American Research Journal of English and Literature

Sk Benazir

The Dublin Murder Squad Series is a collection of novels by the American Irish Crime Fiction Writer Tana French. The Series comprises of loosely interconnected novels which can also be read as stand-alone novels. The Black Woman Detective named Antoinette Conway works in this famous murder squad and she features in The Secret Place and The Trespasser which are the fourth and the sixth novel in the series respectively. Tana French through her portrayal of the character of Antoinette Conway talks about the topics related to gender, class, and racial discrimination, and also about the psychological understanding of rejection and abandonment issues, even when faced as a child, and how it impacts adversely for a lifetime and as a traumatic memory these underlying triggers surface at particular circumstances. As the only woman and that also of color, Conway had to face racist and sexist remarks at her workplace and she is considered as an outsider. Yet driven by her passion and love for the profession, Conway continues to strive to make her own identity in an essentially male dominated arena. This paper intends to make a comprehensive study on how even while battling past trauma and abandonment issues, Conway, the black woman, despite facing a hostile atmosphere at work, continues to pursue her profession and it is only through her intelligence and relentless persistence that she is finally successful in establishing her individual identity as a professional female detective.

Marie-Anne, Justine Noyer

Western post-apocalyptic narratives project a world in which historical and geographical realities are fractured, as they both deny and wield the experiences of colonized and post-colonial populations. This structural appropriation focuses on a Western vision where the notion of space is recreated into new areal boundaries in which native geographies are obscured. A comparison of Western and North American Indigenous post-apocalyptic fictions shows a dichotomy between the nation-state and Indigenous governance as well as a ruptured vision of land property separating nature and culture, and finally a divided notion of homelessness and sense of place. The Indigenous discourses embrace contemporary issues as they focus on futurity, while Western scenarios are enrooted in colonial assumptions and structural appropriation.

Olusegun Oladele Jegede

The study investigated participant roles in selected editorials in Nigerian newspapers. The data for the study were editorials. The editorials were taken from The Nigerian Tribune, The Punch and The Vanguard. Seven editorials were selected and each editorial was labelled T1, T2, ... T7 for proper analysis. Each main clause of the editorials was also numbered for accurate accountability and reference. The selected editirials were critically read and the participants were identified and their roles were interpreted and discussed. The findings revealed that most of the messages of the texts were realised by participants such as actor, carrier, attribute and goal. The study concluded that the dominance of participants such as actor, carrier, attribute and goal in the editorials showed that editorials were not meant to tell us what happened, but rather, how things were and should be. 

Guifang Wang

Chinese new generation science fiction refers to the science fiction after the 1990s because of their diverse creative con cepts, aesthetic values and new narrative modes. This paper summarizes the development of Chinese science fiction liter ature, and analyzes the utopias in Chinese new generation science fiction. The types of utopias in new generation science fiction can be divided into two aspects: temporal and spatial utopias and technological utopias. The characteristics of Chinese new generation’s utopia include extraordinary Imagination, new and different ways of thinking. The functions of Chinese utopia are mainly reflected in the affirmation of ultimate values and the criticism of reality. The creation of new generations has brought new hope to Chinese science fiction literature, but in general, Chinese science fiction literature has a long way to go.

Shireen Ahmed Khorsheed Khorsheed

Following the consequences of the Second World War, the majority of authors wrote their literary works to respond to the world’s massive destruction. The dominant idea that engaged authors’ minds during a time when there was a big need to be free from all authorities that led man to encourage him blindly to kill his brothers and sisters in humanity and to destroy the world. The writer John Fowles assumed man has to be free from following those rules and constraints. John Fowles’s novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman was written in Neo-Victorian prose’s style but with Postmodernism per spectives. This paper attempts to analyze and apply the theoretical perspectives of “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes and “The Birth of the Reader” on the novel of John Fowles which is regarded to be a postmodern novel from mul tiple perceptions. Firstly, the storyteller’s involvement to a variety of opinions as well as substitute endings. The second point, considering this book as a historical text, by applying the method of Linda Hutcheon, Historiographic metafiction, includes the meaning of rewriting history since postmodern writers do not believe in the originality of historical truths or the existence of absolute truths. Fowles wanted to free people from those dogmas. Those entire methods in this text disclose Fowles to reconstruct and deconstruct the Victorian culture through the main character Sarah woodruff that makes Fowles’s novel a perfect example of Postmodernism.

Magdalene Mbotiji Titamoh

It is an ultimate reality that women are facing subjugation and stigmatization all around the world. Especially, in the case of black women, this is much more worsened due to racism and gender disparity issues. African American literature has laid its foundations on the marginalization of black women. The term womanism was invented by Alice Walker in the year 1984, which emphasizes the idea that black women must be treated equally on grounds of race, gender, and class. The books The Colour Purple and The Temple of My Familiar strongly depict the true conditions of black women surviving under oppression and gender disparities. Alice Walker has depicted the nature of black women facing atrocities of sexism and class discrimination in both of her works with equal aplomb. 

Imasuen Osasumwen Sofia

This study illuminates the lives of the abjected women in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, as they undergo as liminal process and how they are able to get feminine subjectivity in the course of their lives. This study also sheds light on how women are being stereotyped, treated, in the patriarchal society. While focusing on The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Awakening by Kate Chopin, this study further addresses the different ways women are able to acquire subjectivity for themselves and by doing so are able to create a new identity for themselves that does not align with the stereotypes and norms created by society that favours men as compared to women

Taimoor Younus

The paper investigates the silencing of women in the patriarchal society of Japan and explores the reasons that contribute towards female subjugation with specific focus on the primary character Sayuri in the light of Marxist Feminism. The paper illustrates the factors responsible for silencing of women, which goes on to violence, oppression, and economic dependence, which ultimately leads to treating them as subaltern. Moreover, this paper avers the issues concerning taboos of sexualization and commodification of women leading to alienation, which is imposed, on women who seem to be self-reliant and deeply access their full potentials

Linyi Tan

This paper compares the Chinese and English languages, trying to clear the argument that the two are from different worlds. To explain this claim, we collected data from both the speaking and writing perspective, providing links between these languages. Our results showed that the languages have certain similarities and should clear the aging stereotypes.

Junge Dou, Tao Li

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) are the best representative of the Gothic works in British and American literature. Not only do they inherit the Gothic traditions, they also put forward the genre by creating their own country’s styles. Poe founds the traditional writing mode of American psychological and introverted Gothic by creating “the terror of the soul”, meanwhile, Brontë undercuts the distinction between Gothic and domestic narratives in the nineteenth century British literary history. In depicting Madeline Usher’s Gothic death, mysterious resurrection and the disembodiment and mental breakdown of Roderick Usher, Poe, presents the incest-taboo, his view of after-life and the ghost haunting the House of Usher, the text and democratic America. Brontë, on the other hand, portraying Catherine Earnshaw’s death and ghost, Heathcliff’s revenge and dubious identity, suggests the instability caused by slavery, racial and colonial issues, Gothic and domestic novels, which makes the novel becomes the dark secret at the heart of the history of literature.