Jahan (from Azar 1300 to Khordad 1320), categorizing all published novels by authorship, translation, and type. In addition to observing several key differences between the status of serial novels in Iran and the West, it was found that nearly all translated novels during our specified period in Iran were translated from French. This finding underscores the powerful influence of French serial novels on the emergence and popularity of Persian serial fiction. https://fis.khu.ac.ir/article_11107.html The most fundamental element of satire is the rule of non-normativity, which is also the basis of literature. However, non-normativity in literature has the aspect of transcending form and language, and in satire, the aspect of destroying behavioral customs and degrading conventional verbal routines. In addition, familiarity with de-familiarity in satire includes physical, behavioral, intellectual, and verbal movements, meaning it encompasses all actions of living beings, especially humans, while de-familiarity in poetry and literature often has a linguistic and sometimes mental aspect; meaning either unconventional forms of imagination are presented or the behavior with language finds a different procedure than communicative action. Although satire and humor have been one of the civil tools for criticizing and taking revenge on tyranny and oppression, which has been present as a central element in Persian fiction and poetry since the Constitutional period, the nature and extent of this Presence has been closely related to the political and cultural behaviors of governments. During the Reza Shah era, political repression also took over the cultural and satirical arena, causing a weak flow of non-political and artistic humor to continue. However, in the decade before the coup, with the establishment of a relatively free space, Persian humor once again became political, explicit, and mature. In the years after the coup, humor disappeared from the scope of official culture for a while, and when it appeared in the fifth decade of the fourteenth century with a cautious and half-hearted move, hidden, deep, and visual humor. And reflection replaced political and linguistic humor.