ABSTRACT
The shift in political and ideological orientation caused by the Iranian governmental change from the Pahlavi monarchy to Islamic Republic (1979) unleased conflicting perspectives about the status of ‘English literature’. At the time when the ‘theory-revolution’ challenged the ‘traditional’ notion of English literature in Anglo-American countries, Iran was experiencing a different ‘revolution’ with a comparable process of ‘discursive’ change. This chapter attempts to explore the Iranian reception of developments in this field, including debates about legitimacy, canonicity, and pedagogy in the Iranian context. The combination of elements in this chapter, including the result of a questionnaire, attempts to present the complex issues, intellectual purpose, and the direction of ‘English literature’ in Iran which is invisible, or opaque, to Western critics.
