this thesis is an evaluation of poetry of sylvia plath (1932- 1963) and forough farrokhzad (1935-1967) using feminist approach and finds the positive concepts of hope, reason and strength through feminine images in their poetry. plath and farrokhzad are from different cultures and different countries but they share the same concepts and themes in their poetry. by applying feminist theory to their works and finding the same concepts of hope, reason and strength in their poetry they break the boundaries and connect to each other in the world of literature. first it gives a critical biography of plath and farrokhzad. this part is a study of their family, cultural and educational background. the second chapter gives an account of feminist movement in general, and then it assesses poetry of plaths and farrokhzads relationship to the womens movement. it will bring examples from their poetry to prove that plath and farrokhzad are feminist and their poems can be categorized as feminist poems. in order to criticize womanhood as a confinement, farrokhzad in her mask of love challenges the traditional constricting social expectation of womanhood and wifehood while plath scorns conventional submissive and obedient femininity and severely denounces a kind of marriage which alienate and enforce the passivity of women. the third chapter examines concepts of hope, reason and strength in the poetry of plath and farrokhzad. in fact it shows how women in their poetry reflect the three above mentioned concepts. many critics considered only concepts of death, frustration, confusion, emotion and confessional ideas in both plaths and farrokhzads poetry. but the present research proves that there are still positive and hopeful images of women in their poetry. then chapter four is the last part of this thesis. this study examines how the woman poets in their distinctive poetic voice repossess a power to seek liberation from social conformity and reorient and affirm their unconventional poetic selves in the male literary tradition. and also it examines how women are dependent on their intellect and have hope toward life.

colonialism is an important factor in cultural production and many of cultural constructs all over the world. english and english language teaching are at the center of the contemporary world. postcolonial literature, the genre achebe exercised, is a kind of historical text which has become central to different debates and criticisms. in this thesis, different elements related to the colonialism, post-colonialism and their actualization in achebe’s selected novels will be discussed to indicate that the process of colonization was not done merely by white colonizers but with the help of colonized people as well. this research uses achebe’s works to introduce colonial subjects and show how achebe portrays them to get this conclusion that african colony was not shaped by outside forces but from within. in chapter one an introduction to the post-colonial studies and colonialism as well as other related phenomena such as creation of the “other”, colonized acceptance of their inferiority, and the role of language in colonization are given. in chapter two, biographical information of achebe and his significance in foundation of african literature, his emphasis on writers’ social commitment, his use of language and his literary heritage are presented. chapter three is devoted to things fall apart. to demonstrate how colonized subjects themselves were effective in the process of colonization different communal and personal qualities of african people are going to be analyzed with regards to theories of critics such as frantz fanon, david carroll, killam and eustace palmer. chapter four is devoted to achebe’s two other novels, no longer at ease and arrow of god. the first section analyzes no longer at ease and the tension between traditional and modern in an educated west african with regard to obi okonkwo and his lack of personality. in the second section, arrow of god and the theme of destruction of the tribal world are given in a more complex way than the previous novels. the terminal chapter wraps up the whole thesis and uses all the information given in the previous chapters to present the significance of the research.

today, persian poetry is of great importance to many scholars around the world. the interest and attention of various cultures toward such a fine literature has given quite a good motivation for a comparative study. the major concern of the study is to investigate how nature is depicted through the works of the great english poet, william wordsworth (1770-1850) and the outstanding contemporary persian poet sohrab sepehri (1928-1980). the two express a rather similar concept of worshiping nature and choosing solitary places to avoid the corruptions which city life can bring, while being sharply separated in time and geographical place. thus, the work holds its major issues, piety toward nature, industrialization and pantheism, as the concern of both poets, and would illustrate from the mentioned points the role of nature as a meditative craft and similarity of attitudes toward pantheism, rural areas and modernity in the poetry of both. what would come next is the study of selected prominent symbolism in poetry of sepehri and wordsworth.

postcolonial feminism, also dubbed as third world feminism, is an innovative approach, demonstrating the way women of colonized countries suffer from both native patriarchies and imperial ideology. also due to this double-colonization, postcolonial feminists contend that third world women are subjected to both colonial domination of empire and male domination of patriarchy. while western feminism focuses on gender discrimination, postcolonial feminism works to extend the analysis of intersection of gender and multicultural identity formation. the present thesis is written based on the conviction that e. m forsters a passage to india (1924) possesses the quality to be interpreted from the postcolonial feminism vantage point. this novel is the account of two british women who question the standard behaviors of the english toward the indians and suffer permanently from unsettling experience in india. the female victim in this novel is not a third-world black woman as usual, but a white british woman who fails in her quest to see the real india. after bringing a short introduction in the first chapter, the second chapter of this thesis provides a definition of postcolonial studies generally, and then postcolonial feminism specifically. here we are going to get familiar with this new approach, its concerns, and opinion of some of its most prominent critics. in the third chapter, a detailed reading of a passage to india is presented. the postcolonial feminism approach is applied to the novel in this chapter, and it can be visualized that how much the western feminism is inattentive to the differences pertaining to class, race, feelings, and settings of women of colonized territories. by depicting the limited worldview of the two british women, the thesis concludes that the privilege attributed to them is the western feminist prejudice and a one- dimensional view.

from its emergence till present time marxist principles has undergone great changes since their promulgation by marx. many theorists and thinkers set at rectifying marxist tenets and introducing those of their own while others advocated its main concepts and attempted at improving them. among marxist philosophers who had an intensive study of marxs ideology, is louis althusser whose reflections upon marxism have remained revolutionary. althussers concept of marxist ideology stands in sharp contrasts with that of marxist humanists who advocated the humanistic aspects of marxism. according to althusser, marxist theories could be deemed anti-humanistic for their disregard of human potentiality. such anti-humanistic misinterpretation of marx robbed marxism of its revolutionary potentiality by disregarding mankind’s active role in making history. his neo-marxist ideas imprisoned mankind within an ideological system with definite roles which overdetermine human conduct and deprive him of his free will. such an overdetermined concept of self is specifically conspicuous within authoritarian governments such as stalinist regimes, which, through misusing marxist ideas, brought about terror and threat under the pretext of leading humans towards marx’s promised socialism and communism. the thesis attempts to demonstrate the failure of marxist promises and ideals in the novel, darkness at noon (1940) through the depiction of the oppressive measures of the stalinist regime in a context of violence and terror. the thesis also aims to discuss and apply marx’s portrayal of a communist society as put forward in his theory of history to the novel and illustrate marx’s failure of an ideal communist society within the stalinist regime. demonstrating the unfulfilled dream of the establishment of a communist society, the thesis also aims to illustrate how the althusserian legacy and his misreading of marx exercised a marked influence on the propagation of stalinist ideas as it degraded the active role of humans throughout history. it analyzes how such derogatory role attributed to mankind can cause passivity among the characters within the novel. it explains how the overdetermined concept of self which althusser put forward, brings about a sense of determinism and prevents a rebellion on the part of the masses against stalinist oppression.

مدرنیسم در بر گیرنده تئوری ها و جنبش های بسیار متفاوتی است، اما مهمترین ویژگی مشترک همه این گرایش ها و جنبش ها کنار گذاشتن و حذف همه قواعد هنری سنتی و کهنه می باشد. بدین ترتیب، مدرنیسم را می توان انفصال کامل با گذشته قلمداد کرد. در میان طیف گسترده آثار ادبی مدرن در قرن بیستم، "سرزمین بی حاصل"(1922) اثر تی. اس. الیوت به عنوان یکی از بهترین مظاهر ادبیات مدرن شناخته می شود. اما دیدگاه های الیوت پیرامون شعر مدرن، پدیده مدرنیسم و از همه مهمتر نظریات انتقادی وی در رابطه با فرایند پایان ناپذیر سنت که به صورت مبسوط درمجموعه مقالات وی تحت عنوان "جنگل مقدس" (1920) شرح داده شده است ثابت می کند که مدرنیسم الیوت انقطاع کامل با گذشته نمی باشد و در حقیقت الیوت را می توان یک شاعر و منتقد فرهنگی ضد مدرن به شمار آورد. این تز به تشریح ویژگی های مدرن و ضد مدرن "سرزمین بی حاصل" می پردازد و چون جنبه های ضد مدرنیستی برجنبه های مدرن تفوق دارند در انتها چنین نتیجه گیری می کند که بهتر است عنوان بهترین مظهر شعر مدرن از این اثر گرفته شود.

charles dickens was a voracious reader even in his childhood. his early reading of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century picaresque fiction greatly influenced his writing style. his first novel, the pickwick papers, is a tale of rogues and swindlers, adventures and quests, satire and comedy, and innocence and experience. oliver twist, dickens’ second novel, is a young boy’s progress through a corrupted, hypocritical victorian society that is not only indifferent or even inimical to innocence, but also does nothing to prevent or subdue evil. both of these works contain picaresque elements such as satire, quest (both physical and spiritual), deception, innocence and experience, disguise, fate, and revenge. the present study aims, firstly, at a general review of the picaresque tradition, and then a detailed analysis of two of dickens’ early novels from a picaresque perspective follows.