Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Department of Persian literary, faculty of literary Humanities, University of zabol
Abstract
This article examines the comparative representation of child labor in William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” and Parvin Etesami’s “The Potter’s Child” based on Stuart Hall’s theory of discourse and representation. In these poems, the representation of the child functions as a discursive mechanism for the production of meaning and social critique, reflecting the child’s position, his relation to structures of power, and social inequalities through the medium of literature. The research adopts an analytical-descriptive method and is based on library note-taking. The aim of the study is to investigate the role of the child as a focal point of meaning production and to analyze the structural and semantic similarities in his representation in the two poems, grounded in the American school of comparative literature. The comparative analysis shows that in both poems, the child is simultaneously a symbol of vulnerability and innocence and a knowing subject who exposes the moral and economic crises of society. Through forced labor and material deprivation, the child’s representation makes it possible to reveal inequalities and critique social structures. The findings clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of Hall’s theory of discourse and representation in analyzing the representation of marginalized subjects and the production of meaning in children’s literature.
Keywords
- The Chimney Sweeper
- William Blake
- The Potter’s Child
- Parvin Etesami
- discourse and representation theory of Stuart Hall
Main Subjects
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