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This article explores the influence of The Arabian Nights on John Barth's novella Dunyazadiad. Th... more This article explores the influence of The Arabian Nights on John Barth's novella Dunyazadiad. This influence lies in The Arabian Nights labyrinth construction of the narrative events. By its experimental literary artifice, Dunyazadiad initiates the early phase of postmodern reactions to modernism's fictional modes and their apocalyptic vision regarding the death of fictional genres. Barth's conscious recapitulation of the twentieth century fictional genre manifests properly in the novella's frame-narrative; posing pivotal questions that previous canonical works, especially The Arabian Nights, are the "treasure house" for avoiding the literary exhaustion prevalent in modern fiction. This study aims to scrutinize Barth's experimental parody of The Arabian Nights' frame-tale, narrator, characterizations, and dénouement to critique the spirit of exhaustion dominating the contemporary modern fictional genre. The theoretical analysis of Dunyazadiad focuses on two main narrative theories, namely Mikail Bakhtin's dialogic mode and Patricia Waugh's formulation of metafiction. Thus, this article argues Barth's reliance on The Arabian Nights frame-narrative to critique modernism fictional exhaustion.

This article examines Toni Morrison's Recitatif and Alice Walker's Everyday Use as post-colonial ... more This article examines Toni Morrison's Recitatif and Alice Walker's Everyday Use as post-colonial texts. Morrison's short story moves beyond the postcolonial aftermath to maintain pre-colonial cultural conventions. The discussion begins with how Recitatif is considered within the field of postcolonial studies, demonstrating such postcolonial concepts as diaspora, nativism and chromatism. The study also focuses on Alice Walker's short story Everyday Use, and discusses how various forms of Filiation/Affiliation and Synergy contribute to the conventions of pre-colonial culture. Everyday Use aims precisely at ethical propensity within colonial circumference. Thus, Walker self-consciously illustrates the level of its pre-colonial features, which expose the colonisation dispersal of identity.

This article demonstrates how Kurt Vonnegut experiments with the narrative structure of his novel... more This article demonstrates how Kurt Vonnegut experiments with the narrative structure of his novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The study focuses on Vonnegut’s experimentation which assents to postmodern innovative virtuosity. On the outset of postmodernism, two critical issues have been raised. That is, the literature of exhaustion and the literature of replenishment dominating modern literature. Accordingly, this study explores Vonnegut’s critique of literary exhaustion prevailing modernism’s exhausted literary forms in order to provide them with permanent literary replenishment. Vonnegut accomplishes his critique through manipulating the novel’s plot, narrator, and character’s discourse. It will be argued that Vonnegut mixes real experiences with fictional accounts. For this reason, self-reflexive metafiction being discussed conflates fictional experimental forms with ideological critique which attests to its fictionality in the name of replenishing manipulation. The critique is oftentimes utilized in order to proclaim a literary complex relation which lies between the author and the reader. The central differentiation being made, then, is that accurately postmodern metafiction and what might be considered therapeutic experimentation in a self-justifying manner. Thus, metafiction does not formulate the beginning of new genre signifiers. Rather, it is a beginning of ideological dialogic fiction between the text and the world. The analysis of the novel’s plot will rely on Patricia Waugh’s self-reflexive metafictional devices. The narrator will be scrutinized by applying Gérard Genette’s concept of the focalization factor. The character’s discourse is approached via employing Mikhail Bakhtin’s modes of dialogic discourse. Vonnegut’s experimentation with these narrative elements reveals the postmodern relative assimilation of fiction and reality.

This article explores Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) as a postmodern critique of mode... more This article explores Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) as a postmodern critique of modern literary
modes. As a novel recapitulating within itself a postmodern relative perspective of reality, it elucidates one
aspect of postmodernism, that of literary experimentation. Vonnegut experiments with the narrator, setting
and characters of the novel to provide a fictional critique of the literary exhaustion prevailing in modern
literary modes. Experimentation is thus remedial replenishment for such exhaustion through authorial
metafictional intrusion into the text. Accordingly, the article uses Patricia Waugh, Gérard Genette and
Mikhail Bakhtin’s narrative theory to examine the experimental technique in the novel. What makes the
majority of metafictional style unique is not only its presence in the novel, but also its conflated depiction of
the American individual’s suffering after the Second World War. For this later style, the self-justifying
manner in the novel extrapolates textual dialogic relations to accentuate the author’s critical voice. Such
voice originates in the main narrative point of view in the text and is known as focalization.

This paper explores the insights that philosophy can bring to administrative and bureaucratic cri... more This paper explores the insights that philosophy can bring to administrative and
bureaucratic critique, focusing on the work of Nikolai Gogol's "The Nose". It
examines the ways in which Gogol's "The Nose" represents the concept of angst in
order to satirize the Russian social and religious status. This paper reads "The Nose"
as a text very much of its time. It moves into fantastic themes and is a project
involving recovering social histories, thus becoming a key example of the productive
coalescence of society and religion amidst early nineteenth-century concerns.
Gogol's satire of society presages many subsequent social religious analyses,
presenting a severe indictment of society as a rigid and impersonal state machine
resulting in meaninglessness, absurdity and tragedy. It encompasses the institutional
level and fundamental ruptures in society caused by a surfeit of religion, as depicted
in "The Nose". On a more philosophical level, "The Nose" explores the effects of
society on the individual, portraying the alienation, futile activity and servility
inflicted on lower-level functionaries through various problems, such as the loss of
identity, the absence of meaningful existence and a lack of integration between
public and private lives.

This article explores, via a postmodern approach, how Barth dealt with the intricate relationship... more This article explores, via a postmodern approach, how Barth dealt with the intricate relationship between postmodern fiction and its modern counterpart by constructing a subjective narrative event in his novella, “Lost in the Funhouse”. It examines the transparent and correspondent representation of the narrative event as a category of Barthian critique of modern literary exhaustion, and how Barth appropriates remedial recycling for fictional conventions. This apocalyptic homogeneous narrative device involves a constant reciprocal examination of contemporary fiction and its possible future. It is carried out through mutual subversion and, ultimately, challenges the notion of inherited literary forms and their utilisation over time. As such, the whole narrative event is achieved via a self-reflexive trajectory and multifarious textual solipsism.