نشریه نقد زبان و ادبیات خارجی
سال هفدهم شماره 25 (پاییز و زمستان 1399)

The aim of this article is to inves tigate how one can apply literary approach s trategies to promote the "writing" skill of German s tudents at Iranian universities. Background s tudies: Writing is a skill that can be learned. In particular, writing technical texts for the university requires appropriate training and the use of professional methods and s trategies. Summarizing a literary text without using the methods and s trategies is considered to be rather impossible and these mus t definitely be acquired. Language and culture have a s trong and inseparable relationship. In addition, it goes without saying that communicative skills now also include intercultural skills. You can only learn and unders tand the foreign language correctly if you also unders tand the culture. Today, literature as a comprehensive cultural medium is assigned an important role in foreign language didactics for teaching and promoting the four skills (in the sense of reading, lis tening, speaking and writing).

This contribution showed how one can improve the writing skills of Iranian s tudents through the use of literary approach s trategies and at the same time introduce GFL teachers and professors at universities to new ways of teaching and treating the writing skills of Iranian s tudents. The present work therefore firs t explained the concept of the literary approach and its functions for promoting the skill "writing". Then the results of each sub-chapter were summarized in order to present a didactic concept based on the German short s tory "Das dicke Kind" by Marie Luise Kaschnitz for the course "Contents for advanced learners" offered at the university.

The results from this concept have shown that the literary approach contains many didactic s trategies to promote the skill "writing" and that they are therefore recommended for improving the writing skills of Iranian German s tudents. It should not be left unmentioned that the use of literary approach s trategies can not only make a major contribution to improving s tudents‘ writing skills, but also to promoting their literary knowledge as well as imparting and treating their intercultural skills. It is therefore recommended to keep an eye on these remarkable functions of the literary approach s trategies for teaching and promoting intercultural skills. Las t but not leas t, this work sees itself as a contribution to the promotion of writing skills not only for s tudents of German language and literature, but also for s tudents of other subjects with a similar focus.

Zadie Smith, as a writer intimately associated with London, attacks the false concept of purity and unity in multicultural societies. In The Autograph Man (2002), she depicts the obsessions of Alex Li-Tandem who is half-Jewish and half-Chinese living in the suburban heartland of Jewish London, Mountjoy. Alex is not a social person at the opening of the novel, and cannot relate to his Jewish background or people surrounding him. So, he s tarts collecting autographs to compensate for the lack he faces in life. A oneto- one relationship between the subject’s path from "marginalization" to "separation" and, "integration", reclaiming his identity and the role of the Other could be pursued in the novel. In other words, family, place of residence, friends, and religion are significant in the acculturation process that Alex goes through from childhood to adulthood. Contrary to Smith’s previous works, the novel emphasizes less on the multicultural issues centered on the land and more on religious identity.

Alongside the main publications of J. W. Berry, Paul Gilroy, and Emmanuel Levinas, the researcher considers several books and critical articles to analyze The Autograph Man (2002). One of the critics whose works is used directly to give depth to unders tanding the multicultural context of Britain is Tariq Modood. In Ethnic Minorities (1997), he inves tigates the role of religion and skin colour in the subjects’ unders tanding of themselves and calls religion an influential factor in shaping their identity. The other two works by Modood that are approached in this research are Multiculturalism (2013) and Ethnic Minority in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage (1997). The former praises difference as an inseparable element of a multicultural society and the latter is an attempt to criticize the multicultural society and it claims that culture has been reduced to a commodity. Paul Williams in Paul Gilroy (2013) scrutinizes the reasons Gilroy opposes ethnic absolutism to depict a closer relation between culture, race, and ethics. On the other hand, "Shakespeare’s Position in Levinas Philosophy" (2019) by Bigdeli and Royanian and "Atwood’s Pre and Pos t-Apocaliptan World: Manifes tation of the Levinasian Subject in the Face of the Other" (2017) by Monfared and Bezdoudeh both give references to the concept of time and the subject in Levinas’ philosophy and are used as secondary sources. The research has also utilized some sources that have directly discussed Zadie Smith’s works. Philip Tew is a scholar, who has had an influential role in interpreting Zadie Smith’s works and life. In Zadie Smith (2010), he opens his discussion by delineating a timetable sugges ting major events influencing Smith from 1960 to 2009. The book traces biographical influences on Smith’s works and highlights Smith’s ethnic minority background in shaping her view of multicultural London. It, then, provides a short overview of her firs t three novels. In another book, Reading Zadie Smith: The Firs t Decade and Beyond (2013) edited by Philip Tew, a collection of 12 essays by scholars, approaches Smith’s novels from various perspectives. Smith owes her reputation to White Teeth, her firs t book that is dealt with more sufficiently by critics comparing to The Autograph Man. In this s tudy, Philip Tew’s "Celebrity, Suburban Identity, and Transatlantic Epiphanies: Reconsidering Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man" and Tracey K. Parker’s ‘"I could have been Somebody’: The Articulation of Identity in Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man" from the collection have been taken into account. According to Marandi et al. in "Identity and Multiculturalism in The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith" (2013), Smith challenges multicultural discourse; however, the current s tudy demons trates the effects of multiculturalism on the acculturation process and its consequences on the subjects’ identity. Dave Gunning in "Ethnicity, Authenticity, and Empathy in the Realis t Novel and Its Alternatives" (2012) introduces Smith and three other writers as realis t novelis ts and discusses the unique s tyle of each one approaching realism in a multicultural society. Peter Childs and James Green in Aes thetics and Ethics in Twenty-firs t Century British Novels: Zadie Smith, Nadeem Aslan, Hari Kunzuru and David Mitchel (2013) discusses three novels of Smith namely The Autograph Man in which the characters are compared with those at White Teeth and discusses the extent society and American culture may influence Alex’s fantasy. Martina Paulová in "Zadie Smith: A New Talent of British Literature" (2007) compliments Smith for her talent in depicting multicultural London. In "Paving the Way from Multiculturalism to Interculturalism in Zadie Smith’s Novels" (2016) Cris tina Chifane and Liviu Augus tin Chifane portray the transition from a multicultural to an intercultural paradigm designed to reflect the changing landscape of modern society. It gives a detailed character analysis of Smith’s 4 novels from WT to NW. What is common among the characters is welcoming a cosmopolitan identity and rejecting pure identity in multicultural societies. Whereas the article focuses on the transition from multiculturalism to interculturalism the present s tudy represents the lack at multicultural London to trace the reason for major problems that hunts the selected characters due to their view of the culture and subjectivity in "totality" and not tolerating the face of the Other. Tracey L. Walters in Today’s Writers and Their Works: Zadie Smith (2014) claims that Smith in The Autograph Man more than focusing on racial issues highlights the religious identity in multicultural society. The s tudies portrayed pave the way to discuss the extent to which the Other is influential in the acculturation process of ethnic minorities in multicultural societies depicted by Smith in The Autograph Man.

This research employs an ethico-socio-cultural approach to delineate the role of the Other in the acculturation process of ethnic and religious minority subjects in multicultural London represented by Zadie Smith in The Autograph Man (2002). In this s tudy, J. W. Berry’s Acculturation process, Paul Gilroy’s cultural Marxis t reading of race and politics of ethnic minority settlement in multicultural London, have been considered under the light of the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to examine the way the subjects can reclaim their identity in a multicultural society. To follow the way the acculturation process works in the novel, the researcher regards meeting Kitty in New York City, in the second book, as a turning point in the life of Alex Li-Tandem. By putting Kitty in the place of alterity and appreciating her difference, Alex enters the realm of integration. So, Kitty enables Alex to live in the real, present, world. Whereas, in the firs t book, Alex-Li has chosen the "marginalization" process, moving to New York is the beginning of "separation" and meeting Kitty acts as the key to "integration". At this s tage, he can praise the Other’s difference and feels responsible towards Kitty rather than simply praising her as an idol. Once he can put Kitty in her place of alterity, he can proceed to the integration process. Acceptance of the Other leads to the subjects’ ability to enter into a relationship with the present. After getting back to London, Alex is able to recite Kaddish and accept differences among people surrounding him. This could be proof of his successful acculturation process.

By taking an ethico-socio-cultural approach, this s tudy delineates the role of the Other in the acculturation process of ethnic minorities and its consequent relation to reclaiming their identity. Family, place of residents, friends, and religion are all significant in the ethnic minority subjects’ contribution in the acculturation process. It could therefore be assumed that recognizing the Other’s difference and placing the Other in its alterity are the keys to a successful acculturation process in multicultural societies.

Chris toph Ransmayer’s novel The Las t World is a successful example of the creative reinterpretation of myths. The novel has a dynamic plot, mixes the his torical sources about the life of the Roman poet Ovid with borrowed motifs from Metamorphoses, and alternates between premodern and modern time levels and worlds. In myth and the his tory of civilization, the author observes the same des tructive forces and phenomena of decay that point to present conditions and future catas trophes. The present essay has examined the peculiar mixture of reception and appropriation of the old myths in Ransmayer’s The Las t World, as well as their creative reference to the concept of the his torical novel. Besides, the philosophical and social aspects of the work have been discussed to relevant theoretical debates. When examining the content-related and formal aspects of the Las t World, different narrative s trategies could be shown: While the intertextual play with known narrative materials, the variable recoding of mythical symbols and the mixing of various spatial and temporal levels can be unders tood as pos tmodern traits, this novel has different characteris tics characteris tic features that mark a closeness to modern works, especially when the novel in impressive pictures and s tories thematizes the increase in des tructive potentials in cultural his tory or subliminally criticizes the devas tating consequences of ins trumental reason in the present.

Although the Las t World brings out the irrational and the fantas tic and shows pos tmodern features, especially in the choice of fabrics and design of the figures, some narrative attitudes and narrative s trategies enable a modern reading of the novel. For this reason, the s tudy of the Las t World deals with theoretical debates that Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno had in relation to the decadence of reason in modern times and which were radically interpreted in pos tmodern thinking and thought through to the end by Jean-François Lyotard. Also, the author’s playful handling of known materials is analyzed and, based on Hans Blumenberg’s anthropological research, interpreted as "work on myth". S tate of research The Las t World was translated into Persian by Mahmmud Haddadi in 1939 but found no adequate echo in the Iranian research literature. The present s tudy refers to a selection of German-language research articles and reviews, for example a comprehensive interpretation by Thomas Epple with the title Chris toph Ransmayr. The Las t World (1992). Besides, Florian Grimm’s reflections are in Journey into the Pas t. Tendencies of the pos tmodern His torical Novel (2006) as well as some contributions from the anthology The Invention of the World has been included in the analyzes for the work of Chris toph Ransmayr (1997).

In the Las t World, Ransmayr simulates the juxtaposition of non-simultaneous elements and illus trates the interweaving of myth and logos with narrative techniques. Overall, it conveys a gloomy worldview and shows a world marked by chaos and disintegration, in which the search for meaning has become absurd. Although the characters he portrays waver between des tructive and creative forces, the characters and phenomena that mark a decadent orientation of civilization overgrow in the novel. The novel consis ts of 15 chapters that offer a repertoire of different motifs, characters, and views. The adapted mythical motifs and materials are charged with complex meanings and enable differentiated, both modern and pos tmodern readings and interpretations. In some representations, the figures s tand in a semi-mythical framework and operate unconsciously according to their blind ins tincts, and in other contexts, they are equipped with calculating reason. A man s teers towards calamity and accelerates with every s tep those apocalyptic processes of dissolution, which were announced as threatening chaos in mythical s tories and which have found an aes thetic interpretation in pos tmodern thinking.

The goal of this s tudy is to analyze through Drake’s model of the human side of organizational principles, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. The novel will be analyzed using Barthes’s literary codes which originate from Taoism and Zen philosophy as sources of creative thinking. Ishiguro novels foreground the behavioral and classical organizations, hence welcome a comprehensive s tudy between literature and social sciences. The role of humanis tic organizations in providing a better chance of growth both for the organization and its human compartments has exceeded the boundaries of social sciences and management, as behavioral approach of leading organizations has become a major development in honoring personal identity. Michael Drafke has determined the kind of proper interaction between decision-makers and subordinates in field researches. These theories of the human side of organizations are mos tly for behavioral management, a short coming in the literature have been addressed. The epis temology and ontology of the behavioral approach have been to the benefit of decision-makers and subordinates. In The Remains of the Day, the dominant organizational implications are classical. The core claim of this s tudy is that it informs a blending of behavioral and classical approaches to be implemented between decision-makers and subordinates who are unequal educationally and characteris tically as a pragmatic s trategy. This s tudy concludes that an appropriate blending of these two approaches can have pragmatic results to pave the way for implementing a full behavioral approach that is able to es tablish an equilibrium between humanity and organization.

Organizations have to be reformed in order to fulfil the mos t important requirements of humanity for the sake of empowerment of the human side of organizations. The gradual change from classical view of organizational decision making to behavioral cooperation for the same goal has been in this direction. Ishiguro’s novel is written in an expanded humanis tic tradition to demons trate a new approach towards Drafke’s organizational principles.

Rothfork in Confucianism in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled has considered "innovation as a byproduct of Confucianism and personal identity as a fleeting phenomenon that can be defined by social roles" (3). Watts considers Taoism as the generating force behind any innovative movement and regards Confucianism a dry and heavy school of thought. In the present novel these two philosophies of thought have found a place to interact with each other as Lord Darlington and S tevens as Confucian school followers and Miss Kenton and Mr. Farraday as Taois ts. Mohagheghe Neishabori and Ilkhani and Sokhanvar in Power Analysis from Foucault’s Viewpoint on the Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro has considered S tevens a normalized individual that los t his individuality under the pressure of external power. Miss. Kenton has been a resis ting individual based on Foucault’s categorization, but this resis tance has been in the context of dominant power. According to this s tudy Miss Kenton is Taois tic in her approach, however the dominant power of Confucian thought could not let her innovation glorify.

The theoretical s tructure which is used here is the human side of organization principles by Drafke and the analysis of the novel would be by Barthes’s literary codes to the recognition of the favorite managerial device that has been preferred. The winning of Darlington Hall by Mr. Farraday can be the symbol of behavioral organizational management’s triumph over classical one. S tevens’s neglecting in attending the deathbed of his father implies the disregard of a classical manager to the fate of one’s close relatives and one’s subordinates consequently.

Organizations whether behavioral or classical need to be reformed according to humanis tic requirements to the extent that the survival of the organization be not at s take. It seems due to proofs which are presented, a combination of the two managerial devices can be the bes t s trategy for handling organizations more humanis tically and a better fate for organizations and individuals can be achieved.

The purpose of this article is to examine the multiple s tructure of s torytelling in S toryteller (1981) by Leslie Marmon Silko (1946- ), an Indian American author using the ideas of Hayden White, Susan Sontag, and Roland Barthes, and to provide a his torical- artis tic reading concerning the role of images within the photographs which are intertwined with the culture, life and his tory of the people of Leguna Pueblo and Silko’s narratives. In other words, the s tructural and aes thetic relationship between photography, collective and individual memory, his tory and s torytelling is examined. Having used Lee Marmon’s photographs and traditional narratives of pas t Silko, similar to a his torian, interweaves what happened in the pas t into a narrative emplotment. In addition, according to White’s view that his tory is a kind of narrative whose closes t relation is with fiction, it can be pointed out that the interpretive patterns of his torians are a bridge between the two worlds of his tory and literature. The photographs in this work are visual-his torical documents that record a choherent s tructure of pas t experiences and events at a specific time and place, which like the his torical discourse and remnants enter the realm of time. Thus, from the perspective of modern his toriography, these photographs themselves become his torical events and are part of the process of decoding the his torical events of a nation. Silko’s narratives along with the art of photography and his toriography creates a kind of multiple narrative literature and discourse of literary his toriography.

Leslie Marmon Silko was born in New Mexico. She was the pioneer of literary movement, the renaissance of native Americans. She learnt the traditional s torytelling of her grandmother. She has brooded upon the identity of native Americans, the white oppression and the women’s marginality. Mos t of her books are described as living experience or as documenting particular and useful cultures for sociological analysis. Silko has illus trated the s truggle of native peoples in America to save all of the aspects of Native American life, as well as their unique culture. Through the interaction of s torytelling and photography, we can refer to a collection of s torytelling by Leslie Marmon Silko called S toryteller, which is a collection of his tory, narrative, culture, poetry and photographs of the people of Pueblo, and in which the his torian, narrator and photographer come together in a combination of narrative-visual space. S toryteller, has also concerned with s torytelling that is an integral part of Native American tradition.

Throughout the analysis of the text, photographs and narration, the article applies the theories of Hayden White concerning his toriography, Susan Sontag, and Roland Barthes regarding reading photography to show how the combination of his tory, s torytelling and photography in the single space of Silko’s s tories create a kind of literary his toriography. The focus is on the importance of photographs which are placed inside her text. So far as there are many memories and narratives inside each photograph, the process of reading the text turns into gazing at the photographs. The people and objects in the photographs call on the reader to relate these images to the narrative text; images that in turn allow him/her to re-read the pas t, the world around people, their his tory and their land. What has happened in the his tory of a nation never changes. But the ways they interpret it and the elements of his tory are cons tantly changing. Native American his tory hasbeen affected by such changes. Having considered such a point, Silko seeks to change the dominant discourse of his toriography about the Pueblo people, referring to what has been passed down to her from generation to generation, along with her father’s photographs. Unlike fiction, his torical works are made up of events that took place outside the author’s mind. The event depicted in a literary work may not be as recorded in his tory. The his torian is faced with an inconsis tent number of events that have already taken place, and from this he mus t choose the elements of the s tory he wants to narrate. He shapes his s tory by quoting some of these events and omitting other ones, while emphasizing some of the events. In other words, the his torian creates his s tory by gathering a series of his torical events together in the form of a narrative with a specific plot. In dealing with Silko’s text it becomes clear where narrators and his torians are left out of s torytelling, photography comes to their aid. Her text tells not only a s tory but also his tory. Thus, S toryteller could be considered as a means of obtaining and transmitting his torical truth in relation to Pueblo people.

In S toryteller, Silko similar to a his torian, chooses a combination of all different methods of his toriography. In a reciprocal interaction, she relates the photograph to the narrative and the narrative to the photographs. In other words, the s tructure of the photographs is interrelated to the s tructure of her narratives. Silko invites the reader to examine the photographs as remnants of the his tory of Pueblo people. She creates a discourse of his torical facts and s tory, a text-image combination, which in itself, as a literary his toriography, creates multi-layered meanings of image and text. Silko combines verbal and visual elements in a challenging way. The photographs in her text allow the narrator to replace the narrative with an image that silences the narrator in the process of remembering. In conclusion, Silko’s work is a cognitive tool in which narrative, his tory, and imagery are intertwined with memory and at the same time s torytelling. The common ground between Silko’s narratives in relation to the art of photography and his toriography is the narrative element that has created a kind of multiple narrative literature and a discourse of literary his toriography; a kind of his toriography that highlights the unique place of literature in exploring, preserving, and unders tanding the pas t.

English Homework, Achievement, and Motivation IntroductionIn many countries of the world, homework accounts for a considerable proportion of study time (Cooper, 1989; Cooper, Lindsay, Nye, & Greathouse, 1998; Xu, 2005). At the same time, the effectiveness of homework has been discussed a lot, and studies investigating the relationship between homework and achievement have produced mixed results. Most previous research on homework has focused on homework time and analyzed the relationship between homework and achievement (Cooper, Robinson, & Patall, 2006). However, according to Corno (1996), homework is a complex process affected by a variety of factors. Previous research fails to reflect the complexity of the variables involved in homework assignment and homework completion, and the methodological pitfalls of many studies make it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the strength of the homework achievement relationship (Trautwein, 2007). Background StudiesThe few empirical studies to date that have included homework variables indicate beneficial effects of  homework. For instance, in their comprehensive study Trautwein, Niggli, Schnyder, and Lu¨dtke (2009) asked teachers about their homework attitudes and behaviors. Overall, they found a relatively low emphasis on drill and practice tasks and a high emphasis on motivation. Cooper (1989) distinguished between homework containing same-day tasks and homework including elements of practice and preparation and found that cognitively more demanding homework assignments were much more favorable and beneficial.In another study, using structural equation modeling, Keith and Cool (1992) found that giving a combination of practice and project homework was positively associated with a higher motivation, which in turn was positively related to achievement. Method The present study examines the effect of different types of homework on learners' language achievement and motivation. Six types of homework have been introduced naming practice, preparation, extensive, guided discovery, real world, and project homework. In this study 3 groups of intermediate level students were chosen from ILI in Babolsar each group containing 17 adult female learners. The first group had only practice homework (the ILI workbook), the second group received preparation homework and the third group had to do extensive homework. The treatment took a whole term (20 sessions) and the ILI final exam scores in addition to an oral exam were used to measure the students' achievement. A questionnaire was also employed which consisted of close and open ended questions. Furthermore, 12 learners (4 learners of each group) participated in a semi-structured interview in Farsi at the end of the term.Conclusion / Discussion The results of the final and oral exam were analyzed using SPSS and the qualitative data of the questionnaire and the interview have been examined with N-VIVO (8).The 2nd and 3rd groups outperformed in both final and oral exams. The group with extensive homework outperformed the other two in oral exam. And the group with extensive homework had the highest level of motivation while preparation homework group was next.

Eric Landowski distinguishes two different and possible forms in searching for joy and happiness based on two different forms of taste and desire: ‘the longing to enjoy from’ and ‘the longing to be enjoyed from’. In regard to ‘the longing to be enjoyed from’ which is the main topic of discussion here, he proposes two different takes of ‘enjoy’.The first take defines subject’s sense of enjoyment built on a one-way relationship of possessing the other person or worldly element. The second one describes the sense of joy based on a reciprocal interaction between the subject and the world which Landowski calls ‘to like’.He also poses two different interactions on subject’s association to the world, which one is attached to the idea of ‘use’ and the other to ‘praxis’.The present paper tries to describe and explain Landowski’s train of thought on taste and desire system and analyze the key concepts of the field as well as proving that in Proust’s significant novel, In Search of Lost Time, the interaction between Marcel and Swann and the beloved is based on possessive desire and is founded on idea of ‘using’. On the other hand, their interactions with the worldly elements are grounded on affectionate intentions established by the praxis with the world, meaning the elements are not considered as objects but subjects or semi-subjects.

A psycho-cultural study of 9/11 attack and its pertinent trauma, reflected in Ian McEwan’s Saturday illuminates the manipulated structures of cognition and cultural identity and the way the unreliable narrators in this narrative are causing cognitive dissonance through their socio-culturally-made trauma resulted by the cognitive manipulation of the 9/11 event. The way the narrator and characters in the selected novel cope with the 9/11 attack displays the cleft Festinger refers to as the cognitive dissonance as a distasteful condition led by the awareness of inconsistencies between beliefs, attitudes, or actions. However, People inherently aspire to the consistency, so they are impelled to reduce the dissonance between what actually occurred and what has been manipulated. While through the narrations, the narrators symbolically act as history-tellers reflecting the 9/11 era, the reliability or unreliability of what they narrate should be socio-culturally investigated. Based on Festinger’s theory of ‘cognitive dissonance’ and Elaine Auyoung’s idea on ‘huge cognitive leaps’, the cognition of a person changes and adapts itself to sociocultural settings and events. So any narration is prone to subjectivity and subsequently not necessarily reliable.  Consequently what happens through the cognitive manipulation is meaning construction that makes narrations of cultural traumas unreliable. Thus, McEwan’s aesthetic representation of the 9/11 trauma makes the reader encounter an unreliable version of a cultural trauma, connoting the fact that the borderline between fact and traumatic fabrications is hard to distinguish due to cognitive manipulations.

The translation of Persian Literature started in the 16th century in Germany. Due to historical and social changes, new translations, corrections, and adaptations of such works were made. One of the most well-known Persian works that has been translated numerous times over the centuries are the Rubaiyat poems of Khayyam. This paper introduces varieus German translations of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat which includes translations from Persian into German and also indirect translations, mostly from English into German. Some examples of these translations according to Koller’s Formal Aesthetic Equivalence are given and reviewed. Also the analogy of interlingual comparison or “simple comparison” that is the comparison of the original text with its translation in the target language according to Reiss’ theory will be analized moreover, intralingual comparison or in other words “multi-comparison” in which various translations of a certain text are being compared will be discussed.