Love, Sexuality and Power in Albanian Traditional Folk Songs

Author(s): Orjona Shegaj / Language(s): English / Issue: 20/2017

This article examines how traditional love and erotic songs can be used to describe the discourse on power relations in Albania. Traditional love and erotic songs in Albania seem to be grounded in the contradiction between the natural, intimate expression of love and erotic feelings on the one hand and the moral codes of patriarchal society and state power on the other hand. Considering the socio-cultural and political context, the main focus of this article is to examine the songs as social texts and to investigate them as political spaces in which people express different forms of resistance: resistance towards the power of social hierarchy within the family and resistance towards other social structures. Secondly, the article sheds light on sexuality, which, as a pillar of identity, comes as a product of social relations framed by power and closely related to the social, political, and cultural context of society. The article is based on material from the folklore archives of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Art Studies in Albania and from different fieldwork on this issue. It explores only the textual dimension of the Albanian love songs in the sense of an “oral source”.

Lyricism is the taste of things that pass

Author(s): Primo Shllaku,Ag Apolloni / Language(s): English / Issue: 18/2019

Interview with Primo Shllaku by Ag Apolloni

Mahir Domi - personalitet dhe organizator I shquar i shkencave filologjike shqiptare

Author(s): Emil Lafe / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 01-02/2015

The jubilee solemn gathering, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the academic Mahir Domi, is an expression of the deserved appreciation and esteem enjoyed by the Academy of Sciences and the Albanian scientific world for the figure of prof. Mahir Domi, for the written work and the example of his life as an intellectual, as a scholar, as a Teacher of the People, first of all for his distinguished and comprehensive exhortations in the field of linguistic and literary studies and high school.

MANDALA PËR LETËRSINË ROMANTIKE ARBËRESHE

Author(s): Serafina Lajçi / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 22/2018

Review of: Matteo Mandala, “Studime filologjike për letërsinë romantike arbëreshe”, ”Naimi”, Tiranë, 2012

Me interpretue poezinë e Martin Camajt

Author(s): Hans-Joachim Lanksch / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 2/2014

Martin Camaj ishte nji njeri ma tepër i introvertuem, shumë i ndjeshëm dhe pak i frikshëm. Frikat i përpunonte në veprat e tij letrare. Mirëpo, nji frikë e verbalizonte drejtpërsëdrejti: frikën nga interpretimet e poezivë të tij.

MENDIMI ESTETIK I JERONIM DE RADËS

Author(s): Emin Kabashi / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 44/2014

Letërsia jonë artistike e kultivuar, sidomos në epokën e ndritur të Rilindjes kombëtare, që të rritej dhe të zhvillohej në truallin e letërsive evropiane të kohës, kishte shëmbëllimet më të arrira, jo vetëm artistike, pra letrare, por edhe si përvojë të pasur shekullore estetike. Burimet ishin të shumta, kurse praktikat e ngjashmërive shumë të larmishme, duke filluar që nga antikiteti greko-romak, mesjeta, renesanca, klasicizmi, iluminizmi e deri te drejtimet e neoklasicizmit, realizmit e të modernizmit të shekullit XIX.

Mësim letrar e histori

Author(s): Kujtim M. Shala / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 24/2019

A literary scholar considers that his field of knowledge and research, at least in one sector, is at the border with historiography.Literary epistemology itself raises the question of whether the history of literature can be written and not be a political history, or a history of ideas, especially when we consider the historical nature of a large class of literary phenomena.This is not a renunciation of historical literary research, but it opens the awareness of literary history as a description of literature in its internal history, awareness of a historical poetics story (of literary forms).Thus, in this paper too, the issue will be discussed in the form of History and Literature, as this deals with a writer like Gjergj Fishta and his literary work, while we are looking for historical threads for documentation and learning.

Mësimi i letërsisë

Author(s): Sabri Hamiti / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 35/2017

In this paper, initially delivered as a lecture, I dwell on the universal value of teaching literature at the University, drawing on my own experience as a writer and literary scholar, as well as student and professor, having studied in Kosovo, Croatia, and France, and taught in Kosovo and Albania. I advance the idea of generating a scholarship and not developing a doctrine as the province of teaching literature. The literature curriculum – and indeed the teaching of literature – is all the more significant in the Albanian literary environment, because in this culture literature has for a long time underpinned knowledge in the fields of history and the humanities in general. The teaching of literature/lecturing on literature aims at instruction on the reading and the writing of literature, that is teaching literary reading and writing. This leads to a writerly reading and a readerly writing, and ultimately generates the pleasure of lecturing on/about literature and the pleasure of writing/reading literature. I argue in the talk/paper that experienced and trained readers and lecturers of literature generate their universal and universalizing theories through the close study of masterpieces of their national literatures, e.g. the Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin through Dostoyevsky’s fiction, French scholars Roland Barthes and Gérard Genette through Proust (In Search of Lost Time) and other French writers, Ibrahim Rugova, anAlbanian scholar from Kosovo, through Pjetër Bogdani’s work, and his colleague Rexhep Qosja through Naim Frashëri’s oeuvre. The concluding part of the paper draws on my experience as a University professor of literature in Kosovo, including during the 1990s, when the Albanian-language University of Prishtina operated in exacting circumstances, as an underground university, in the Serbian-occupied country.

Metafora e madhe

Author(s): Ag Apolloni / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 46/2016

The night is our day clearly shows the principle of double coding manifesting it into the schismatic protagonist, Budin Buda, who is the author and character of the story. Separation of the protagonist in two parts / persons, one that deals with writing (Budin Buda) and the other one that commits crimes (Centaur) is a consciousness separation to maintain two types of readers. Budin tells Centaur’s actions. The Centaur’s actions entertains the semantic reader, while structuring of story by Budin provokes the semiotic reader.

METAFORA NË ROMANET E REXHEP QOSJES

Author(s): Shpresa Ismajli / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 48/2018

This paper deals with metaphorical names in Rexhep Qosja's novels. The aim is to highlight the contribution of R. Qosja for enrichment the semantics and stylistics of the Albanian Language with numerous meaning and with emotional and expressive coloration. R. Qosja, creator and scholar of literature, has used and created many metaphors with rare artistic abilities, which have expanded and enriched the semantics of the Albanian word, have significantly increased its meaning weight and emotional expression. Through the metaphors R. Qosja emerges various aspects of the material and human worlds, appropriate use of them unfolds numerous views, varying situations and states, proper characterizations. Nominal metaphors in R. Qosja's novels will be treated according to the main thematic fields.

METAGJUHA SI KOD I INTERPRETIMIT TË ROMANIT BASHKËKOHOR SHQIPTAR

Author(s): Myrvete Dreshaj-Baliu / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 47/2017

The subject of this study was the code of the language of discourse, not only as linguistic construction of the literary text but also as a centerpiece of building novel content (themes and ideas) in some of the works of contemporary Albanian literature. Among other things, we emphasize the morphological and syntactic structure of the phrase and even the semantics of punctuation marks in the novels of Rexhep Qosja, specifically Death Comes to me from Such Eyes, One Love and Seven Sins, and No Man’s Children; the promise / besaas a meta-code of novel narration in Doruntine (The Ghost Rider), and language as an identity code in The Traitor’s Niche and The Concert by Ismail Kadare; the linguistic sign / phonetic structure as a code of word and ethnicity in Zejnullah Rrahmani’s The Lost Vowels and the word and its ancient structure as a code and reference in the novel Ring Square; as well as word semantic, namely a specific word, as a code of structure, the entire narration, and ethic and cultural mentality in Jusuf Gërvalla’s novel Around. The language of these writers' works and the pattern of use represents Bart's typical concept of "language as a set of rules and phrases common to all writers of an era," in fact, as he would put it, the structure of these novels matches his other conclusion that language is derived from, or better yet is functionalized before literature.

MIGJENI DE DRITËRO AGOLLI

Author(s): Shaban Sinani / Language(s): French / Issue: 01/2016

Parmi les éléments inconnus de la vie de l’écrivain Dritëro Agolli, son étude Skicat dhe tregimet e shkrimtarit revolucionar shqiptar Migjeni (Esquisses et récits de l’écrivain révolutionnaire albanais Migjeni) (titre en original : Oçerki i raskazi revolucionnogo albanskogo pisatjelja Migjeni), mémoire de diplôme soutenu à l’Université d’État Zhdanov de Petersburg, doit, sans doute, être des plus importantes.

Migjeni, shkrimtar aq i diskutuar

Author(s): Klara Kodra / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 03-04/2015

In this article we arrive to the conclusion that Migjeni is a writer of centre in Albanian literature and he has an European value; that there were some excesses in his sociologic interpretation and also in psychoanalytic one; that his Nietzscheanism is reduced to anticlericalism and the cult of strong person, but the empathy of writer for “small man” doesn’t leave him to ignore “the crowd of slaves” that Nitzche poses to his Superman, nor to accept his inhuman aspect which is interweaved with superhuman in the concept of German Philosopher. White two so-called Nietzschean poems offer different ideas: the satirisation of a dictator to “The superman forms” (Trajtat e mbinjeriut) and the aspiration for a leader who has come out from the people breast, who isn’t against him to “To be born the man” (Të lindet njeriu”; Migjenis’s work stays between the optimism and pessimism: the first social and ethical that expresses trust to the man and progress, the second existential and relative, which is connected with the smallness and inability of the man against the universe and its lows; that writer belongs to literary current of realism, but of a special realism, grafted with elements of some modernist currents like expressionism and symbolism.

Miku, armiku, i çuditshmi, i huaji - Për një fenomenologji të tjetrit në rrëfimtarinë shqipe

Author(s): Rudian Zekthi / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 37/2018

The Other, as an independent and neutral existence, in essence constitutes the purest and most important conceivable form of disparity. In the absence of this, they interfere with the conjunctive forms of the enemy, the foreigner, and the stranger. A national literature can impact the emancipation of its own public only if it succeeds in overcoming unconventional non-conformational appearances and stabilize a certain perception of the other such as a person.We will try to sketch such a phenomenology, in two directions: in relation to the narrator and the internal relation between the characters.Phenomenology will have a critical perspective, based on the premise that the presence of the other in itself, in the Albanian literature is deficient.

Mimesisi dhe metafiksioni

Proza e Martin Camajt

Author(s): Anton Berishaj / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 24/2019

In general semiotics, in linguistics, in discourse theories and in literary theories, the issue of referenciality, i.e. the relation of signs and sign systems, language and texts to the world/reality represents one of the fundamental theoretical issues. The relationship between fact and fiction in literature is also one of the fundamental theoretical issues that has attained a considerable importance in literary studies nearly from the very beginning of the field’s development. In this context, the theoretical paradigms arise from Platonian and Aristotelian concepts of mimesis. In semiotic analyses of literature, these have been transformed into the contemporary paradigm of possible worlds (Ronen 2004), or alternative worlds (Waugh 2001). This study will be approaching this particular issue by taking into account contemporary theoretical perspectives related to mimesis (Halliwell 2002, Potolsky 2006) and metafiction, while maintaining a correlation to the theoretical foundations of the relations between literature/ the world, text / reality, fiction / fact, starting from the Aristotelian paradigm of mimesis up to the contemporary paradigm of possible / fictional / alternative / virtual worlds, which determine not only the philosophical idea of literary ontos, but also the implications in the poetic and the genre affiliation of literary texts. More specifically, this study examines the metafictional dimension of Martin Camaj’s fiction (Djella 1958, Rrathë 1978, Karpa 1987), as one of the most distinctive models of 20th-century Albanian prose.

MINO MES FAKTIT DHE FIKSIONIT

Author(s): Serafina Lajçi / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 36/2017

Zef Skiro's literary work is an embodiment of the reality and the art. As such, it is a reflection of the author's preoccupations and concerns, not only of personal ones, but also of great concerns related to the fate of Arbëresh's reality. By disclosing his creative art, Skiro, with a special talent aesthetically concretizes his confrontation with reality. In this way, the poems of Skiro, are expressive of certain circumstances and situations, part of which is the poet himself.'Mino' at the center of our study is a literary experience of the tragic death of the poet's son, Mino, who was the victim of a political assassination. It will be precisely this tragic situation, which will significantly affect the health and life, already troubled of Skiro. This poem that reveals a shocking truth to the poet, merges between the fact and the fiction, as two important components that distinguish its composition. The fact, as concrete realistic life of the poet, and the fiction, which melts into artistic side of the poetry.

Mitologjia dhe ideologjia

Author(s): Saranda Buzhala / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 46/2016

The mythical paradigm taken from Kadare comes as a multidiscciplinary approach for the reader. The story was written in 1967 in Tirana, and the trilogy starting from 1967 until March of 1990, all written in Tirana. The drama has been written between Paris and Tirana in the spring of 1996. If the story “Prometheus” can stand alone as such, because it is consisted of one page, then the trilogy “Prometheus” may function as separate stories. This may make the piece to have two statuses. When speaking of drama, we must emphasize that it is subject to laws of drama. Lastly, the contextual reference in modern time and the geniality of adjustment and adaptation of this myth with itself and the nation, which for the author is as identification mark, and for the reader a reminiscence of reality with art, constitutes the universality of these writings.

Myth, history and literature: Reading Ismail Kadare’s “Essays on World Literature” through Giorgio Agamben’s “The Coming Community”

Author(s): Adriana Răducanu / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2020

The work of Albania’s best-known writer, Ismail Kadare, is focused on his native country’s culture, history and traditions, but has been paralleled by his equal concern with world literature. This has provided him not only with a cultural framework for comparison and analysis, but also with an effective means to render historical processes throughout artistic expression. The collection translated into English as Essays on World Literature: Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespeare (2018) mediates the readers’ imaginary voyage to ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, Elizabethan England and communist Albania. Using a theoretical approach inspired by The Coming Community (1993) by philosopher Giorgio Agamben (with whom Kadare received the 2018 Nonino Prize), this article discusses Kadare’s essays focusing on Albania’s European identity, supported by the inextricable links between myth, literature and history.

Nderim mikut të shtrenjtë dhe kritikut mendjemprehtë

Author(s): Agim Vinca / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 45/2015

Bajram Krasniqin e kam pasur fillimisht student, pastaj edhe koleg dhe mik. I takonte brezit të parë të studentëve që u kam dhënë mësim si asistent në Fakultetin e atëhershëm Filozofik (në vitin akademik 1972/73), brez në të cilin bënin pjesë, përveç tij, edhe Arif Demolli, Rushit Ramabaja, Sylejman Syla e të tjerë.

Nekrologji për një letërsi

Author(s): Ag Apolloni / Language(s): Albanian / Issue: 6/2015

Criticism has usually done its natural job: it has conveyed literature. Only dogmatic criticism (socialist realism) has attempted to have a priori character to literature, and therefore has failed with the literature that produced according to it. Criticism today, as in ancient times, is based on fiction; hence there is a posteriori status. It follows the artistic literature, but does not dictate it. As such, through various methods, it tries to understand fiction. But literature is at risk when it stops to create and will be just the object of studies. So, metatextual literature can be more read as necrology than as criticism.