University of Anbar - Mohammad Deraa Farhan

Staff Portal

Mohammad Deraa Farhan (Lecturer)

MSc in English Literature

English - Education for Humanities
ed.mohammed.dera@uoanbar.edu.iq

Biography

Name:  Muhammad Dera Farhan Date of Birth:  1-1-1977                                                                Religion: Muslim Martial statues: Married No. of children: 2 Specialization: English literature_Novel Position: Teaching Staff Scientific Degree: Master Degree Work Address: University of Anbar/College of Education Work Phone: Mobile:  07808836688 E-mail: ed.mohammed.dera@uoanbar.edu.iq

Publication

uhammad Dera Farhan, the Humanistic Values in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and a Farewell to Arms. Volume: 4  year:  2011(link) 2-    Muhammad Dera Farhan, Alaa Sadoon Muhsen, Serach for Identity and Self-Realization in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Al Ustath, issue: 214 volume: 2 year : 2015. (Link)   Muhammad Dera Farhan. The Use of Irony in Willa Cather’s One of Ours. AL Ustath. Baghdad University. (link) 4-    Muhammad Dera Farhan, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: A Critical Study of war and its negative impact From an Ironic Perspective. Ijels issue: 4 vol. 2 year: 2017. (link).   Muhammad Dera Farhan, Khalid Qais Abid.  Mystery Elements in T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedra: a Thematic Reconsideration.  -    Muhammad Dera Farhan, Alaa Sadoon Muhsin. Deception and Betrayal in Harold Pinter’s the Dwarfs. 44-2-2019. (link

Lectures

First Lecture : HardTimes is a social novel, a work concerned with exposing and critiquing major social problems of the day. It amounts to a piece of social analysis, Dickens’ criticism of mid-Victorian England. As pointed out in the editors’ introduction to our text (the Norton Critical Edition, edited by George Ford and Sylvere Monod), the novel’s critique concentrates on four main topics: urban industrial life; education; utilitarianism and political economy; and the family. We will consider each of these matters in our discussion. Let’s begin with the topic of utilitarianism, which in some ways is the most important of the four main topics because it is the most pervasive. Utilitarian assumptions about what is valuable in life underlie “Gradgrindian” education, the wretched marriage of Louisa Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby, and the problematic relations between factory owners and workers such as Stephen Blackpool. In short, Coketown, a “triumph of fact” as it is called in the novel, is a satirical version of utilitarian values put into practice. Utilitarianism was initially a theory of ethics formulated in England in the 18th century by Jeremy Bentham (1747-1832), who believed that the best test of all ethical concerns was their “usefulness” to society at large. Bentham defined usefulness or utility as that which offered “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” of people. As this definition suggests, the emphasis was upon quantitative rather than qualitative values, or rather the assumption was that qualitative judgments could be determined and evaluated by quantitative means; for Bentham there was no real distinction.

Second Lecture : The principal achievement of Bentham and his followers was to effect reforms in law, government and civil service, and other basic communal institutions. Their methods were to investigate a situation, prepare reports studded with statistics, and then propose legislation based—of course—on “facts” rather than on sentiments or subjective concerns (e.g., aesthetics) or traditional beliefs. “Efficiency,” based on such facts, was the essential criterion for judgment. Utilitarian theory was advanced and refined in the 19th century by Bentham’s followers such as James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill, both of whom wanted to define “happiness” in less rigid terms so as to include some qualitative as well as quantitative considerations. In Hard Times Dickens satirizes utilitarianism in its severest form by embodying the philosophy in the character of Thomas Gradgrind, the Coketown hardware merchant, educator, and Member of Parliament. As we learn, Gradgrind is a well-intentioned and even kindly man, in his way, but one whose rigid preoccupation with facts and reason leads him to deny and suppress the faculty of imagination or “fancy,” thus impoverishing the emotional life of his family as well as others. Here Dickens exemplifies the social novel’s practice of embodying abstract ideas in the characters of the fictional narrative. By this means he enables the reader to experience the effect of those ideas by observing the behavior of the characters who represent them and to judge their effect on other characters in the novel.

Third Lecture : Education was a major concern in much of Dickens’ writing, not only because he had had important personal experiences as a child in schools—experiences both good and bad— and because he had nine children of his own to raise and educate, but also because education was a major social issue of the 19th century. With a rapidly growing population, an increasing urban working class, and middle and lower classes that were beginning to assume both political and economic power, the subject of was a constant matter of public discussion and controversy. Obviously, education was a window on the future. The kind of education put into practice would have a major impact on generations to come.

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