The Magic Lamp in American Fiction: An Archetypal Approach to Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut

Q1 Arts and Humanities

International Journal of Arabic-English Studies Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI:10.33806/ijaes2000.23.1.9

N. J. Kadhim

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Abstract

This paper examines the symbolism of the magic lamp in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Kurt Vonnegut's Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp (1957). This study, which uses an archetypal approach to the texts, demonstrates how the American authors use the literary source of the magic lamp image from the Middle Eastern folktale collection of the Arabian Nights, where the lamp essentially represents Aladdin's dream and a quick route to success. Furthermore, the two authors aim to transform this image into the motif of the American dream in its modern contexts. These two literary works likewise made an effort to use the picture as a vehicle for the issues of slavery, racial prejudice, and class inequality. Additionally, the characters’ desire to escape their social and economic constraints is, contrary to what they anticipate, frustrated because of their use of the lamp. Moreover, the wishes of the characters in both texts to escape from their social and economic restraints are, contrary to their expectations, thwarted as a result of their use of the lamp. This negative outcome renders the function of the lamp the opposite to its original function in the literary sources of the texts.

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美国小说中的神灯:马克·吐温和库尔特·冯内古特的原型分析

本文考察了马克·吐温的《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》（1884年）和库尔特·冯内古特的《哈尔·欧文的魔灯》（1957年）中魔灯的象征意义。这项研究采用了原型方法来处理文本，展示了美国作家如何使用中东民间故事集《天方夜谭》中的神灯形象的文学来源，在那里，神灯本质上代表了阿拉丁的梦想和通往成功的捷径。此外，两位作者的目的是将这一形象转变为美国梦在现代语境中的主题。这两部文学作品同样努力将这幅画作为奴隶制、种族偏见和阶级不平等问题的载体。此外，与他们预期的相反，角色想要逃离社会和经济约束的愿望因使用灯而受挫。此外，这两部文本中的人物想要摆脱社会和经济约束的愿望，与他们的预期相反，由于他们使用了灯而受挫。这种消极的结果使灯的功能与它在文本文学来源中的原始功能相反。

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来源期刊

International Journal of Arabic-English Studies Arts and Humanities-Literature and Literary Theory

CiteScore

1.10

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The aim of this international refereed journal is to promote original research into cross-language and cross-cultural studies in general, and Arabic-English contrastive and comparative studies in particular. Within this framework, the journal welcomes contributions to such areas of interest as comparative literature, contrastive textology, contrastive linguistics, lexicology, stylistics, and translation studies. The journal is also interested in theoretical and practical research on both English and Arabic as well as in foreign language education in the Arab world. Reviews of important, up-to- date, relevant publications in English and Arabic are also welcome. In addition to articles and book reviews, IJAES has room for notes, discussion and relevant academic presentations and reports. These may consist of comments, statements on current issues, short reports on ongoing research, or short replies to other articles. The International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) is the forum of debate and research for the Association of Professors of English and Translation at Arab Universities (APETAU). However, contributions from scholars involved in language, literature and translation across language communities are invited.