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This paper investigates how fictional dystopia is constructed and comprehended, relying upon the cognitive operations of categorization and positioning. It argues that characters develop out of tensions between self-aligned categories and others-aligned ones. The argument is carried out through a detailed analysis of Burns's fictional dystopia, Milkman (2018). It divides the novel along three story levels, each level examining how the narrator, as the presenting self, positions her presented self with respect to other characters, to herself, and to readers. The study also looks for the narrator's cognitive urges for portraying herself along the imposed categories and inflicted positions. It concludes that there is an intertwined relationship between categorization and positioning, taking categories as manifestation of one's position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though no method is the best and every educational situation invokes its unique requirements, getting provisional insights from suggestions is a justifiable policy. In the current paper, seeking to harmonize the postmethod-era "learner autonomy", the social interactive theory of Max Weber and Burner's "discovery learning", we sought to propose an educational guideline termed "EEDA" for managing EFL educational settings and put it into SWOT analysis. EEDA's axiomatic components were first formulated in alignment with theories in the sociology, and the psychology of teaching and learning. Next, through self-introspection in a SWOT analysis, some positive and negative aspects of the protocol were alleged. Accordingly, its emphasis on learners' metacognitive development skills, goal-orientation, bilateralism of accountability, and synergetic network of participation were considered as worthy features whereas devising some solid validating routes for further executability and adopting a germane pace of policy change were claimed to be some areas of potential threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though no method is the best and every educational situation invokes its unique requirements, getting provisional insights from suggestions is a justifiable policy. In the current paper, seeking to harmonize the post- method-era "learner autonomy", the social interactive theory of Max Weber and Burner's "discovery learning", we sought to propose an educational guideline termed "EEDA" for managing EFL educational settings and put it into SWOT analysis. EEDA's axiomatic components were first formulated in alignment with theories in the sociology, and the psychology of teaching and learning. Next, through self-introspection in a SWOT analysis, some positive and negative aspects of the protocol were alleged. Accordingly, its emphasis on learners' metacognitive development skills, goal-orientation, bilateralism of accountability, and synergetic network of participation were considered as worthy features whereas devising some solid validating routes for further executability and adopting a germane pace of policy change were claimed to be some areas of potential threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper approaches the question of identity in a posttraumatic condition through the lens of schema theory, with reference to Tom McCarthy's novel Remainder (2005). It examines how schema construction provides enough clues for understanding the protagonist's attempt to form his lost identity. The close analysis of the novel is done through Stockwell's (2002) definition of schema theory. Schema theory offers psychological and scientific proofs for the protagonist's behavior, revealing how his mental obsession and motivations for reenactments are directed by cultural forces. This obsessive behavior constantly changes from one state to another. The theory will make these constant changes in behavior trackable by examining the character's changing principles of his schemata, which, according to Stockwell (2002), first develops, then changes, and finally gets refreshed in a posttraumatic situation. Finally, the paper interprets the protagonist's crisis of identity as the modern man's passage from modernism toward postmodernism and the traumatic reaction to this transition. The paper also pinpoints the pros and cons of the schema approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares shadow projection in two postcolonial novels: Adiga's The white tiger (2008) and Ishiguro's The remains of the day (1989). It takes these autobiographies as narratives of shadow and investigates how each protagonist projects his shadow in his narrative of servitude. The study draws on Carl Jung's view of shadow and shadow projection and holds an analytic and comparative methodology. The analysis focuses on the influential forces that shape each protagonist's shadow, while the comparison reveals psychosocial differences between them. The study tracks a line of psychological continuation between the two novels and concludes with psychological similarities that link the protagonists cross-culturally. Finally, it is concluded the detection of shadow projection is beneficial to character analysis, but it falls short at addressing the rhetoriclinguistic aspects of each novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies "construal," a concept from Cognitive Grammar, to Alice Munro's short story "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage." Like (post)modernist stories, Munro's story has multiple plots and narrators and develops out of constant spatiotemporal shifts. Such features mark the story with narrative slippages, that is, smooth shifts and turns of perspective. The study examines the applicability of construal for literary interpretation. It provides a close reading of Munro's story in the light of cognitive construal, dividing the story based on its narrative slippages and investigating the perspective and construal of each scene. The analysis shows interplays between subjective and objective construals in each slippage. Also, the paper discusses the tensions between narrative points of view and construals and takes them as the limitations of the concept of construal when applied to a complex literary work. Cognitive Grammar does not address such tensions in complex narratives; it, therefore, needs to expand its potentials in this respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial positioning strategies and social actors representation have been introduced and discussed in visual and political texts. This paper offers an analysis of these strategies in a literary text, Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending. The main objectives of this study are (a) to disclose the way(s) the narrator-autobiographer positions himself and others in his life story as social actors, (b) to investigate whether these strategies can explain the involved social actors' motivations in their interactions, and (c) to pinpoint the pros and cons of this perspective for literary analysis. The paper uses social actors representation and spatial positioning theories provided by Langacker, Hart, van Leeuwen, and Chilton along with Jahn's notions of focalization. The analysis of Barnes's fictional autobiography pinpoints the precision spatial positioning strategies confer on literary focalization. Simultaneously, both social actors representation and spatial positioning strategies fail to attend to the gaps the narrative has due to its symbolic overtones or ambiguous repetitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study approaches experimental literary texts from a cognitive perspective. It investigates if a constructivist modeling of cognition can be applied to such texts, and contends that there is a two-way relation between memory and literary experimentations. It suggests a fresh look at literary experimentalism – from the perspective of the cognitive processes involved in challenging (text, language, and world) schemata to varying degrees. There exists a vast body of knowledge on experimental texts, but the study of cognitive processing of such texts has until now been a less studied area of cognitive research. This study defines two main types of experimental texts based on their closeness to or divergence from the schematic parameters of world, text, and language: proximal and distal. The study shows how distal experimentations are conventionalized over the course of time and call for re-innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article approaches Ashok Bhargava's poetry collection, Riding the tide (2017), from an ecocritical perspective. The paper traces the speaker's line of development from a desperate, sick person to a powerful entity. It argues this development occurs by way of nature. Being a cancer-ridden man, the speaker appears as a victim to the destruction man has done to nature, including his body. Delinking himself from society and its sweeping wave of technology, he aligns himself with nature, and finds not only comfort but also remedies to his weakened body in nature. This accentuates the role of nature in this collection. The paper reads the selected poems from Riding the tide in this line and investigates how the person charts and re-charts the territories of his environmental consciousness in addition to those of his body. It is shown how nature helps the speaker develop spiritually and change from a weak, impotent entity to an all powerful force in the universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes identity as a conceptual metaphor in the construction of which psychosocial force dynamics are at work. Identity is thus approached as a site of power struggle between the Agonist and Antagonists. Three works are selected which are both generically and geopolitically different: J M Coetzee's Foe (a novel), Richard Wright's "Big, Black, Good Man" (a short story), and Billy Marshall- Stoneking's "Passage" (a poem). The analytic and comparative methodology of the study allows investigation of the psychobehavioral (re)action between the Agonist and the Antagonist in the selected works. The type of Agonist's reactance behavior--namely, inertia, resistance, skepticism, and aggression--is examined and discussed in each work. The study contends that while Foe poses a narrative challenge, "Big, Black, Good Man" represents a physical challenge, and "Passage" brings the Agonist and the Antagonist in a mythic-historical challenge. The common reactance behavior between the Agonists of the three works is inertia. It is concluded that while in psychology, inertia is a state of helplessness, in a postcolonial context, it can signify the Agonist's resistance to the colonial's psychosocial forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of earth-consciousness is concerned with the problems of the threat of global nuclear war and environmental degradation. This theme is complementary to the theme of self-realisation as both of these are part of our two foundations, Dharma and Karma. The two fundamentals may be regarded as prerequisites for the attainment of a more environment consciousness world. This paper analyses the relation of Dharma and Karma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study gives a close reading of some of the selected poems of the living Indian poet, Anand. His collection of poems, The Living Splendour (2017), touches on different dimensions of a modern man's life, including personal and public lives. This study argues despite its apparent celebration of splendor, the collection is replete with concepts of confinement. The paper extracts these concepts to support the main argument of the paper. It goes by selection and reads the poems that conceptualize confinement in various aspects of life. The concepts show not only Anand is well aware of the restrictions of his context, but they also evince his inconsistencies. The fluctuations are symptoms of the (post)modern indeterminacy from which he has not remained immune. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper studies the concept of spirituality in Gandhi's selected poems entitled The rhyme of the mystic mariner (2017). The paper focuses on spiritual qualities and pragmatics as conceptualized in some of the poems. Spirituality is presented mostly in metaphors and personifications throughout the poems. The adopted methodology is both analytic and interpretive. Spirituality is treated on the three levels of trait, goal, and emotion. It blends Elkins' spiritual qualities with Beck's pragmatics of spirituality. The analysis of these concepts helps one detect a processual pattern. It is argued in addition to universality, phenomenology, mysterious energy, and compassion, Gandhi accentuates eternity (universal timelessness), oneness, love, and harmony. Love is the foremost spiritual emotion that accords one perspective, insight, and awareness. It ends in Zen or contemplation, the pragmatic act that Gandhi's poetry highlights in the spiritual process. The paper concludes for Gandhi the Ultimate truth is harmony, the Ultimate state is silence (peace), and the Ultimate act is contemplation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central discussion of this paper proceeds as a counterargument to Johansen's (2002) discursal view of literature. Our premise is that literature can be appraised rather as an autonomous composite of discourses not reducible to the idea of mimetic representation of a reality. In line with such a postulation, we duly present four main perspectives to counter granularity, mimeticity, linearity, and institutionalization of literature as advocated by Johansen. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's (1994) notion of the virtual, we further take the world of literature as a virtual macrocosm setting up a paradoxical relation with the actual world. This feature leads us to approach literature not as a discourse but as a metadiscourse. The discussion on the metadiscursivity of literature features it with interdiscursivity and intertextuality. The paper concludes that far from analogizing the actual world, the virtual metadiscourse of literature runs parallel to the real world in an attempt to otherwise it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thematic, stylistic, and rhetorical versatility of the Holy Qur'an has led to rich scholarship of Qur'anic studies. Approached as a scripture, this book has mostly been focused on thematically. Comparatively, studies on its rhetorical dimensions and their contribution to its various themes are less in number. The present study deals with both rhetoric and thematic aspects of this book and evinces they both complement one another. The methodology is a hybrid one which adopts and adapts El-Awa's textual analysis, Michel Cuypers' rhetoric study, and John Swales' move analysis. While the first two methods deal with the Qur'anic text, the third one has developed out of the study of scientific texts. This paper picks up the advantages of each method to account for thematic diversities in surah "Waqi'a". The argument of the study is that, far from being a disintegrated text, "Waqi'a" cherishes thematic unity which is realized by deploying rhetorical devices like symmetry and rhyme profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is an interdisciplinary study which brings together the scientific findings of modern physics with the postmodern philosophical concerns. This paper casts an interpretive light on the key issues of modern physics through the lenses provided by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Realism and the real are the focus of the paper. It is argued there are many affinities between the new concept of the real provided by the quantum mechanics and the real as defined by postmodern philosophers. The paper takes up a comparative and interpretative approach and analyzes the issue of the real in a parallel way between modern physics and philosophy. The main objective of the paper is to show how intimately the scientific and philosophical lenses are intertwined with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper focuses on a detailed analysis of the power of metaphor in Gandhi's collection of poems, The Enchanted Flute. Metaphor as the inherent dimension of language gains its functional role through the conceptual studies of language by Johnson and Lakoff. The present paper analyzes Gandhi's use of metaphor in his highly imagistic poetry collection. However, there is also an eye on the political significance of his metaphoric language in this seemingly romantic collection. It is argued the power of the poet's language arises out of the unsaid or untouched aspects in his metaphors. While the poet draws upon his conventional context to metaphorize his thoughts and emotions, he challenges them by taking them to their limits. This detailed analysis aims at unraveling such tensions and limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revolves around J. S. Anand's theory of biotext, theorized as the virtual Third Space which encompasses author, text, and context. It brings together the theoretical notions of Anand (India), Deleuze (France), and Bakhtin (Russia) on a comparative scale, hence a crosscultural phenomenon. It is argued that biotext is the meeting point between Bkahtin's dialogism and Deleuze's temporal synthesis. Bakhtin defines man in terms of language which is inherently dialogic; hence for him identity is defined in self-other relation. Deleuze bases self-other relation on temporal syntheses and presents it in a constant flux. What interlinks Bakhtin to Deleuze is Bakhtin's view that language is inevitably context-oriented; context, for Deleuze, is a synthetic process which happens in temporal scheme. A process of being thought together, synthesis is argued to be dialogic. Biotext is the Deleuzian virtual realm which crystallizes the dialogic relation between language and context, and is therefore synthetic. Any dialogism for Bakhtin is unavoidably ideological, hence politically partial. It is argued that unlike Bhabhalian Third Space which is dehistoricized and depoliticizing, Anand's biotext conforms, albeit temporarily, to an ideological stance, either of the text, of the author, or of the allegiance provoked by the reader/author's context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is an analytical scrutiny into the spiritual. The theoretical lens is Deleuze's concept of the virtual; the paper takes the spiritual as the virtual which is actualized through the processes of individuation and plane of consistency. On the plane of consistency, the virtual becomes actual, or individualized, based on degree of power and speed; hence asymmetrical relation. The paper comparatively analyzes the spiritual as poeticized by three major Indian poets at the two extremes of a century. The temporal gap is of significance here as it sharpens the points of contrast. Therefore, the paper starts with an analysis of the spiritual in Tagore's Gitanjali (Song Offerings) (1912) and then as its postmodern counterparts shifts to the far end of a century and concerns itself with Madan Gandhi's Planet in Peril: Poet's Lament (2004) and Anand's Burning Bright (2013). This comparison reveals that the spiritual depicted in Gandhi's and Anand's poems is de-spiritual which is the outcome of the asymmetrical relations determined and imposed on the plane of consistency due to the conditioning circumstances of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literary criticism has always concerned itself with the triangle of text, context, and author/reader. Such triangulation has led to the emergence of a wide variety of literary approaches, each one of which has paradoxically had some limitations. The present article aims at introducing a new perspective which encompasses all other approaches without falling in the trap of their reductionism. The initiator of this new notion is J. S. Anand, the living Indian poet. This paper not only introduces Anand's theory of biotext as the virtual realm of any literary text but it also elucidates Anand's biotext by modeling it after Gilles Deleuze's postmodern theories on time, hence interdisciplinarity between literary criticism and philosophy. Here, a parallel is drawn between the syntheses of time (past, present, future) and those of text, context, and author/reader. Calling biotext as the virtual Third Space is regarded as Anand's attempt to postcolonialize his new perspective, following Homi K. Bhabha. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative study of Gibran Khalil Gibran's The Prophet (1923) and J. S. Anand's Bliss: The Ultimate Magic (2007). This cross-cultural comparison traces a line of development from early up to late twentieth century. While Gibran's text embodies his anxiety about modernity and its aftermaths, Bliss addresses the already lost generation of the postmodern era. Thematically, both works are texts of spirituality. The Prophet is a fictional narrative in prose-poetry, while Anand's text is a philosophical treatise hybridized with poetry and narrative. Despite this structural discrepancy, both texts emerge out of a dialogical texture. The Prophet develops out of the dialogue between Al-Mustafa and people of the fictional city, Orphalese. Bliss, in contrast, dialogizes directly with the reader. This paper takes the dialogical base as an important shared feature which interlinks the spiritual crisis of the modern age with the urgent hail to the soul in the postmodern era. This comparative study adopts a Deleuzian lens and takes both texts as their writers' attempts to fabulate through sloganizing spirituality against a backdrop of scientific and materialistic logic. It is argued that both texts legend a better people by training them into world citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interrelationship between modernism and postmodernism has always been a moot point, hence evasive. Many postmodern thinkers and theorists have viewed this issue from a wide variety of angles. While, for Jean-Françoise Lyotard, "postmodernism is modernism at its nascent", Linda Hutcheon and Ihab Hassan vote for an ironic and ambivalent relationship between these two. Some theorists dispense with the contextual aspects and accentuate solely the aesthetic traits; whereas some poststructuralists like Michel Foucault historicize and thereby politicize this controversial interrelationship at the cost of marginalizing the stylistic dimension. The present paper compares T. S. Eliot's modernist colonial wasteland and J. S. Anand's postcolonial postmodernist wretched land portrait. This comparison aims at showing how the spatiotemporal travelling of the wasteland vision backgrounds the inflicted plight of the wretched land. The present study adopts a Lyotard-Hutcheonian methodology and detects a dialogic relationship between the two poets. It is argued that in "writing back to the empire", Anand portrays and laments the rise of the wretched land. The postmodern state of disbelief is the stretch of modernist doubt. This paper tracks a line of continuity in this comparative study. This paper takes Eliot's Wasteland as the colonial heritage bequeathed under the rubric of civilization to the postcolonial generation, depriving it of its spiritual being. Anand's poetry is the voice which laments this loss. The paper also pinpoints an ambivalent relationship between Anand and Eliot and thereby votes for the forked ironic tone which runs through the postcolonial portrait of the wretched land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]