As a South African female writer, the works of Nadine Gordimer have been frequently discussed through either the post-colonial or feminist principles of criticism. However, another way to interpret and evaluate these works, particularly her short fiction, can be the application of psychoanalytic approaches, which have been almost often neglected by the literary reviewers. This study aims at a new reading of Loot, a very short story by Gordimer, by employing the theories of Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst. Using Lacan's theories of the structure of the mind and it's division into three stages of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic, and also the individual's quest to reach the fullness of the primal sense of unity and safety, which is lost by his entrance into social order, this reading intends to interpret the protagonist's behavior and reactions in different situations of life. Besides viewing the different stages in the formation of the protagonist's self, the study focuses on the formal structure of the work in its narrative method of story within story, and deviation from the standard language of story-telling on the basis of its Lacanian interpretation as a sign of the individual's inability to cope with the social dictates of the Symbolic order.

Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for a desired lost past, forms a considerable part of the literary works produced by authors during their migration experience. By recounting the desirable memories of their past, the characters of these stories find redemption despite the loneliness and depression that surround them as strangers in the new environment. The present study deals with the analysis of the nostalgic aspect of the short stories written by Goli Taraghi, the contemporary Persian migrant writer. The result indicates that Taraghi's characters still live in a homogenized universe and define their identities by clinging into their past life. Consequently, nostalgia becomes the central theme of Taraghi's fiction.

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Bleak House is an especially interesting case among Dickens's novels, in which fact and fiction are integrated proficiently within the context of the novel. The plot is basically made upon imaginative events, while the author's perspective in describing the Victorian London is essentially realistic. This article aims at reading Bleak House as a realistic portrait of the Victorian London, by demonstrating that the moral corruption of the ruling administration, particularly the legal system, is at the root of the general misery and bleakness that prevailed the lives of people. The study indicates how Dickens has tried to express the belief that certain aspects of the real world would become remote to our sensibilities through time, and that it is art's mission to keep them alive.