Bücher von Mansour Khelifa

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: Literature and irony are intimately associated with man¿s predicament. Myth, epic, classical tragedy, "The Canterbury Tales", "Arabian Nights", "King Lear", Swift¿s ¿Modest Proposal¿, modern and post-modern literature such as Joyce¿s "A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man", Orwell¿s "Animal Farm", Beckett¿s "Waiting for Godot", all of these devote a substantial part to irony. Whether it is Socratic, dramatic, tragic, ¿cosmic¿, Romantic, structural, or rhetorical, irony signifies a gap that needs filling. The importance of an ironical relation lies in the absence of harmony between the parties and the misunderstanding caused by it. Irony proceeds from ¿Dissymmetry¿, ¿Negation¿, ¿Denial¿, ¿Cancellation¿, ¿Concealment¿, ¿Parody¿, ¿Reversal¿, ¿Interchangeability¿, ¿Playfulness¿, ¿Witticism¿, ¿Understatement¿, etc.Commenting upon the superiority of ¿Metaphor¿, Aristotle says that it takes a genius to ¿perceive similarity¿ between two distinct objects. Irony stems precisely from the reverse, i.e. the perception of dissimilarity, or from the deliberately perverting and obliterating denial of what is perceived as distinct. If the purpose of Metaphor is to assemble, that of Irony is to dissemble (in Greek comedy the eiron is a ¿dissembler¿). In a sense, while Metaphor relates to metonymy, Irony is germane to oxymoron and paradox. Yet, the Aristotelian concept of ¿Peripeteiä (Irony of events or Reversal of Fortune), which determines the real fabric of a ¿complex¿ fable, seems to allow for circularity instead of dislocation: ¿It is the coming full circle of a wheel, which first carries a man up and then down...¿ (81).

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: The sweeping assertion ¿once a rebel, always a rebel,¿ soliloquised by Alan Sillitoe¿s character Arthur Seaton in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", published in 1958, echoes the dissent of the Angry Young Men of the late fifties and sixties in Britain and functions as a binding theme and narrative strategy yoking together the different fragments of the novel.The purpose of this paper is to study the various aspects of the anti-herös dissenting action, assess the limits of his rebellion and eventually relate the complexity of the narrative to a larger corpus of literature that is more likely to be dubbed ¿literature of dissent¿ rather than ¿literature of exhaustion¿ (John Barth 70 ¿ 83); although Sillitoe¿s novel may partake of both. Such subversive trends, typical of post-war British literature, permeate a wide spectrum of working-class ethics ranging from mere industrial dissent to more life-enhancing assent. The ultimate purpose of such literary representation of modern life in Britain is to question, at the same time, the bourgeois standards of profitability and the controversial identity of the marginally subversive working-class anti-hero trapped between hope and despair, revolt and submission.

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: Starting from the apocalyptic modernist assumption that "[h]umanity is a dead letter¿ ("Women in Love" 60) Lawrence launches, especially after the Great War, his bitterest attacks on bourgeois society. He accuses Western civilisation of causing the impoverishment of what he calls the sensuous vitality of the ¿lower self¿ ("Fantasia of the Unconscious and Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious" 178), of turning human beings into spineless abstractions, and of transforming man into a consuming machine. Lawrence cannot expect from modern society anything other than post-mortem effects. He however believes that the novel, ¿the one bright book of life ,¿ as he calls it, may eventually reinvigorate this moribund society. In order to address the notion of invisibility in relation to Lawrence¿s apocalyptic / vitalistic vision, I have chosen one of his most eloquent and perplexing works, i.e. "The Man Who Died" which deals with the representation of the world¿s invisibility and mindlessness. This short novel is one of his lesser works, the title of which refers to the main character who has risen from the dead as a parodic, Christ-like figure.In this paper, I will analyse the various ways in which Lawrence endeavours to make the invisible vitality of the living world ¿ what he calls ¿the phenomenal world¿ (143) ¿ visible and palpable, and even more real than reality itself.

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: Occupying a central position in the political inner debate of Winston Smith, the main character in Orwell¿s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is the following statement/promise/threat: ¿We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness¿ (25). This cryptic illocutionary speech act is initially heard by Winston in a dream, then is distinctly associated with, and equivocally reiterated, later on in the novel, by O¿Brien who embodies, at the same time, the main character¿s ideological mentor, intellectual tormentor and physical torturer.As the story unfolds, the initially promising trope, ¿the place where there is no darkness,¿ becomes more and more of a sibylline utterance representing a locus of (mis)understanding and a space of radical misreading. The representation of this place is stripped of its dream-like, metaphorical significance and reveals a dark, deictic and literal meaning. ¿[T]he place where there is no darkness¿ turns out the infamous Room 101, which is precisely the opposite of what it initially passes for, that is, a ¿utopian¿ space of enlightenment. On the contrary, Room 101 is a ¿dystopian¿ place, in the novel, where the light is deliberately never switched off as a torture inflicted upon political dissidents like Winston Smith. Likewise, the story line seems to operate a series of ironical degradations such as utopia becoming dystopia; metaphor dwindling into synecdoche; and euphemism signalling a glaring ¿statement¿ (25) charged with a sense of utter (mis)understanding, foreboding and warning, culminating in the irreversible destruction of the main character. Winston¿s revolutionary dream of a better world turns into a horrible nightmare full of equivocation and despair. The mutual (mis)understanding between Winston and O¿Brien leads to complete brainwash and emasculation of the former. Winston¿s political resistance to, and hate of, Big Brother¿s regime are annihilated, his dream is shattered. The story ends with Winston being ultimately defeated, ironically depicted as follows: ¿[h]e had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother¿ (297); whereas at the beginning of the narrative he has emphatically written in his secret diary in distinct capital letters: ¿DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER¿ (18).