Keywords: memory; morality; history; redemption
The article represents the inaugural address of Professor Eveline Goodman-Thau on the occasion of her being awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj.
More...Keywords: social history; regional literature; minorities; influence; reception; exchange process; comparative approach
Romania’s accession to the European Union integrates its German speaking regions into the western value system that they have always felt to be connected to. The new cultural context enables a multiplication of the views on history, freed of resentments and of one dominating interpretation, causing the concepts of periphery and centre to lose their accuracy. The following paper analyses the consequences of these transformations on the Study of German literature. On the one hand German studies expand their literary history onto the new regions, becoming increasingly interested in it and academics in these regions have the same research facilities as the ones in Germany, thus channeling their interest also to the established German literature. Nevertheless the interest in regional literature, in the specific living, production and reception conditions persists creating identity and following the trend of specialization. Analysing the evolution of the study of regional German literature both diachronically and synchronically in the German speaking regions of Southeastern Europe, the paper shows that contemporary studies are less interested in the aspects of influence, reception and imitation and that the focus has shifted towards a comparative approach.
More...Keywords: book review
The article presents Horia Ursu's new novel - "Le siege de Vienne".
More...Keywords: coincidence; Eminescu; folklore; Maupassant; Pamfile
The paper presents the possibility of coincidence existing in their lives and in some of the works written by Mihai Eminescu and Guy de Maupassant. This coincidence may be thus found in their poetry and also in their interest for legends and fairy tales. But, folklore places Maupassant next to another Romanian, Tudor Pamfile, too.
More...Keywords: education; professionalism; standardisation; competitiveness
Universities are education institutions. Education is a broad and generous concept which, extremely often, has been regarded by the society from the viewpoint of its concrete results. Such an attitude is justified, given that, in all domains, the major interest refers to results rather than processes. The Romanian higher education appears to focus excessively on results and, consequently, there is a serious gap between the official, documentary level and reality. Such an approach cannot be beneficial to the Romanian society in the long term.
More...Keywords: Romanian language; to be; being; stereotypes; identity; living in language
The aim of this paper is to identify the contributions of the great Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica on the Romanian language. Noica’s approach towards the Romanian identity is a unique one due to the fact that identity is built up on a strong connection with the Romanian language, especially with the verb ”to be” and its continuously changing forms. The paper highlights the main cultural stereotypes associated to Romanians and a few identity aspects reflected in/by/within the Romanian language.
More...Keywords: family; foreign language; literature; migration; memory; narration; social capital; “third space”
The present paper inquires into the relationship between migration, memory and literature. It analyses aspects of the family novel to see why it gives the topic of migration a suitable form of expression. By personalising historical turning points and internalising the discourses of their time, representatives of different generations juxtapose concurring visions, giving an insight into how both memory and texts are created. Perception transforms with the changing of the cultural framework. Here the dualism between mother tongue and foreign language is important, as is the aspect of work, related to the social capital of the migrant. Finally, I refer to the trope of return, which becomes an instance of intercultural exchange.
More...Keywords: cultural semiotics; social system; constraints; conventions; moral revolution
The present study tries to elaborate an analysis of the novel No longer human from the perspective of cultural semiotics, by focusing upon concepts such as haji (‘shame’), identity, social convention, moral, crisis, which receive specific valencies in the given social and political context. In an era dominated by nationalist ideology and political expansionism, the Japanese social system, based on strict hierarchies and the idea of “closed groups”, inevitably led to a crisis of social identity. Such was the case of Osamu Dazai whose almost autobiographical literature reflected lucidly the extent of devaluation of the human condition. Trapped between desperation of soul and doubt of reason, the hero of the novel No longer human finds himself unable to cope with social constraints and falls prey to an anguish which slowly turns to a feeling of dishonor and humiliation, one that Japanese language calls haji (‘shame’). However, the concept receives multiple connotations within the context of post-war Japanese society. In this respect, the novel dwells upon the conflict between the stability of conventions and a possible moral revolution.
More...Keywords: comparison; humour; national characteristics; self-image; tolerance
This essay will compare the works of two authors : a French one (Pierre Daninos) and a Hungarian one (George Mikes), both of which are famous humorists. The same topics were chosen in their cases to illustrate the differences and similarities between two nations : the French and the English.
More...Keywords: medium; verbal narrative; story; discourse; narrativity; event; eventfulness; pictorial narrative
The article discusses the narratological concept of “eventfulness” as applied to pictorial narratives. As such, it raises questions about whether, and to what extent, verbal narratives can be taken as the ultimate narrative medium, and whether pictorial narratives avail themselves of other strategies we might call narrative, and about which we do not know enough as yet.
More...Keywords: culture; cultural organisations; leadership styles
The paper aims at investigating leadership styles within cultural organisations. With an insight into the various definitions of the term “culture”, the article is meant to shed light on the classification of leadership styles and to identify the leadership style appropriate to cultural organisations. The study is set in a geographical area known for its multicultural and multilingual background.
More...Keywords: reading; identity; literature; China; knowledge; culture
Chinese novelist and film producer, Dai Sijie has been writing his novels in French. The aim of this paper is to highlight the main similarities between Chinese and French cultures in three different novels: Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise, Le complexe de Di et Par une nuit où la lune ne s’est pas levée. In all his books, ubiquity has allways been on an ever changing fields, as a result of the fact that the two cultures continuously collide. The novels’ main topics refer on one side, to the impact that the books’ power has on the reader, and, on the other side, they are the writers’ avatar who confessed that « j’ai appartenu à une génération qui pense qu’un livre peut changer la vie ». Dai Sijie’s talent reflects in the way in which he approaches terms like Occident and Orient. The whole story is the result of the character’s presence, whose names “travel” from one book to another in order to re-emphasise the main topics: education, knowledge that do not know any historical or geographical barriers.
More...Keywords: attitude; bilingual language learners; second language proficiency; language learning strategies
Contemporary research demonstrates that both the learner’s native and non-native languages may play a role when acquiring a new language. The aim of this paper was to research the effect of dominant bilingualism of minority language learners on third language acquisition. Semi-structured interviews were used to find relevant answers. The results of the questionnaires revealed the language learning strategy choice of the learners the interviews gave a deeper insight into the individual characteristics of learners’ habits. The openness and awareness, motivation and positive experiences significantly help language learners to acquire Romanian, English or any additional languages. The scantiness in strategy choice can be traced back to poor language teaching methods in schools and lack of spontaneous language learning opportunities. The qualitative data allowed the analysis within the frames of the whole stories, the steps, techniques and strategies were all interwoven with different aspects and moments of the learners’ lives. By analyzing the interviews, the questions referring to the circumstances of learning Romanian and English, to attitudes towards language learning meant an important completion, and additional pieces of information to the research of language learning strategies.
More...Keywords: modernity; modernism; modern; modernization; poetics; traditional society; narrative space
A variety of works treat the questions of modernity, modernism, modern and modernisation. The following paragraphs are concerned with modernism through the analysis of narrative space in literary works. The theme is modernity and its rebuttal in various literary works written in the 1940’s and 1950’s by Slovak and Romanian authors, who understood modernity in a more or less negative manner, between the poetics of modernism and the modernisation of traditional society. Focus will be placed on four titles: Švantner’s novel Nevesta hôľ (1946), Sadoveanu’s short novel Horalka (in Slovak translation in 1942), and the novels by M. Eliade, which were first produced in Romanian in the same time period (Slečna Kristína, 1936 and Svätojánska noc, 1955).
More...Keywords: multilingualism; linguistic policies; linguistic integration
The paper tackles the topic of the linguistic integration of Romanians, as speakers, and that of Romanian, as a language, into the allegedly multicultural and multilingual environment of the European Union. The study establishes whether European policies have had any impact upon the Romanian foreign language policy, especially in the formulation of the language curricula. In this section, there is special focus on the translatability of European policies into the language policy at university level, with a careful examination of the case of Babeş-Bolyai University. The core of the study dwells upon what a multicultural and multilingual environment should be, that is, its defining features. It also focuses on the main linguistic trends within the European Union which value one language over another and on the groups of people that have arisen around these trends, with the arguments that account for their position. Furthermore, it aims to establish the degree of multiculturalism and multilingualism in Europe and Romania and to decide whether any hierarchy in the importance of studying one language over another, which is the case in most E.U. countries including Romania, is not a threat to multilingualism. Instead of conclusions, a series of alternatives are presented that could enrich the multilingual environment in Romania. These options are considered not only to secure equal rights to European languages within Romania, but also to contribute to a better multicultural living experience in so multilingual a background as Transylvania.
More...Keywords: War; tragic experience; surrealism; poetic substance
Our research, without any pretension of being an exhaustive analysis of two famous French poets from the 20th century, intends only to study how the tragic experience of the Second World War influenced in a different way the poetic works of Paul Eluard and René Char. The two friends who struggled together for the surrealism were deeply struck by the experience of the war and of the Resistance, and took two different ways : Eluard chose an improvised poetry, committed and militant, obsolete today, weakening and trivializing his talent. On the contrary, René Char evolved towards a maximum of concentration and essentiality of the poetic substance and has completely fascinated his critics and his readers.
More...Keywords: anamorphosis; ekphrasis; engraving; allegory; metaphor; baroque culture; Romanian language; teaching; language diversity
Terrasse à Rome by Pascal Quignard depicts the creation process of black-style engraving set against the background of the life of 17th century engraver, Meaume. Our paper uses the hermeneutical approach in order to overview and analyse the methods of mise en abyme, artistic intertextuality as well as the manner in which the engraving represents an anamorphosis of Quignard’s writing. The paper also highlights the typical ekphrasis of Quignard’s writing style, proposing at the same time a theme analysis of Meaume’s ‘black’ engravings as they are described in Pascal Quignard’s book.
More...Keywords: Asediul Vienei; Horia Ursu
book review
More...Keywords: metamorphosis; life; spirit; mimesis; utopia; dream; memory
Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is the novel of extraordinary destinies and powerful characters who are playing the game of their own destruction. It is the novel of utopia and dream, of life and death, of memory and forgiveness.
More...Keywords: Joseph Ratzinger; Benedict the XVIth; Selected Works
Book review
More...
