Comparative Literature Essay

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Examining literary texts in different languages in order to find out about their affinities, relations or influences is known by the literary communion as comparative literary studies (Prawer 8). Francois Jost believes that comparative literature is to a great extent “as old as literature itself” (Jost 22); however, literature is a prerequisite to comparative literature (21). Due to the international nature of comparative literature, literature takes the form of a universal, rather than a national, phenomenon (16) and is often known as world literature. Jost defines comparative literature as an organic world literature (21), “a mutual, even a systematic, comparison of national literatures” (22).
In this regard, the present thesis focuses upon the comparison of two literary works of different nations and languages, one being The Blind Owl by the Iranian novelist and short story writer Sadegh Hedayat, and the other Slaughterhouse-Five by the modern American novelist Kurt Vonnegut.
Hedayat’s The Blind Owl is the story of an anonymous painter who decides to write for his shadow about one of his personal unpleasant experiences. The narrator has isolated himself from the rest of the world and now, therefore, is a recluse. He is obsessed with one single painting (a hunchback old man sitting under a cypress tree and a young girl bending toward him and offering him a morning-glory) all through his painting career. The narrator calls the outside world “the world of the vulgar” and resorts to alcohol and opium in order to forget about it. The story is divided into two parts which have basic elements in common. In both parts, under the effect of opium, the narrator is immersed in an imaginary world which he resents and fears. Besi...

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...rience of the real world,” between the wish to be accepted by the society and the feeling of being shunned (Tillich 69).
2. Fear:
Like anxiety, fear protects man against the threats of a fatal situation, (Tillich 81) but unlike it, fear is “directed toward a definite object” (83). Tillich’s concept of fear can be best explained as “being afraid of something specific which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured” (Dreyer 1249). Because anxiety does not have any objects, life establishes fear (Tillich 8) so that the latter preserves man from the agony of non-being (Dreyer 1249).
3. Courage:
Courage deals with fear which is regarded as an object of anxiety (Tillich 70). “Existential anxiety . . . cannot be removed but must be taken into the courage to be” (81). Courage is approached by Tillich as man’s power to come to grips with fear (Dreyer 1249).

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