This thesis challenges the silenced voices of women in the Iranian written literary tradition and proposes a fresh evaluation of contemporary Iranian women's poetry. Because the presence of female poets in Iranian literature is a relatively recent phenomenon, there are few published studies describing and analysing Iranian women's poetry; most of the critical studies that do exist were completed in the last three decades after the Revolution in 1979. Addressing the ethical questions of gender in Persian literature by women, this study seeks to offer a systematic and historical reading of women's poetry in dialogical terms. It argues that Luce Irigaray's deconstructive method can be used productively as a means to explore the ways in which women deliver a subversive discourse of gender relations in Iran. Irigaray's transcendental theories of the duality of subjectivity, masculine and feminine, and the culture of dialogic exchange between different subjects will challenge existing readings of Iranian women's poetry. This will be achieved using Irigarayian modes of resistance (mimesis, masquerade, strategic essentialism, utopian ideals, and employing novel language or structures of expression and subjectivity) across the three main conjunctures in the history of Iranian women's poetry. The thesis presents an Irigarayian reading of selected women poets within the constitutional period, the Pahlavi era, and the post-revolutionary period. Through my assessment of these poems, a discussion begins which starts with the lived reality of female repression, and finishes with a prospect for women's freedom and enunciation. I will argue, using Irigaray, that it is essential for Iranian women to create a “house of language”, a place in which they can practice living and articulating, so that they can achieve self-enunciation and the “sensible transcendental”.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:731252 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Hosseini, Mahrokhsadat |
| Publisher | University of Sussex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/72558/ |
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