C o m p a r a t i v e S t u d i e s o f S o u t h A s i a , A f r i c a a n d t h e M i d d l e E a s t V o l . 3 2 , N o . 3 , 2 0 1 2 d o i 1 0 .1 2 1 5 / 1 0 8 9 2 0 1 x -1 8 9 1 5 0 7 © 2 0 1 2 b y D u k e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s 4 8 4 Comparative Literature in IranAlireza Anushiravani his essay is a historical and critical survey of comparative literature in Iran that discusses its potentialities for development in the context of new directions in comparative literature. It is divided into three parts: The first section is a survey of the history and origins of comparative literature in Iran. The second part deals with the present state of the field, challenges, and recent developments, and the last part is a speculation on the future trends and directions of comparative literature in Iran.

Abstract:From an Orientalist viewpoint, Coleridge and his poems were shaped by the discursive web of the 18 th century culture, and he was not free from the worldliness of historical forces. However, it is not difficult to see resistance towards dominant ideologies in his poems. One example is Coleridge's sentiment towards the systematicallymisrepresented Islam and its prophet. Coleridge's radical interpretation of Islam in the 1790s made him feel the need, with Southey, for a model of moral regeneration after observing European corruption and having lost his radical interest in the millennial politics of the French Revolution. The radical act of composing "Mahomet" signifies Coleridge's endeavor to change the distorted image of Mahomet and Islam that to him was the beginning of the Unitarian revolution and the symbol of the revolutionary France. However, he perpetuates the prejudice of Christianity's superiority over Islam as a deviation of the true religion introduced by Christ. Coleridge's approach is imaginative reconciliation of Christo-Islamic inspirations to offer his political thoughts and avoid identification with English Unitarianism.

Coleridge's radical and colonial interests can be explored in his 1790 poems as sites of power and resistance. As a product of the complex discursive web of the 18 th century, the Orientalist Coleridge could not act out of such historical forces as colonialism that had gone into shaping him and his poetry. Although he attacked European corruption and desired a revolutionary figure such as Mahomet to make a return to Abyssinia as home to true Christianity, Coleridge perpetuated the prejudice of Christianity's superiority over Islam. Disillusioned by the French Revolution, Coleridge created Mahomet to replace Napoleon to pave the way to Abyssinia where true Christianity began. This study is an attempt to show that Coleridge's radical interpretation of Mahomet, and desire for the Abyssinian maid and a Pantisocratic setting are all ideologicallyshaped discursive practices within the context of 18 th century colonialism. With such political elements as colonization in mind, a better historicallyengaged understanding of Coleridge can be achieved.

This essay investigates the dynamics that led to the literary reception of Ernest Hemingway before the Islamic Revolution in Iran. This article deploys reception studies as a branch of Comparative Literature with a focus upon conceptions of Siegbert Salomon Prawer and the practical method of George Asselineau to unearth the ideological, political, and historical milieu that embraced Hemingway’s literary fortune in Iran. This investigation, unprecedented in the study of Iranian literature, discusses how and why Hemingway was initially received in Iran. As such, the inception of literary fortune of Ernest Hemingway in Iran is examined by the contextual features, Persian literary taste, and the translator’s incentives that paved the way for this reception. This article also uncovers the reasons for the delay in the literary reception of Hemingway in Iran and discussed why some of Hemingway’s oeuvres enjoyed recognition while others were neglected by the Iranian readership.

Multitudes of intermedial Shakespearean adaptations, especially since 1975, have captured Iranian theatrical stage, cinema or radio as the Bard's texts are frequently modernized, transfigured and indigenized in order to add to his globalization. Hamlet works well in the mechanisms of temporality, spatiality, power, control and sexuality, socio-political discourses, economic upheaval, female self and gender struggles even in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Hence, Iranian directors such as Varuzh Karim-Masihi and Arash Dadgar as well as the British director Gregory Doran have re-interpreted this text based on new ideological grounds in which the characters are at times similar or different. In this article, the transformation and characterization of major characters, especially female ones such as Gertrud/Mah-Tal'at and Ophelia/Mahtab, are analyzed based on Hutcheon's Adaptation Theory to see how they are represented in an Asian society whose Islamic ideology necessitates a unique transcultural, transhistorical rendition.