Modern American Literature and Contemporary Iranian Cinema

As an endeavor to contribute to the burgeoning field of comparative literature, this monograph addresses the dynamic yet understudied "e;intertextual dialogism"e; between modern American literature and contemporary Iranian Cinema, pinpointing how the latter appropriates and recontextualizes instances of the former to construct and inculcate vestiges of national/gender identity on the silver screen. Drawing on Louis Montrose's catchphrase that Cultural Materialism foregrounds "e;the textuality of history, [and] the historicity of texts"e;, this book contends that literary "e;texts"e; are synchronic artifacts prone to myriad intertextual and extra-textual readings and understandings, each historically conditioned. The recontextualization of Herzog, Franny and Zooey, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Death of a Salesman into contemporary Iran provides an intertextual avenue to delineate the textuality of history and the historicity of texts