Concessionaire Department of English Language and Literature, SBU Managing Director Sasan Baleghizadeh (PhD, TEFL) Editor-in-Chief Mehrdad Yousefpoori-Naeim (PhD Candidate, TEFL) Editorial Board TEFL Maryam Abbasi (MA, TEFL) Literature Hossein Mohseni (MA, English Literature) Cover Design AA Brothers Studio Website Design Maryam Marandi Special Thanks to Ghiasuddin Alizadeh and Sadegh Heydarbakian Contributors Maryam Abbasi Vahid Ahmadi Nasrin Bedrood Mehdi Dadashi Ali Derakhshesh Ataollah Hassani Niloufar Hematyar Mahshad Jalalpourroodsari Nahid Jamshidi Rad Masood Farvahar Kalkhoran Mohammad Mohammadi Hossein Mohseni Ali Nazifpour Amin Raeisi Hamid Rastin Mojgan Salmani Saleh Tabatabai Ebrahim Zanghani Saman Zoleikhaei Advisory Board Jalal Sokhanvar, Prof., Shahid Beheshti University Seyyed Abolghassem Fatemi Jahromi, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Kian Soheil, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Shideh Ahmadzadeh Heravi, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Amir Ali Nojoumian, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Mohammad Reza Anani Sarab, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Sara C. Ilkhani, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Alireza Jafari, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Sofia A. Koutlaki, PhD, Quran and Hadith University Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari, PhD, the University of Tehran Hossein Mollanazar, PhD, Allameh Tabataba'i University Publisher Shahid Beheshti University Publishing House Website http://www.sbu.ac.ir Indexed by noormags.com Address Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences Shahid Beheshti University, Evin, Tehran, Iran Tel.: +982129902486 Email: [email protected] Price 3000 T 1 Submission Guidelines •Threshold welcomes contributions of original (not previously published) works of interest in the disciplines of Translation Studies, English Language Teaching, English Literature and Comparative Studies along with related reports, news, profiles of eminent scholars, book reviews, and creative writings. •The contributors are expected to submit their works for the coming issue no later than 30 Azar, 1393. •Prospective authors are invited to submit their materials to the journal E-mail address: [email protected] •The manuscripts are evaluated by editors of each section and at least two referees from the advisory board. •The editors require the following format styles: .Informative title .Abstract (150-200 words) .Keywords (3-5 words) .Introduction (500-800 words) .Background or review of related literature (1500-2000 words) .Methodology (500-700 words) .Results and discussion (500-700 words) .Notes and references • The name of the author(s) should appear on the first page, with the present affiliation, full address, phone number, and current email address. • Microsoft word 2007 is preferred, using Times New Roman font and the size of 11 with single space between the lines for the abstracts and the same font size and line spacing for the body of the paper. Graphics can be in JPEG format. • Footnotes should only be used for commentaries and explanations, not for giving references. • All papers are required to follow the APA style for citations and references. 2 Table of Contents - Editorial 1 Literary Studies - Profile: Ted Hughes / Hossein Mohseni 5 - Kim Scott’s True Country: A Transnational and Post-Colonial Study / Vahid Ahmadi 13 - Unconscious Submission to ISA and Lack of Agency: An Althusserain Reading of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” / Saman Zoleikhaei 29 - Enough It Is! That All the Day Was Yours: The Carnivalesque in Spenser’s "Epithalamion" / Ali Nazifpour 39 English Language Teaching - Profile: Randolph Quirk / Maryam Abbasi 53 - The Role of Generalized Anxiety Disorder in Reading Comprehension Performance / Mohammad Mohammadi, Mehdi Dadashi, and Ebrahim Zanghani 57 - EFL Students’ Attitudes toward Adopting Computer Assisted Language Learning / Amin Raeisi 75 - Investigating Nation’s Four-Strand Model of Language Acquisition in Interchange Series Course Books / Hamid Rastin 93 Interview - An Interview with Dr. Amir Zand-Moghadam on Allameh Tabataba'i University ELT Conferences and English Students / Ali Derakhshesh 111 Army of Letters - Short Story: A King Who Did Not Want to Be “Down to Earth” / Saleh Tabatabai 119 - Poem: Join Us! / Ataollah Hassani 120 - Poem: Sauntering Shoes / Masood Farvahar Kalkhoran 121 - Poem: In Memoriam / Saleh Tabatabai 123 - Translation: Perplext in Faith / Saleh Tabatabai 124 - Translation: A Way to the Purification of the Soul from the Impurities: A Religious Excerpt / Mojgan Salmani 126 Translation Challenge - Profile: Mohammad-Taqi Bahar 133 - Tombstone / Mahshad Jalalpourroodsari 136 3 - Tombstone / Nahid Jamshidi Rad 137 - Headstone / Hossein Mohseni 138 - Tombstone / Nasrin Bedrood 139 - Next Issue Translation Challenge 140 Views and Reviews - Play: A Review of Faust’s Adaptation in Tehran / Nahid Jamshidi Rad 143 - Novella: Kafka’s Metamorphosis: Borrowing, Reinterpretation, or a New Creation of Greek Myths? / Niloufar Hematyar 149 - Short Story Writer: A Comparative Study of Joyce Carol Oates’s Short Stories / Hossein Mohseni 159 - Language: English: Its Past, Present and Future / Saleh Tabatabai 167 Threshelf - Literary Theory: The Basics 179 - Literary Theory 180 - Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader 181 - What English Language Teachers Need to Know Volume III: Designing Curriculum 182 - Language Education and Applied Linguistics: Bridging the Two Fields 183 - Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education: Vygotskian Praxis and the Research/Practice Divide 184 - Farsi Abstracts 185 4 Threshold Editorial We all thank God for His grace, which made the on-time publication of another issue of Threshold possible. I should also express my gratitude to all our readers as well as contributors for their support and continued interest in the journal. Although Threshold was first opened to realize the potential of Shahid Beheshti University students, it has never limited itself to only one university and has always welcomed contributions from all over Iran, and even at times, from universities around the world. Having gone through many ups and downs, Threshold has grown in many ways over the years, which makes us learn more and more from the past, be proud of where we stand now, and have hopes of an even brighter future. We have focused our efforts on the improvement of both format and content of the materials, attempting to make the journal better known among the students, teachers, and researchers of the field. The outcome of such efforts is reflected firstly in the journal itself and secondly in a few awards that we have been honored to receive during these years. Once more, I am glad to inform you of another success: Threshold was chosen as the best scientific student journal of Shahid Beheshti University in the 2nd Student Journals Festival of SBU this year. Mehrdad Yousefpoori-Naeim Editor-in-Chief 1 Volume 8, Number 1 2 Threshold Literary Studies 3 Volume 8, Number 1 4 Threshold Profile Ted Hughes By Hossein Mohseni Ted Edward James Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Yorkshire, the son of one of seventeen men from a regiment of several hundred to return from Gallipoli in World War One, a tragedy that imprinted the imagination of the poet. He was educated at Mexborough Grammer School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where in his later year he changed his course of study from English to archeology, pursing his interest in the mythic structures that were later to inform is poetry. In 1956, he married the American-born poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963. As poets, they explored the world of raw feeling and sensation, a world that Hughes’ poems tended to view through the eye of the predator, Plath’s through the eye of the victim. Theories, Cast of Mind, and Major Works Hughes’ Interest in the Natural World: Whereas Philip Larkin had the urbane conversational tone, Ted Hughes was more intense and more physical. He was reaching to a poetic generation who has wanted to render everything casual and everything in the language of conversation. That is why in his much lauded The Hawk in the Rain, the language had strong aural qualities; its guttural consonants and harsh plosives are indicative of the physical nature of the verse. Later, Hughes’ identification with D.H. Lawrence use of free verse- as opposed to Eliot’s use of fragments and allusions- and his exploration of the natural world made him quite distinct from the literary and cultural elite of his time. Hughes’ verse is dominated by strong and often unexpected images that create cohesion both within a particular poem and within the wider context of his work as a whole. Natural imagery dominates Hughes’ work. However, his attention to visual detail is not Wordsworthian in its precision. Instead, he transforms the natural world. So, the effect of the imagery in Hughes’ poems is 5 8Volume Number 1, to communicate meaning in a very physical way. It is a means of elevating the ordinary to a symbolic level. Nature is both other, quite apart from man and an integral part of the lifecycle to which we are all subject. Hughes’ poems therefore exist on two levels; at a physical and literal level, we see him recreating a specific scene, moment in time or idea, using analogy to bring abstractions to life. He then goes beyond this, revealing something about life and the way we perceive it. So the natural landscapes are animated by a sense of process and become the backdrop to man’s metaphysical quest for understanding. Hughes’ Crow (1970) and The Trickster Figure: The publication of Crow (1970) was to remain one of Hughes’ most enduring volumes. Retelling the legends of creation and birth through the vision of a mocking and predatory crow, Hughes attacks traditional beliefs and ridicules a tyrannical God with its bleak and bitter tone. Hughes’ mythic imagination immediately recognized the manifold mythic potentialities of the crow, as trickster, quest hero and embodiment of almost all the themes that were most urgent to Hughes at that time. The crow figures prominently (usually as trickster) in many mythologies, including the Red Indian and the Eskimo. The tale drew not only on trickster mythology, but on the whole body of myth, folklore and literature.