Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran
2 Ph.D. Candidate of Persian Language and Literature, Allameh Tabatabaʼi University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
The psychological roots of most of human actions have been explained by the science of psychoanalysis. By reinterpreting Freud’s views, Jacques Lacan made a great revolution in psychoanalysis and presented a new linguistic reading of such concepts as demand, desire, child and the post-childhood period. The psychoanalytical ideas of Jacques Lacan can be used as methods or perspectives for analyzing works of children’s literature. In this research, we have tried to explain the repetition of children’s desire in the symbolic or the adaptation of secondary identity in Mohammad Sohrabi's The Teacher of the Ants and Mitra Masiha’s Little Elephant, Where did You Sleep? The findings of the research show that characters such as the honey bee, the duckling, and in one occasion the crow, felt a sense of integrity and wholeness due to seeing an imaginary image of the integrated ego in a mirror held by other or mother in front of them. The childish demand was stable for the person until he/she had not faced the lack in him/herself and had not recognized the ego as a castrated identity. Also, when a person identifies the ego as a castrated entity, he/she enters into the adaptation of the secondary identity or the domain of the symbolic of the Other’s desire in order to be able to recover his/her ideal ego as a childish demand. At this stage, the person follows the implications of the symbolic order with the hope of regaining the previous childish demand; however, he/she fails every time due to the representation of the sign of anxiety.
Keywords
- Jacques Lacan
- psychoanalytic criticism
- children's poetry and stories
- The Teacher of the Ants
- Little Elephant
- Where did You Sleep?
Main Subjects
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