CEEOL - Browse Subjects Result

We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.

Ludopoetic Interplay in Baba is You

Author(s): Imre Olivér Horváth / Language(s): English Issue: 3 - SI/2024

The study investigates aspects of ludopoetic interplay in Baba is You, a digital puzzle game that radically reimagines the relationship between language, gameplay, and meaning-making. Through a close reading of selected game levels, we identify several features that render the game poetic: its use of emotive linguistic markers, its emphasis on verbal creation, and the player’s engagement with and enjoyment of linguistic play. By analysing the game’s unique mechanics of rule manipulation, we examine how players interact with language as both a procedural system and a poetic medium. The study identifies five modes of interaction between referential (metaphorical) and intraprocedural (metonymical) transfers of meaning, including exclusion, diversion, and mutual support. We argue that the game achieves its poetic quality especially by prioritising metonymy over metaphor, foregrounding the materiality of language and the performative power of words. By enabling players to dynamically reconstruct game rules through linguistic manipulation, Baba is You transforms gameplay into an act of linguistic creativity.

More...

Objects Really Matter: Ludo-Representationalism and the Reality of Digital Games

Author(s): Tamás Csönge / Language(s): English Issue: 3 - SI/2024

The aim of this paper is to identify the reasons for the contradictory conclusions of the fictionalist and the realist theoretical positions on the ontological status of digital game objects. First, the applicability of the Waltonian notion of fiction regarding digital game objects and events is challenged. The paper clarifies that the debate contains a categorical misunderstanding, and that it is not really about the discursive quality of fictionality (or factuality), but about an ontological opposition between represented and real objects. It is then demonstrated that digital game objects belong to a special category of non-physical informational entities that realists rightly consider real because they exhibit systemic behaviour, but fictionalists are also correct regarding their function as signifiers of non-real, represented objects. Following Aarseth, a distinction is made between represented, simulated and real objects. It is argued that simulated digital game objects are real objects, but not necessarily the same kind of objects as those they represent: a virtual library is a library, but a virtual kitten is not a kitten. Finally, it is suggested that the main reason for the confusion about the existential status of game elements is an issue of descriptive language: a confusion between signifier and signified and the uniform designation of heterogeneous phenomena.

More...

Preparing a Tabletop Role-Playing Game Experiment: Methodological Notes for Studying the Immersion of Tabletop Role-Playing Game Participants

Author(s): András Hlavacska / Language(s): English Issue: 3 - SI/2024

The study aims to contribute to the research that seeks a better understanding of the language of tabletop role-playing games through the analysis of video recordings of game sessions. In the autumn of 2021, the Tabletop Role-playing Game Research Group at the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Debrecen performed an experiment, the aim of which was to analyse the communication of role-playing participants through video recordings. During the experiment, the research team recorded 38 hours and 47 minutes of video footage of the games played by participants with no previous role-playing experience; a text transcript was made of the recordings, in which different types of utterances were marked with colour codes. In this study, we present the preparation and execution of the experiment, paying special attention to preliminary proposals for similar experiments in the future. The experiment served as a basis of a subsequent quantitative and qualitative analysis, the purpose of which was to make the role-play participants’ immersion the subject of a closer examination. It is important to emphasise that this study does not discuss the results of the analysis due to the partial processing of the video recordings. However, it scrutinises the methodological possibility of examining the immersive experience of role-players through their communication.

More...

Arabo-islamski ključevi u Don Kihotu - među Moriscima

Author(s): Pilar Garrido Clemente / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 65-68/2024

Don Quixote de la Mancha, the monumental work of Miguel de Cervantes, is one of the pillars of world literature. This research focuses on the vast Islamic and Arabic components of a masterpiece whose legacy continues to inspire new generations and to be studied and reinterpreted.

More...

Vklad Antona Habovštiaka k problematike teritoriálnej diferencovanosti slovenských nárečí a ich klasifikácie

Author(s): Mária Mikolajová,Gabriela Múcsková / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/2024

The article presents some models of territorial classification of the Slovak dialectal area, which were created in the course of the development of Slovak linguistics and dialectology. At the same time, it reminds that the differentiation of Slovak dialects has to a large extent the character of a dialectal continuum, therefore territorial classifications are always the result of a certain abstraction and selection of linguistic criteria as well as the consideration of extra-linguistic factors. The first classifications were based almost exclusively on extra-linguistic factors (namely the division of the territory into the old administrative units in the Hungarian Empire). During the development of classifications of Slovak dialects, it is possible to identify a gradual tendency to increase reflection of linguistic data and isoglosses, and extra-linguistic factors served as one of the potential motivations. In this article, special attention is paid to the contribution of A. Habovštiak’s work to the research of dialect differentiation and the basic principles of their classification.

More...

Otázky sociálnej diferencovanosti slovenského národného jazyka v diele Antona Habovštiaka

Author(s): Stella Ondrejčiková / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/2024

This paper presents views on the social differentiation of the Slovak national language with regard to the works of A. Habovštiak in the context of development of the Slovak linguistics. The social differentiation of the national language and, within its framework, the relation between the literary or standard language and the territorial dialect was studied by linguists such as J. Horecký, J. Bosák, I. Ripka, D. Slančová and M. Sokolová, Ľ. Kralčák and others. The views on this relation were influenced by the historical development, political situation and the development of society, and it was the topic of several linguistic conferences and discussions. Within this framework, Anton Habovštiak dealt mainly with the questions of the standard – dialect relationship, the influence of other languages on dialects, semi-varieties, the stylistic differentiation in dialects and specific social varieties as slang and argot, in particular, the language of the linen weavers and merchants. The aim is to present an overview of linguistic perspectives and unique contribution of Habovštiak, who looked at these issues from a dialectological perspective.

More...

Czech structuralism at the end of the 1950s: an ideological struggle over the legacy of the Prague School

Author(s): Marie Havránková,Vladimír Petkevič / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

The article explores the history of linguistic structuralism in Czechoslovakia in 1957–1959 during a political thaw following Stalinist repression. Initially rejected in favour of dogmatic “theories” like Marrism and Stalin’s ideas on language, structuralism gained acceptance after its discussion in the Soviet journal ʻVoprosy iazykoznaniia’ in 1956. The first part analyses how structuralism, once ideologically dismissed, was reintroduced as a valuable methodology within official Marxist science. This was notably demonstrated at the 1958 4th International Congress of Slavists in Moscow, where the Prague Linguistic Circle’s “new theses” were presented, reflecting on its past development. The second part examines a 1959 polemic between two prominent linguists: František Trávníček, a member of the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic, and Bohuslav Havránek, head of the Czech Language Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. Trávníček criticized the work of the Academy in a series of texts, while Havránek responded by refuting the criticism and defending structuralism. The polemic revealed Trávníček’s reliance on politicized clichés, whereas Havránek upheld structuralist theory as a rigorous scientific approach. This stance was further affirmed at the 1962 Liblice conference, where Havránek openly defended the principles of structural linguistics.

More...

A critical examination of the notion of norm in literary structuralism and film historiography

Author(s): Radomir D. Kokeš / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

The article critically examines the notion of (aesthetic) norm as developed by Jan Mukařovský and its later applications in David Bordwell’s poetics of cinema. It distinguishes between two approaches to the concept of norm in Mukařovský’s work – the systemic and the explanatory – and traces how each influenced different research programs: Czech literary structuralism and American neoformalist poetics of cinema. It then explores how Bordwell operationalized the notion of norm as a methodological tool, demonstrating its shifting analytical role across his works. It also situates this discussion within a transdisciplinary framework, highlighting how literary scholars can engage with the empirical potential of the notion of norm, while film scholars can benefit from a deeper understanding of its theoretical foundations. The conclusion proposes a reconsideration of norms as a tool for studying artistic creativity, linking them to debates on conventions and historiography.

More...

The Divergent or Convergent Paths of Law and Emotions in William Shakespeare’s Plays. Introductory Remarks

Author(s): Katarzyna Jaworska-Biskup / Language(s): English Issue: 15/2024

The paper provides an introduction to law and emotions in William Shakespeare’s plays. It briefly discusses the existing research in the field of affect and the law and how those two dimensions are reflected in Shakespeare’s literature. The Author also briefly comments on the research outcomes of the Contributors to the current volume

More...

Retributivism Gone Mad: Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure

Author(s): David A.J. Richards / Language(s): English Issue: 15/2024

Measure for Measure is ostensibly a comedy (no one dies, and the main penalties at the play’s end are, hilariously, requiring marriage), but it is a much darker comedy than any other Shakespeare wrote written after Hamlet, retaining features of that play’s moral nihilism. Its nihilism takes the form of a criticism of the claims of strong retributivism as a basis for criminal justice, namely, that it is necessary and sufficient for punishment that there be a moral wrong, and the nature of punishment is to be determined by the nature of the wrong (thus, death for killing). The play focusses on the criminalisation of two forms of consensual sex: the commercial sex business of Mistress Overdone and Pompey, her servant, and the non-commercial loving sex of Claudio with Juliet, now pregnant, who shortly intend to marry. The play questions the first comically, the second tragically. The article explores the play’s indictment of strong retributivism, and charts a path to an alternative, namely, restorative justice.

More...

“The Sense of Death is Most in Apprehension” Law and Death in Augustine, Donne and Measure for Measure

Author(s): Terry Reilly / Language(s): English Issue: 15/2024

Early modern English law recognised two forms of death that are mostly unfamiliar to modern culture – civiliten mortuus, a term in Civil Law to indicate that a criminal convicted of a capital crime was considered dead at the time of conviction, not when he was executed, and mortuus saeculo, referring to the form of “secular death” which occurred when a man or woman entered a religious order, such as a convent or monastery (Clarkson and Warren: 261). After developing legal and literary contexts about the contemporary discourse concerning death, using legal cases and selected works of Augustine and John Donne this paper examines representations of these legal definitions of death in Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure.

More...

Флексивното разграничаване на съществителните от мъжки и женски род в множествено число в българския книжовен език през Възраждането

Author(s): Lachezar Perchekliyski / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: Special/2025

The article examines the problem of identifying the dictionary form and grammatical gender of nouns with the suffixes -(н)ик and -(н)ица occurring only in the plural in Bulgarian Revival texts. This difficulty arises from several factors: 1) in the 19th century, many dialectal words, as well as specialised terms form various spheres of public life entered the Bulgarian literary language; 2) no comprehensive dictionaries documenting the lexical richness of the language existed; 3) the plural endings of nouns with the suffixes -(н)ик and -(н)ица historically converged (-ници and -ици). Given these circum-stances, researchers can rely on the written distinctions between the nominative and accusative forms of masculine plural nouns, as well as the graphical differentiation between the nominative plural endings of masculine and feminine nouns. Lexicographic works published after the Liberation also played an important role. Further, the article explores how 19th-century grammar books, published in the second and third quarters of the century, addressed the issue of differentiating plural noun endings. Several examples from the 1871 Bible, provided in the study, illustrate how the problem of deter-mining the dictionary form of plural nouns with the suffixes -(н)ик and -(н)ица was resolved in practice.

More...

Lexika slovenských nárečí v celoslovanskom kontexte. Príspevok ku konfrontačnému slavistickému výskumu Antona Habovštiaka

Author(s): Gabriel Rožai / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/2024

This paper presents the results and clarifies the scientific contribution of A. Habovštiak’s confrontational Slavic research focused on the lexicon Slovak dialects in the Slavic context, which he presented in numerous articles published in domestic and foreign scientific journals and proceedings and later in a summarized form in the monograph Zo slovensko-slovanských lexikálnych vzťahov (so zreteľom na lingvistickú geografiu) [From Slovak-Slavic Lexical Relations (with Regard to Linguistic Geography)] from 1993. With an emphasis on the Slovak-Slavic context, we can summarise that the author significantly contributed to the discussions about defining the place of Slovak in the group of Slavic languages, shed light on its West Slavic character and its relations with South Slavic and East Slavic languages, pointed to the peculiar development of the Slovak lexical fund and on the special continuity of the Slovak dialect lexicon with its Proto-Slavic linguistic origin.

More...

The Ambiguity of Milk: Lactation and Maternal Identity in Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Author(s): Hanna Gęba / Language(s): English Issue: 15/2024

This article discusses the motif of lactation in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Breastfeeding was an ambiguous phenomenon for Shakespeare’s contemporaries – it meant both an absolute power over the nursing child and an act of self-sacrifice, often out of love. It is no coincidence that Lady Macbeth admits she “had given suck” and that in her monologue directed to “spirits” she asks them to “take her milk for gall” to do dark deeds. The article’s main methodological contexts are the medical knowledge and superstitions about breastfeeding in Early Modern England and sexual difference feminism as it is understood in the works of Elizabeth Grosz and Rosi Braidotti. The argument for such a combination is the non-dichotomic perception of the mind and body relationship in both Shakespeare’s times and these scholars’ theories. By closely examining the motif of lactation we can better understand how Shakespeare depicts motherhood and how he constructs maternal figures in the Scottish Tragedy.

More...

„Kvietí sě zjevilo na našie zemi.“ Geneze dorotejského diskursu a tři staročeská kázání ke svaté Dorotě

Author(s): Vendula Rejzlová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2025

Three Old Czech sermon collections – Passionál (Passional; autograph, c. 1357), Kázání dzikovská na okruh de sanctis (Dzikov sermons on the de Sanctis Cycle; sole surviving manuscript from the 1420s), and Sbírka kázaní založených na legendách (A collection of sermons based on legends; sole surviving manuscript, likely completed in 1453) – were produced over a span of a century, drawing from original Latin sources of Dominican origin: Legenda aurea (c. 1267) by Jacobus de Voragine and Sermones de Sanctis (c. 1295 – 1304) by Peregrinus of Opole. All three Old Czech collections include sermons on Dorothea of Caesarea, a virgin and martyr whose cult became popular in Central Europe from the 13th century and saw significant expansion in the 14th century. However, neither Jacobus’s nor Peregrinus’s original collections contained a section on Saint Dorothy, meaning that the anonymous preachers had to rely on other sources. This study first traces the development of Saint Dorothy’s hagiography and then explores its dissemination in the Czech lands from the mid-14th century onward. A comparative analysis reveals that each of the three Old Czech texts underwent a distinct evolution and represents a different sermon type: two distinct passiones serving as exempla and a classical thematic sermon.

More...

Když se Pán Bůh v hněvu svém rozpálí. Česká kázání o katastrofách z období pozdního humanismu a Malé doby ledové

Author(s): Marie Hanzelková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2025

Between 1550 and 1620, nearly twenty sermons and treatises on natural disasters were published, mostly in Prague. Their authors, Utraquist priests, responded to contemporary catastrophic events – plague epidemics, earthquakes, storms, floods, fires, famine, war, and locust infestations – as well as celestial phenomena and monstrous births. Reflecting the intellectual landscape of the time, these sermons also incorporated scientific findings, micro-stories, and songs or prayers. All sermons interpreted catastrophes as divine messages: expressions of God’s wrath, signs of the approaching Judgment Day, but also manifestations of God’s fatherly care and love. This paper explores the representation of catastrophes and the oscillation of preachers between established literary topoi and individual authorial experience. Additionally, I examine the role of climatic stress and the broader social crisis of the period in as reflected in what is known as Wunderzeichen literature and consider how the society responded to these challenges.

More...

Gestika v raně novověkém herectví (a kazatelství?)

Author(s): Magdaléna Jacková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2025

The performative aspect – delivery – was considered a crucial, if not the most important, component of rhetoric already in antiquity. This was undoubtedly also true for early modern homiletics. However, this aspect of sermons remains virtually unknown today, primarily because it could not be recorded in its time. Apart from visual representation, we must therefore rely on theoretical works whose authors, at least to some extent, addressed the performative form of preaching. These include both classical works, which served as the primary sources of inspiration in the early modern period, and contemporary studies. This paper aims to provide an overview, based on selected works, of the types of gestures preachers may have used during this period and the principles and rules that guided them. The starting point is Institutio oratoria by Marcus Fabius Quintilian, who, alongside Cicero, is regarded as the foremost authority in rhetoric, as well as two works by Jesuit authors: Joseph de Jouvancy’s De ratione discendi et docendi and Franz Lang’s poetics Dissertatio de actione scenica.

More...

Czy milkną muzy, gdy grają armaty? Perspektywa antropologiczna w romansie Adam i Ewa Sergiusza Piaseckiego

Author(s): Jakub Horbacz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15/2024

The article is a reading of the work by Sergiusz Piasecki (1899–1964) Adam and Ewa by approaching love in confrontation with the system from an anthropological perspective. Piasecki’s tragic romance is subjected to a critical sketch in a research approach to the affective turn, placing in the center the feelings and emotions of the main characters, as well as the author of the text himself. Piasecki’s words become a determinant about two great loves – Adam’s for Eve and the author’s love for Vilnius and the Vilnius region. For the proper reception of the work, the chosen practice of close reading remains important – focused reading, emphasizing what is detailed, the elements of articulating love and describing the system, as well as specific parts of the work. The whole thing is an attempt at an answer to the question whether the muses fall silent when cannons play in understanding whether love ultimately kills war and the political system. The verification of the meanings hidden in the romance Adam i Ewa does not avoid confrontation with historical and philosophical contexts, thus building a colorful portrait of the Polish, especially Vilnius, socio-political situation in 1939 and the outbreak of World War II, at the intersection of feelings and the system.

More...

Aspekt lokálneho v toponomastických prácach Antona Habovštiaka

Author(s): Patrik Jakubek / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/2024

Anton Habovštiak, known in the wide linguistic sphere primarily as an excellent dialectologist, in addition to his main scientific activity in dialectology, was also engaged in the onomastic sphere, especially in the field of anoikonyms. His toponomastic works, culminated in the summarizing monograph Oravské chotárne názvy [Field Names of the Orava Region] (1970), are significant in their structure not only as a sociolinguistic probe into the life of the former inhabitants of his native Orava and their connection with the use of the language, but above all for their enormous contribution to the then beginnings of nationwide anoikonymy research and the creation of Slovak onomastics as such in the second half of the 20th century. The linking of the sociolinguistic aspect with the traditional onomastic and dialectological element can be described as a novelty of the time, which undoubtedly deserves closer attention. Therefore, the primary aim of the paper is a comprehensive presentation of this selected and still inspiring onomastic segment in the otherwise rich and varied scientific research activity of this renowned Slovak linguist.

More...

Vplyv nárečovej a historickej lexiky na poetiku a intencionalitu literárnych (povesťových) textov Antona Habovštiaka

Author(s): Peter Karpinský / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/2024

The paper focuses on the study of temporal and territorial lexis in Anton Habovštiak’s folklore collection Skamenená dievka [Petrified Girl] (1977), primarily analysing the occurrence and functional use of archaic, historical, and dialectal elements. It examines how these lexemes influence the interpretation of these texts and their poetics to intentionality (the text’s focus on a child recipient). Special attention is given to temporal lexis, intended to characterize different regions of Slovakia, as the folklore collection displays a heteroregional character. The presence or absence of dialectal words is particularly monitored. Another partial topic of the paper is the investigation of how outdated prefixes and suffixes create the archaic character of the text. The paper identifies these elements and examines their impact on the historical, cultural, and linguistic context of Habovštiak’s tales, highlighting a certain temporal universality of his literary expression.

More...