"All my sour-sweet days I will lament and love" – a comparative analysis of metaphors with the basic taste adjectives in Polish and English

Author(s): Marta Helena Falkowska,Magdalena Zawislawska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 18/2018

This paper provides a comparative analysis of verbal synesthetic metaphors with the basic taste adjectives in Polish and English: słodki/sweet, gorzki/bitter, kwaśny/sour, słony/salty. Since taste seems to be an ideal candidate for a universal, biologically determined source of metaphors, the authors seek to verify the hypothesis of metaphor embodiment. The corpus-based analysis of nominal phrases with basic Polish and English taste adjectives indicates that cultural influences on the metaphorical mapping, as well as the importance of the target conceptual domains, must be taken into account.

"Ikaromenippos" – starożytny dialog o locie na Księżyc i do niebiańskiej siedziby bogów

Author(s): Dominika Budzanowska-Weglenda / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Dominika Budzanowska-Weglenda’s chapter proposes an analysis of the Ikaromenippos or Voyage in Space, which is one of dialogues of Lucian of Samosata and probably the first literary description of the human trip to the Moon. The main character takes on this journey because of his aversion to philosophy. Lucian’s Ikaromenippos is a fantastic dialogue: a philosopher, probably the cynic, and satirist Menippus of Gadara, flies here “through the stars”. He takes two wings of large birds: the wing of the vulture and the wing of the eagle, and performs an incredible feat, worthy of Icarus: he reaches the Moon (from where he looks at the people and their actions on Earth), and then flies to Heaven—to the gods, “in upper Zeus’ rooms”. The story of Menippus’journey is like a swift current of the river, full of jocular tone, with a fantastic plot. But it clearly carries a deeper message: it expresses criticism of human attitudes and actions (adulteries, murders, conspiracies, perjury, betrayals among the closest to ones, war, courtship, piracy), meanness, false and mercenary piety, especially when stigmatizing bad behavior of philosophers, without sparing the representatives of any philosophical school. According to Lucian’s narrative, philosophers are lazy, quarrelsome, bloated, angry, grotesque, tumultuous, surly, unworthy people. The author reinforces the accusations of philosophers with the deity’s words, as the goddess of the Moon, Selene, having been encountered by the traveler, complains about them as well. She believes that philosophers are impostors, leading a shameful nightlife behind the scenes: they commit adultery, steal, and commit any other evil deeds. Ikaromenippos belongs to Lucian’s satirical works featuring reflective comedy. Correspondingly, Lucian postulates the liberation from the practical cognitive pressure of the logical rules and from the philosophical logic of cognition of the universe.

"Koralina" Neila Gaimana w realizacjach teatru lalek w Polsce

Author(s): Maria Janus / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Maria Janus focuses on theatrical adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s "Coraline" in Polish puppet theatre. The analysed performances were directed by Włodzimierz Fełenczak in Teatr Miniatura in Gdańsk with a stage design by Mikołaj Malesza (opening 2009) and in the Białostocki Teatr Lalek with a stage design by Joanna Braun (opening 2011) and directed by Karolina Maciejaszek in Teatr Pinokio in Łódź with a stage design by Anna Chadaj (opening 2013). In addition, the Author discusses the performance of Rozalinda, written and directed by Krystyna Jakóbczyk in the Teatr Dzieci Zagłębia in Będzin (opening 2012), which was inspired by Gaiman’s novel. Janus presents this performance in the context of copyrights and difficulties of obtaining licenses for use of texts written by popular authors (especially from the Anglo-Saxon region). The author compares the adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s novel written by Fełenczak, Maciejaszek and the translation of the novel’s narration by Jakóbczyk (theatrical situations and visual narration vs. the narration performed live on-stage). Maria Janus also highlights theatrical references from the novel considering meta-theatrical elements that enhance the performance. Janus compares theatrical media used in performances from Gdańsk, Białystok and Łódź with special consideration to the stage design and puppetry techniques. In the second part, the author focuses on the popularity of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline among theatrical directors despite little interest in horror fiction. Puppet theatres in Poland do not produce performances based on modern epic literature, especially those nbased on fantasy. Classical fairy-tales and modern dramaturgy containing fairy-tale motives are still more popular. Furthermore, Janus reflects on the possibility of a change of the herein discussed situation. She further refers to the arguments of Bruno Bettelheim, Stanisław Grzelecki and Katarzyna Slany considering young spectator benefits from the contact with theatrical representation of youth horror literature.

"Le Tramway" de Claude Simon : une vanité postmoderne ?

Author(s): Mokhtar Belarbi / Language(s): French / Issue: 8/2018

The theme of vanity occupies a prime place in Claude Simon's "Tramway". In this text, he has adopted a new conception of vanity. Certainly, the author has always evoked themes intimately associated with vanity, such as the theme of death, the theme of melancholy, the theme of war, etc., but the “finitude” has always been for him a crucial phase for the return to the primordial and the origin for the beginning of a new cycle of life. In "The Tramway", the vanity of the world is presented in a tragic way. No reference to the primordiality or the cyclical return of things. The author insists on updating in the memory of the time of death. A large number of metaphors and symbols highlight this theme of death; it is as if the author throws to the reader a memento mori from someone on the point of experiencing this fatal experience which is irremediable and definitive. This gives the text a tragic and undeniable human dimension.

"Późne lato" Johna Crowleya jako postmodernistyczna wizja procesualnej koncepcji tożsamości

Author(s): Malgorzata Gancarczyk / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2018

The article John Crowley’s “Engine Summer”: A Postmodern Vision of the Processual Construction of Identity analyses the eponymous novel as pivoted around the narrative’s role in constructing both individual and collective identity. Drawing from Mieke Bal’s narrative theory, as well as a number of establi­shed (such as paratextuality) and emerging theoretical concepts (Piotr Kubiński’s emersion), Gancarczyk emphasises the multifacetedness of novelistic references, including the stereotypisation of the Other and top-down control of social relationships. Furthermore, Engine Summer is interpreted he­re as drawing the reader’s attention to the medium itself and to the embodied text which co-creates narrative identity, allowing for its inscription and transmission—an idea literally realised in a postapocalyptic world of the novel. Finally, Gancarczyk shows how Campbell’s concept of monomyth reverberates in Crowley’s narrative, proving pivotal for the overall interpretation, indicating the active role of the medium and narrative subjectivity in constructing the meaning.

(BE)SMISAO VREMENA U ODABRANIM DJELIMA WILLIAMA FAULKNERA I MEŠE SELIMOVIĆA

Author(s): Selma Raljevic / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 2/2014

The purpose of this paper is to compare the modern concept of time by “placing” William Faulkner’s (1897-1962) novels: The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Go Down, Moses (1942), and Meša Selimović’s (1910-1982) prose works: Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt, 1966), The Fortress (Tvrđava, 1970), The Island (Ostrvo, 1974) and Memories (Sjećanja, 1976). The aim of this paper is to compare the perception of time in the selected prose of these two writers within the context of the sum of combined intelligences. The topic will be explored by applying the thoughts of Einstein, Nietzsche, Bergson, Eliade, Freud and Jung. In their modern literary works, both Faulkner and Selimović transpose time into space, and time/space becomes a major player in their works. Accordingly, special attention will be given to the perception and (non)sense of time and space in their modern prose.

(In)visibles persévérances de l’absence. Les enjeux de la mise en forme dans Les Années d'Annie Ernaux

Author(s): Jolanta Rachwalska von Rejchwald / Language(s): French / Issue: 1/2011

A dialectic between presence and absence, remembrance and oblivion, testimony and silence, body and its trace reflects the gist of the most recent Ernaux’es book. It constitutes not only plenteaus thematic confluence but also or even majorly an axis of the book’s construction. Its structure encompasses various layers such as: rhetorical, stylistic and typographic, which separately and together combined reside in prevailing tensioned coexistence of presence and absence.

(Не)могућности књижевности и културе у доба кризе

Author(s): Sladana Rakic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 48/2012

(РА)СТВАРАЊЕ PERSONAE DRAMATIS У МАГБЕТУ ЕЖЕНА ЈОНЕСКА

Author(s): Katarina Z. Milic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 57/2015

Dans ce travail nous offrons les résultats de l’analyse des concepts dramatiques contemporains par rapport au théâtre dit traditionnel, et nous prêtons attention surtout au statut du personnage dramatique, vu que celui-ci est l’un des éléments inévitables dans la structure dramatique. Notre but est de présenter des tendences singulières du théâtre de l’absurde (le degré zéro du théâtre), et plus particulièrement la création des personnages dramatiques en tant que des figures disséminatives, mais aussi d’indiquer leur rôle dans le théâtre contemporain et leur rapport avec les contraintes structurales de celui-ci.

`СМИСАО ЗА ИСТОРИЈУ` И `ЖИВА ТРАДИЦИЈА` У ЕЛИОТОВОЈ ПУСТОЈ ЗЕМЉИ И ПОЕЗИЈИ ШЕЈМУСА ХИНИЈА

Author(s): Ana S. Živkovic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 54/2014

Comparing the poem Wasteland by Thomas Eliot to the Irish Nobel-prize winner Saemus Heaney’s collection of poetry Bogland, the paper underscores the similarities and differences aiming to prove that almost identical “sense of history’ is present in the poetry of both poets. Eliot views the “sense of history’ as the ability to recognize the same situations and patterns not only in the past, but in the present and future, bringing time into a whole, not chronological, but cyclic. “Living tradition’ is the tradition of stopping and continuing, basing the existence in the past and surviving in the present. The research includes the incongruities of Eliot’s theoretical considerations about tradition and practical realizations of those ideas in poetry, and we conclude that, according to the poet, tradition is not everything written since Homer until today, but only those works that possess the “sense of history’. The important myths (mermaid myth, Holy Grail myth, Narcissus myth) remind us that the 20th century man is not free from the primeval striving towards the spiritual and physical healing, as well as the eternal craving to divulge one’s own being completely. Civilization and capitalist tradition have distanced contemporary man from nature and sexual emotion, and directed him towards profit and material production. Despite Eliot’s declaring as a royalist and follower of catholic tradition, his poetry as well as Heaney’s is predominated by the influence of humanistic tradition based on the conflict of different cultural concepts, on the archetypes of light and darkness, heavens and the underworld.

A Butlerian Reading of Ernest Hemingway’s Personality and his Work

Author(s): Golbarg Khorsand,Parvin Ghasem / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

This study aims at analyzing Hemingway’s selected novels and short stories in order to identify possible shared masochistic symptoms. The overriding questions concerning this paper will center on the multiple ways in which Hemingway’s sexual fluidity contributes to formation of masochistic behavior in his writings and also the degree to which masochistic properties contributed to the aesthetic and literary values of his fiction. This paper concentrates on the specific elements of masochism which pertain to the texts most, including symbiosis/separation dichotomy (closely related to the theme of humiliation), fetishism, pain, violence and death. The author wishes to unveil the oft-hidden submissive and feminine characteristics of the masculine characters which are not few in Hemingway’s writings.

A CHALLENGE TO ALL AUTHORITIES: D.H. LAWRENCE’S PROVOCATIVE REMOTE SOUTH

Author(s): Stefania Michelucci / Language(s): English / Issue: 24/2018

From his first travel book Twilight in Italy (1916) to the posthumously published Etruscan Places (1932), Lawrence’s travel writing shows a continuous experimentation with the genre, which in his hands, always escapes any fixed scheme. In spite of their stylistic difference and the variety of images and contents, his travel books lay bare a common intention, which is the author’s attempt to escape the wasteland of mechanization and industrialization, the upsetting, fragmented world of Europe at the time of World War I, and to find an ideal place for a rebirth, a palingenesis, a place (remote in space and, in the case of Etruscan Places, also in time) where human beings could live an harmonious relationship with Nature, with the Other and with the Self.

A clean, well-lighted writing

Author(s): Irina Simanschi / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2017

Interpreting Hemingway’s works is mostly focused on the intermingling of the recurring themes, on the (in)explicable achievements of the troubled (fe)male characters, and yet it is the shaping of the discourse which stands for Hemingway’s hallmark. Reverting to the carefully planned withdrawal of strategic elements of the writing contributes to the complexity of the text, which to a great extent depends on the reader so as to be given hermeneutical value. The display of the clear language is nothing but a straightforward wrapping of internal progressive actions beneath the text, which both vertically and horizontally challenges the reader and the entire narrative act.

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE CONDITIONS IN THE ROMANTIC AND VICTORIAN AGES AND THEIR REFLECTION IN THE POEMSTHE CHIMNEY SWEEPER (1789, 1794) BY WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

Author(s): Melih Karakuzu,Özlem Sayar / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2016

“The Romantic and The Victorian Ages are the consecutive ages, and there is not a long time between them. That is why, the conditions in the society and the effects of the developments on both the social and literary environment are similar, and therefore some common themes can also be found in the literary works written in these ages. As Stephen Greenblatt also states, the literary texts are a part of culture and they reflect the cultures and the periods they are produced in, which means that this reflection is somehow inevitable. Likewise, The Chimney Sweeper (1789, 1794) poems by William Blake and The Cry of The Children by Elizabeth Barrett Browning reflect common concerns about the Romantic and the Victorian Ages. This paper aims to compare the stated poems of these poets in terms of child labor, social and family relationships, and religion; also according to the reflection in these poems, it tries to analyze whether the conditions about these issues in the Romantic Age made any progress in the Victorian Age.”

A Confederacy of Dunces: Ignatius Reilly’s Sensory Universe

Author(s): Laura Ciochina / Language(s): English / Issue: 14/2014

What is there about Ignatius Reilly – the protagonist of John Kennedy Toole’s novel, A Confederacy of Dunces – that makes him such an unforgettable character? This study aims to analyse a series of sensory nuclei around which Ignatius’s eccentric personality becomes manifest. The sensations and perceptions of the character and the ones elicited by him in others represent a good pretext for Ignatius to express his critical attitude towards a vitiated society characterized by mediocrity, hypocrisy and shallowness. By means of the analysis of these sensory nuclei this study aims to better understand the fascination Ignatius Reilly exerts on his readers.

A Kynical View on Corporeality: Jeanette Winterson’s Non-Philosophy in WRITTEN ON THE BODY

Author(s): Cristina Diamant / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

Science-fiction writers tend to side either with the flesh, holding that “all is body/matter,” or with the machine, believing that “all is mind,” and these two divergent perspectives translate into either a protectionist or an accelerationist attitude. They can, however, be seen as interpenetrating agencements (Charles T. Wolfe), as is the case of Donna Haraway’s “cyborg” as an emerging political form, especially in feminist science-fiction works. Jeanette Winterson’s novels may seem to slowly turn away from the flesh since Written on the Body, from Gut Symmetries to The PowerBook and The Stone Gods. The present paper aims to suggest that what Written on the Body expresses is the heightening of kynicism (Peter Sloterdijk) towards both the flesh and the machine, all while rejecting cynical reason. The novel offers the reader an ec-static understanding of desire and loss, as well as the possibility of spiritual rather than spiritualist sans-philosophie (François Laruelle).

A Network of Themes: A Qualitative Approach to Gerhard Richter's TEXT

Author(s): Narvika Bovcon,Aleš Vaupotic / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

Gerhard Richter's books Text – a collection of painter's verbal statements about his artistic method – and Atlas – 783 sheets with images, mainly photographs and visual notations – are two archives that complement the understanding of his diverse artistic practice. The paper presents a textual model that experimentally simulates a possible ordering principle for archives. Richter's statements in the book Text are cut up and used as short quotations. Those that relate to multiple aspects of the painter's oeuvre are identified as hubs in the semantic network. The hubs are organized paratactically, as an array of different themes. The paper presents a methodological hypothesis and an experimental model that aim to connect the research of real networks with the paradigms of humanistic interpretation. We have to bear in mind that the network is a result of the researcher's interpretative approach, which is added to the initial archive included in the book Text. The breaking up of Richter's poetics into atoms of quotations is an experimental proposal of a new textuality in art history and humanities, which has its own history. In comparison to digital archives with complex interfaces that often tend to obscure the content, the elements in our experiment appear as specific configurations of the semantic network and are presented in a limited number of linear texts. The method of listing of quotations gathers the fragments into a potential “whole”, i.e. a narrativized gateway to an archive according to the researcher's interpretation.

A propos de l’ouvrage de : Stoyan Atanassov. De la littérature à la vie. Moyen âge, Temps modernes.

Author(s): Dina Mantcheva / Language(s): French / Issue: 1/2018

A propos de l’ouvrage de : Stoyan Atanassov De la littérature à la vie. Moyen âge, Temps modernes. Sofia, Colibri, 2016. [От литературата към живота. Средновековие, Ново време./ From Literature to Life. Middle Ages, Early Modern Period]

A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma: Deception, Truth and Modernism

Author(s): Roland Boer / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

This article deals with the widespread assumption that a significant collection of texts known as the Bible is inherently ‘deceptive’. That is, the Bible does not – it is assumed – say what was ‘really’ going on in the ancient world. The truth, therefore, must be found by going behind or beneath the text (the spatial metaphors should be noted). Here the real story may found, through archaeology or reading the text against itself. This approach may be described as a modernist ‘depth model’, in which the surface attempts to conceal the truth, while the truth itself must be found by going around the surface text. This remains a dominant approach in biblical criticism. However, it cannot be understood without earlier and indeed, in some quarters, current assumptions concerning the realist nature of the text. In this case, the text reflects in a reasonably trustworthy fashion the context of the text, if not the ideological assumptions and positions of the putative authors. Modernist ‘depth models’ may then be seen as attempts to respond to realist assumptions. A third moment is what could be called postmodern: in this case, the distance between surface and depth is challenged, so that the various possibilities become equal contestants for the dominant position. This entails a shift away from the assumption of a singular truth of the text, characteristic of both realist and modernist assumptions, to the understanding of multiple truth claims – not as relative but as absolutes that permit other absolutes. The argument emphasises that these approaches should be seen as dialectically related to one another, rather that mutually exclusive approaches.