The city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in The Blind Owl and City of Glass

New York City in Paul Auster’s City of Glass and Ray in Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl testify to the presence of a wasteland, setting in motion an unavoidable sense of nostalgia, confusion and fragmentation upon the protagonists. The present article argues that the pictures painted of the two met...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Lalbakhsh, Pedram, Torkamaneh, Pouria
Format:	Article
Language:	English
Published:	Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2016
Online Access:	http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10154/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10154/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10154/1/10589-38510-1-PB.pdf

id	ukm-10154
recordtype	eprints
spelling	ukm-101542017-02-23T04:22:38Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10154/ The city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in The Blind Owl and City of Glass Lalbakhsh, Pedram Torkamaneh, Pouria New York City in Paul Auster’s City of Glass and Ray in Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl testify to the presence of a wasteland, setting in motion an unavoidable sense of nostalgia, confusion and fragmentation upon the protagonists. The present article argues that the pictures painted of the two metropolises with their specific cramped urban spaces function as culpable agents influencing Quinn as a New Yorker and Hedayat’s narrator as a resident of Ray. The paper builds its argument upon Merlin Coverley’s concept of psychogeography which supports transformation of the city as an integral part of the main characters’ fates. Further, the article illustrates how in Hedayat and Auster’s pieces the city reigns triumphant as the main characters fall victim to hallucination and isolation, or are left with desperate choices: in Hedayat’s novella murder or acceptance of misery and in Auster’s the sudden disappearance from the city and the plot horizons. To further support the argument advanced in this research, we take into account Tötösy de Zepetnek’s method of comparative literature and culture and its idea of parallelization that emphasizes the existence of similar social evolutions represented through the literature of various nations and carried out through the use of comparable literary conventions and symbols to stress their concerns. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2016-06 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10154/1/10589-38510-1-PB.pdf Lalbakhsh, Pedram and Torkamaneh, Pouria (2016) The city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in The Blind Owl and City of Glass. GEMA: Online Journal of Language Studies, 16 (2). pp. 141-153. ISSN 1675-8021 http://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/801
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Local University
institution	Universiti Kebangasaan Malaysia
building	UKM Institutional Repository
collection	Online Access
language	English
description	New York City in Paul Auster’s City of Glass and Ray in Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl testify to the presence of a wasteland, setting in motion an unavoidable sense of nostalgia, confusion and fragmentation upon the protagonists. The present article argues that the pictures painted of the two metropolises with their specific cramped urban spaces function as culpable agents influencing Quinn as a New Yorker and Hedayat’s narrator as a resident of Ray. The paper builds its argument upon Merlin Coverley’s concept of psychogeography which supports transformation of the city as an integral part of the main characters’ fates. Further, the article illustrates how in Hedayat and Auster’s pieces the city reigns triumphant as the main characters fall victim to hallucination and isolation, or are left with desperate choices: in Hedayat’s novella murder or acceptance of misery and in Auster’s the sudden disappearance from the city and the plot horizons. To further support the argument advanced in this research, we take into account Tötösy de Zepetnek’s method of comparative literature and culture and its idea of parallelization that emphasizes the existence of similar social evolutions represented through the literature of various nations and carried out through the use of comparable literary conventions and symbols to stress their concerns.
format	Article
author	Lalbakhsh, Pedram Torkamaneh, Pouria
spellingShingle	Lalbakhsh, Pedram Torkamaneh, Pouria The city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in The Blind Owl and City of Glass
author_facet	Lalbakhsh, Pedram Torkamaneh, Pouria
author_sort	Lalbakhsh, Pedram
title	The city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in The Blind Owl and City of Glass
title_short	The city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in The Blind Owl and City of Glass
title_full	The city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in The Blind Owl and City of Glass
title_fullStr	The city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in The Blind Owl and City of Glass
title_full_unstemmed	The city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in The Blind Owl and City of Glass
title_sort	city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in the blind owl and city of glass
publisher	Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
publishDate	2016
url	http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10154/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10154/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10154/1/10589-38510-1-PB.pdf
first_indexed	2023-09-18T19:56:41Z
last_indexed	2023-09-18T19:56:41Z
_version_	1777406576105095168

The city in man: foregrounding psychogeography in The Blind Owl and City of Glass

Similar Items