Session 2: Evil in National/Religious(?) Fiction

Session 2: Evil in National/Religious(?) Fiction
Chair: Ann-Marie Cook

Islam’s View on Evil and Popular Iranian Fiction
Amirhossein Sadeghi and Hakimeh Entesari
Department of English, University of Qom, Qom, Iran

Islam has developed a special view on the nature and meaning of evil (Sharr in Arabic language) as opposed to the materialistic and every day interpretation of evil. This view is introduced in the holy book of Islam i.e. Quran, both to define the nature of evil and to put forward its manifestations on earth. No earthly criterion is recognized in the holy Quran to distinguish the evil from the good (Khayr in Arabic language). The only criterion mentioned to understand the evilness of a phenomenon, event, action, or behavior is whether it is in accordance with God’s satisfaction or not. It is precisely due to this fact that it is stated in the holy Quran that what might seem to be the source of good for human being may turn out to be evil for him/her. The last idea has encouraged different even contradictory interpretations of the meaning of evil in Islamic societies. One important institution (in its Foucauldian sense) for the emergence of these interpretations is popular fiction. The essay first introduces the Quranic view on the meaning and manifestations of evil, and then tries to explain the way the popular fiction of present Iran as an Islamic society, interprets/appropriates Islamic thought to support the dominant ideologies in the society. The essay focuses on a novel entitled Bamdade Khomar – deemed as the most popular novel in recent decade. The novel arrays its forces and discourses into the binary fronts of the evil and the good, repeatedly using the Quranic words for them (Sharr and Khayr) to give them Islamic overtones to attract the sympathy of readers toward the good forces and discourses portrayed in the novel. In this way the reader is persuaded that the novel’s arrangement of forces is a religious one and unintentionally sympathizes with the dominant ideology portrayed by the author in the form of good forces against the marginal discourses in the form of evil forces.

The Presence of Evil: Violence as Technique in The Roman Catholic Writer
Evangeline Manickam
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India

Forces of good and evil have battled as subject matter of literature from Dante to Dostoevsky, the Mahabharatha to Machiavelli, Star Wars to Harry Potter. Religious and secular writers have honed their craft on the universally acknowledged presence of evil to make masterpieces and perhaps their life’s millions.
This paper interprets the short fiction of two exceptionally gifted, contemporary twentieth century Roman Catholic writers, Flannery O’Connor and JF Powers, who made the doctrinal tenets of Christian orthodoxy the basis of their work.
O’Connor’s stories use a diabolic satiric impulse, a demonic sensibility that apparently place her as a writer on the devil’s side. Her bizarre comedy and sardonic humor baffle the reader and offend Christian sensibilities on first encounter. Her deliberately unorthodox, irreligious stance creates an illusion of contemporary alienated literature. Her characters begin with secular viewpoints which prove unworkable in their experience. Through structural devices of violent, cataclysmic intrusion of incomprehensible evil and ironic reversal her naive, complacent protagonists are initiated into harsh realities of vice and villainy, awareness of the presence of evil, consciousness of vulnerability, and the need for grace.
By contrast, JF Powers describes confrontation with evil as small, subtle and unexciting, suggesting with peculiar perception that evil does not necessarily make a great noise in the world. The Roman Catholic Church, the inner workings of rectory life, the worldly priest serve his irreverent muse.Through quiet humor, intense introspection, and a psychologically violent demolition of proud certainties, precipitated by a subtle assault on his moral values, Powers’ hero recognizes his potential for wrong, and the presence of evil within himself.
In an age that carelessly discarded values of faith and spirituality, through popular secular techniques of violence, these writers made their faith an asset rather than a hindrance to their craft, producing art beyond demarcations of sacred and profane.

Representations of War in Canadian Fiction
Mercedes Díaz Dueñas
Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana, Facultad de Traducción e Interpretación, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain

The evils of war have often been represented in the arts. Amongst them, literature frequently portrays warfare, and Canadian literature is no exception. However, it is striking that the topic of war, especially as regards its physical and emotional consequences, features very predominantly in contemporary Canadian fiction (as I have argued elsewhere, 2005). Dagmar Novak (2000) notes that Canada’s perception of war, studied through the novels published from 1915 to 1955, can be described as the shift from “glory to dubious glory” (5). Contemporary writers have definitely abandoned any heroic idea of war and concentrate on its harmful effects.
In this paper I will examine the ways in which several of the most successful and well-known Canadian writers have dealt during the last decade of the twentieth century with the wars in Europe. I will explore how Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, Anne Michaels’ Fugive Pieces, Michael Ondaatje’ The English Patient and Jane Urquhart’s The Underpainter tell stories of characters whose lives are deeply affected by war.
The analysis will show that these works establish a direct connection between war and Europe, considering Europe as the source and site of evil and destruction. I will argue that the insistence on this extremely negative image of Europe is a way of picturing Europe as the Other, of establishing a distance between Canada and Europe. Hence, these novels perform what can be interpreted as a postcolonial rewriting of these events by exposing the fact that Canada’s connection to the British Empire is the cause for the country’s involvement in the war and, consequently, for the suffering it causes. Moreover, I will conclude that this type of writing has allowed Canadian artists to detach themselves from Europe and the British Empire, and in a way to perform a distinctive Canadian identity.