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In this study, we propose the analysis of a series of biblical quotations in the last Cervantine novel in order to identify the role that these could play in highlighting the meanings of the book and in the narrative strategy of the author.
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The article aims to compare the creative principles of the epic and that of archaic art. The standard repeatable vocabulary of folklore and art is determined by the use of object and action formulas and themes, as well as rhythm and symmetry in the composition. In this way content is condensed and the whole myth can be read / remembered. For the initiates in the language of mythological thinking, figurative hints are sufficient to reproduce a mythological situation. As in myth and ritual, cosmogony is realized through naming, so in art the world is created through obtaining an image. The article draws analogies with Balkan folklore, as well as Greek, Vedic and Celtic mythology.
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According to ancient authors, the ordering of the Thracian ethnicities from the Bosporus/Bosphorus to the east along the Anatolian Black Sea Coast is as follows: Bithynians, Thynians, Mariandinians, Tibarenes, Halybes, Mosynoikes and Paphlagones. Located on the map, they are identified in modern settlements and sites: Kefken, Eregli, Amasra, Sinop, Hissar, Akliman, Ikiztepe, Ordu, Trabzon. In and around them were observed interesting topographical locations associated with objects from the Thracian times.
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A series of remarkable images on mosaics from sepulchral buildings or ritual halls, textile works of art within a Christian context, as well as pyxides, introduce strange and unusual mythological figures into the widespread theme of Orpheus taming wild animals. A special place in the pictorial composition is occupied by the figure of a centaur, who seems to have had complex functions indicating the space of the events. This paper aims to systematize the source base, to analyze “the narrative,” and to offer new details to the interpretation of the remarkable and enigmatic scene, which – in combination with the fragmented poetic evidence – allows the reconstruction of a possible mythological precedent for the journey of Orpheus to the World Beyond, where he attained the mystic theological knowledge and that allowed him to lay the foundations of the mysterial initiations. Those eschatological notions were projected in some early Christian or Christian gnostic communities in the period between the 2nd and the mid-6th century, as indicated by sacral and funerary monuments.
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The ancient novels, written in Greek or Latin, appeared around the Ist century AD and quickly became a popular genre. Drawing from a number of topoi and common themes, both in their narratives and in their style, these works reflected perceptions of the present, problems and questionings of their time. The genre of the ancient novel also shared numerous themes and means of expression with ‘higher’ literary genres from the same period, such as those of the Second sophistic. Later, the novels enjoyed popularity in the Byzantine empire and in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The paper aims at exploring there presentation of Thrace and the Thracians in the works of several authors of ancient novels such as Apuleius, Longus, Helliodorus and Pseudo-Callisthenes by gathering and analyzing interpretations of various figures from the history and the mythology of the region as well as generic representations and themes related to it. The paper will thus contribute to the main subject of the readings by bringing into light some of the manners in which the image of Thrace and the Thracians evolved in the Graeco-Roman culture from the first centuries of the Empire.
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This article discusses the various stereotypes associated with Thrace and the Thracians during the Roman era, not only drawn from the Greek literary tradition, but also directly inspired by the political situation in Rome and the Balkans, skillfully intertwined by Apuleius to offer different levels of interpretation.
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Serving as introduction to this Special Issue, this article presents a thematic review of topics involved in studies on humour and belonging. It briefly elaborates on the intricacies of concepts such as humour, sense of humour and belonging and their relationships. It then provides a selective review of some major relevant studies. Finally, the themes and contents of the Special Issue are introduced.
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This paper combines perspectives from evolutionary biology and linguistics to discuss the earlyevolution of laughter and the possible role of laughter-like vocalisation as a bonding mechanismin hominins and early human species. From the perspective of evolutionary biology, we hereemphasise several things: the role of exaptation, the typically very slow pace of evolutionarychange, and the danger of projecting backwards from the current utilities of laughter to inferits earlier function, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years ago. From the perspectiveof linguistics, we examine both the semantics of the word ‘laugh’ and the vocal mechanics ofhuman laughter production, arguing that greater terminological care is needed in talking aboutthe precursors of laughter in the ancient evolutionary past. Finally, we turn to hypotheses abouthow laughter-like vocalisations may have arisen, long before articulate language as we know ittoday. We focus in particular on Robin Dunbar’s hypothesis that laughter-like vocalisation,which stimulated endorphin production, might have functioned as a bonding mechanism (a kindof “vocal grooming”) among hominins and early human species.The paper contributes to the special issue theme (Humour and Belonging) by casting a longlook backwards in time to laughter-like vocalisation as a distant evolutionary precursor ofhumour, and to bonding as an evolutionary precursor to cognitively and socially modern formsof “belonging”. At the same time, it cautions against casual theorising about the evolutionaryorigins of laughter.
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Drawing on a range of American, Australian, British and Scandinavian research into laughter,the current paper will use the form of pragmatic analysis typically found in qualitative researchand apply it to data produced by the quantitative methodology common in the author’s owndiscipline of psychology. Laughter will be examined as an indexical that serves both a discoursedeictic function, designating the utterance in which it occurs as non-serious, and a social deicticfunction, marking the laughing person’s preference for social proximity with fellowinterlocutors. The paper will then analyse examples and data pertaining to three types oflaughter bout derived from taking laughter as an indexical. First, solitary listener laughter willbe argued to signify a deferential acknowledgement of continued solidarity with the speaker.Second, solitary speaker laughter will be suggested to mark a simple preference for solidarity.Third, joint laughter will be accepted as a signifier of actual solidarity that may also be used tomark status depending on which party typically initiates the joint laughter. Joint laughter thusacts in a manner closely analogous to the exchange of another set of indexicals, the T and Vversions of second person pronouns in European languages. Finally, the paper will concludeby examining the problematic case of laughing at another interlocutor, before brieflyconsidering the implications of this pragmatic perspective for traditional accounts of laughteras well as for future research.
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This study examines the use of online humour in a subversive local community Facebook group set up in 2017 by disgruntled members banned from a similar group “in opposition to [the original group’s] arbitrarily-applied rules, [its] enforced happiness, and [its] suppression of any post that isn't about giving away lemons or asking to borrow small appliances”. The dissatisfaction with the guidelines and the administration of the original Facebook group provides rich material for humorous posts in the new group, many with varying degrees of aggression directed at the founder and certain members of the “Dark Side”, as the original group is frequently referred to. This article will demonstrate how the use of humour in this new rival Facebook group is used for the purposes of inclusion and exclusion, and how it contributes to a sense of belonging in this online community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991) created by a small group of selfdeclared dissidents. It will be shown how the humour shapes the identity of the group through the members’ shared ideologies and beliefs (Tanskanen 2018), and how the humorous messages intended to denigrate and belittle the “Dark Side” reinforce unity among the group members, since the feeling of superiority over those being ridiculed coexists with a feeling of belonging (Billig 2005). Fifteen single comments or multi-post threads were chosen for analysis. These appeared during the first twenty months of this rival group’s existence, and included primarily affiliative and/or aggressive humour (Meyer 2015) directed at the original group. The analysis was carried out using elements of computer-mediated discourse analysis (Herring 2004), and an insider participant-observer online ethnographic approach. The examples chosen illustrate how the humour is used to unite the members of this subversive group by dividing them from the original one, to create the joking culture (Fine and de Soucey 2005) of the new group, and in so doing, creates and sustains the members’ shared identity as irreverent breakaway troublemakers.
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Our study examines the impacts on workers when organisational humour is repeated,sustained, dominating, and potentially harmful, and thus can be considered to be bullying. Inan ethnographic study of an idiosyncratic New Zealand IT company, we observed humour thatwas sexualised, dominating, and perpetrated by the most powerful organizational members.We argue that the compelling need for belonging in this extreme organizational cultureinfluenced workers to accept bullying humour as just a joke and therefore acceptable andharmless even when it contravened societal workplace norms. Our contribution is inidentifying and extending the significant theoretical relationship between workplace humourand bullying that, to date, is not well-explored in organizational research.
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Defended PhD theses in Bulgaria in the field of linguistics, literature, history, folklore, ethnography and art studies.
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Data about scientific events in the field of the humanities in Bulgaria in 2022.
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The article presents a study concerning the development and testing of innovative educational approaches for developing language competences of engineering students. The study was carried out among 1st and 2nd year students of the specialty „Technical Mechanics“ at the University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy (UCTM) – Sofia, Bulgaria. An original bilingual educational tool was developed for this purpose. It was designed to support and improve the learning process in specialized foreign language classes.
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