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A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRITISH AND ROMANIAN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Author(s): Mădălina Șraier (Ștefănescu) / Language(s): English Issue: 20/2020

This article aims to briefly present the evolution of British and Romanian children’s literature. Translating a text for young readers requires a good understanding of what children’s literature is. In its turn, defining the genre requires a grasp of its historical evolution. Numerous factors, such as moral values, religious views, pedagogical practices, commerce and finances, have influenced the development of children’s literature throughout time, leading to the emergence of a stratified literary polysystem. The interplay of the aforementioned factors, the constant competition between them, has been at the heart of the transformation and progression of the genre. While resources treating British children’s literature are numerous, those dealing with the genre in Romania and with its trajectory throughout time are scarce. This lack of materials could be justified on the one hand by the late emergence of Romania as a geographical and political entity, and on the other hand by the lack of interest in children’s literature on the part of academics.

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ABOUT CHARACTERS IN CAMIL PETRESCU`S DRAMAS

Author(s): Roxana Kaitar / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 20/2020

The issue of character creation is carefully analyzed by Camil Petrescu himself. The character is such a complex figure that the process of creation implies full involvement, all the more so in the case of the characters in the dramas. The playwright debated the intellectual problems, among his characters appearing exemplary types through the dramatism of the searches and the failures, through their acute lucidity, in general. His characters are complicated intellectuals, characterized by nostalgia for the absolute, exaggerated reflexivity, maladaptation, pride, contemplative spirit, refusal of compromises, capacity for analysis and synthesis, vocation of introspection, feeling of honor, loyalty, etc.

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ABOUT DANILO KIŠ'S INTERVIEWS

Author(s): Tatijana Petrika / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 20/2020

Interviews of local and foreign journalists (sometimes with professional literary critics) with Danilo Kiš, were published in the volume Gorki talog iskustva / The bitter tale of experience from 1972 to 1989. Together, these interviews form a coherent theoretical basis for whoever wants to know more about the creation of this writer. They contain many autobiographical data, which Danilo Kiš inserted, not only to satisfy the curiosity of the interlocutor, but also because he was constantly concerned about the connection between fiction and realism, between descriptions and descriptors / those that describe, between literature and life, perceived as two competing phenomena.

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THE READER-EGO AND THE CONFINEMENT POSED BY THE TREMULOUS TIME

Author(s): Mihaela Airinei / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 20/2020

The reading analysis of works pertaining to the totalitarian period made by the common literature consumers require special attention. The difficulties and the risks of investigating their reading behaviour arise mainly from the obvious differences that exist between reading and its perception in the past and the way the nowaday’s reader relates to it. For the nowaday’s reader and especially for the one who has very shortly lived under the communist era (if not at all), the allusions, references or nuances specific to the text are in peril of remaining unveiled. The complicated historic context is difficult to penetrate in consequent epoques. On the other hand, whether the censors, critics, professional readers have the possibility of researching documents that acknowledge considerations regarding the works of writers, the common reader and his reading behaviour, in particular, are very difficult to explore.

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MAGIC REALISM, IDENTITY AND THE HOLOCAUST IN JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER’S EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED

Author(s): Paula Rebeca Cozma (Drăgan) / Language(s): English Issue: 20/2020

Magic Realism is a topic widely discussed and debated among critics all over the world. This term and this literary genre, from its very beginning, seemed to have created some difficulties in its usage and understanding. Many writers have chosen to use Magic Realism and to incorporate the magical into the everyday reality, writers like Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie or Laura Esquivel. In addition, there is an increased interest in literature and literary criticism for topics related to race and ethnicity and there is a considerable growth in the writings produced especially by American writers coming from different ethnic backgrounds. However, there seems to be a lower interest and amount of literary criticism given to those American ethnic writers who have chosen Magic Realism in their novels. These American ethnic writers seem to be concerned with specific literary themes, among which there is the theme of identity. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the Magic Realism and the theme of identity in the novel Everything is Illuminated written by the Jewish-American writer Jonathan Safran Foer.

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NOTES ON THE WRITER-BLOGGER

Author(s): Emma-Mădălina Lăcraru (Neamțu) / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 20/2020

In the Internet era, fiction literature has to ajust to the technological progress, in order to be accessible and valued. Yet the paperback publications are far to dissapear. Between those two, blogs seem to be a way to bring them to peace. And the writer becomes writer-blogger, a hybrid concept yet to be theorized, but already having distinctive features, due to the online environment.

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THE ONEIRIC, INTERIORITY AND ETHICAL READING IN CHAUCER'S BOOK OF THE DUCHESSE

Author(s): Rebeca Dogaru / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 20/2020

When the structural and thematic conventions of dream vision literature – the ambiguity of the dream’s origins, its revelation of divine truths, the allegorical illustration of its elusiveness – meets the genre so-called courtly love, Middle English literature sees a flourish of erotic visions, images of lovesickness and translations of courtly life into fabulous settings of classical inspiration. To them, Geoffrey Chaucer adds an emphasis on characters, in their typological and individual diversity, a consciousness of the literary tradition on whose shoulders he was standing and a positioning on the outside of the courtly looking into its stereotypes. Rather than glorifying divine revelations of morals of sin and virtue, his dream vision poems are centered on the experiences and the inner life of the dreamer whose reflexive autonomy helps him distance from these conventions. This study is a glance into one of Chaucer’s three main oneirical writings, Book of the Duchesse, from the point of view of visionary tradition and outside of it.

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THE FANTASTIC DIMENSION OF MIRCEA ELIADE’S LITERATURE

Author(s): Amalia-Maria Roșioru / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 20/2020

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a savant of the history of religions and a writer who transposed theses from scientific texts to literature (Aspecte ale mitului, Sacrul şi profanul, Tratat de istoria religiilor etc.). It is well-known that he was preoccupied by the relation between sacred and profane and by the mythic. Sacred is present in people’s life and the fact that they don’t notice it, doesn’t mean that it dissapears. The archaic man from the writer’s texts is a hypostasis of homo religiosus. The way Eliade’s literature attracts the reader is similar to the discovery of a strange thing or event found in close proximity. Parallel universes, born from the fusion of sacred and profane, alternate and set a mythical atmosphere. Eliade’s literature is the closest to italian fantastic represented by Buzzati and Bontempelli.

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APÓDEIXIS/ EPISTÉME: THE LYRICAL AND THE NARATIVE: DIFFERENCES AND COMMON GROUNDS

Author(s): Ion Popescu Brădiceni / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 21/2020

As both a poet and prose writer, as a theorist of Romanian trans-modernism, I feel most able to say that in current Romanian literature the lyrical discourse is also narrative, and the narrative is also poetic. I could further exemplify through the poetry of Gabriel Chifu and Adrian Alui Gheorghe, both of whom are also remarkable prose writers. I would tend to believe that such a model is specific to the tradition of local modernity. The following were both excellent novella writers and brilliant poets: Mihai Eminescu, Vasile Voiculescu, Mircea Ciobanu, A.E. Baconsky, Petre Stoica, Ştefan Bănulescu, Mihai Ursachi, Gellu Naum and others. And this article argues for the trans-poetic trans genre (narrative lyric or vice versa). It does so by resorting to irrefutable / infallible strengths offered by the philosophy of the imaginary, by structuralism, by the concept of open work (even if it is a masterpiece - m.n., I.P.B.). It thus imposes, demonstratively and functionally, a new regime of writing-as-such, usually (pro) grammatically irresistible. But also, the seven concentric iconospheric layers, placed for the first time in a firm, plausible and systematizing iconographic and iconological figure almost without fissure in the post- / trans-modern (ist) eon.

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ABOUT CHILDHOOD

Author(s): Oana Roxana Bătrîna / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 21/2020

Childhood, the period with the sound of bells, the beginning of the ascent to knowledge, to light, to beauty, claim its rights. There is no man who does not turn his thoughts to the years of childhood with emotion. Beyond the apparent reality there is a world of intense feelings and experiences from which we extract the essence of continuity in order to survive the obstacles of life. Ρerhaps the most powerful weapon against the evil deeply rooted in people’s hearts is childhood. The innocence that accompanies this age always surprises with a smile and candour. There is so much hope and love in a child’s soul that hurting him would kill his smile. Strange game as it may seem is indispensable being similar to food and water without which people could not live.

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FOLK INFLUENCES IN CREANGĂ’S WRITING

Author(s): Oana Roxana Bătrîna / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 21/2020

The term folklore has its etymology in English and was first used on August 22, 1846 by the archaeologist William J. Thoms. ,,Folk” means nation, and ,,lore” means science, the creation of the people or, after the ethnomusicologist Gheorghe Oprea, ,,all artistic creations integrated into popular culture.” Here are subsumed music, literature (prose, the poem), dance and fine arts. Popular spiritual creation in the field of music, of literature and dance constitutes etnophony (gr. Ethnos- nation, people; phoni- voice, sound), and material popular creations in the field of port, of stitches and sculpture, constitutes ethnography (gr. Ethnos- nation, people; graphi- writing, graphics).

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LITERARY INFLUENCES IN AUREL BARANGA’S WORKS

Author(s): Adrian Oros / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 21/2020

Aurel Baranga’s plays were written in time of effervescence in the Romanian literature, therefore there are many influences that can be visible in his work from authors such as Tudor Musatescu, G. Ciprian or Mihail Sebastian. While these influences are at the level of themes, motifs and sometimes characters, they were well integrated in Baranga’s original work and create an original literary construct.

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AESTHETIC CATEGORIES IN ROMANIAN LITERARY FOLKLORE

Author(s): Nicoleta Flavia Dan / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 21/2020

In this paper, the aesthetic categories in Romanian literary folklore are analyzed. Literary work addresses human sensitivity. In anonymous creation, the beautiful, the sublime, the graceful, the tragic do not submit to the whims of the tastes of the ages, but have a constant evolution. There is talk that form is a construction of the subconscious spirit, and aesthetic categories are defined and found here. In conclusion, aesthetics fulfils educational functions, exerting a multidimensional action on personality development.

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ASSIMILATING THE AMERICAN DREAM THE RIGHT WAY: NORMAN PODHORETZ’S MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH AMERICA: THE CAUTIONARY TALE OF A CHEERFUL CONSERVATIVE

Author(s): Ștefana IOSIF / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

Norman Podhoretz proposes an incursion in his past with his 2001 autobiography, My Love Affair with America: The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative, meant to glorify the hold America has on him and the impact it had on shaping his identity. Podhoretz unabashedly shapes his narrative spanning over seven decades around and in adamant support of the notion of assimilation and Americanization. Running as a parallel concept, Podhoretz employs all narrative artifices available for making the case of political conservatism, offering his own conversion from a leftist 1960s intellectual to a neoconservative pundit of the 21st century. In his typically instructive account, he follows the lines of Franklin and Jefferson, placing America on a sacred pedestal, and allowing no room for an internal conflict of hyphenation.

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TRANSLATING PROPER NOUNS: ROALD DAHL’S THE BFG IN ROMANIAN

Author(s): Mădălina Șraier (Ștefănescu) / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

This article covers the translation of proper nouns, more specifically character names, in children’s texts and the implications of such an undertaking. Much like the title of a text contributes to the reader’s first impression of what he/she is going to read, names represent the first contact with the characters. The manner in which a reader perceives a character and the key in which he/she interprets the character’s actions in the economy of the entire text largely depends upon the translation choices made in respect to the character’s name. Left as such, translated or completely replaced, names are an essential component in the texture of a text, with a major impact on the overall reading experience. This paper looks at the names of the characters in the children’s novel The BFG and in its three translations into Romanian. The Romanian translators’ choices are analysed in the second half of this article in an attempt to highlight the main strategies employed and their effect in the economy of the text.

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CONFESSORS OF THE FAITH - CONSPIRATORS AGAINST THE REGIME

Author(s): Maria-Cosmina Uceanu-Petrache / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 21/2020

The atheism of the dictatorial regime severely punished faith in God, spirituality, meditation, intellectuality, freedom of thought, expression, totally annihilated the human being. Christianity was tolerated only as a relic of the past, destined for extinction, and the testimonies of the persecuted show the aversion of the system to Christianity, which it mocked in unimaginable ways. The tormented Romanian culture deprived of reason and freedom was forced to enslave the communist regime, and the opponents were declared enemies of the people. The dungeon has become a place of culture, a place of prayer and spiritual reunion.

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REPRSENTATIONS OF GENDER AND WOMEN’S IDENTITIES IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

Author(s): Adina Campu / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

This paper aims to explore the cultural markings of femininity and masculinity by analysing representations of gender in two contemporary post-colonial novels: Chinua Achebe’s “Anthills of the Savannah” (1987) and Rohinton Mistry’s “A Fine Balance” (1995). Written a decade apart and rooted in cultures dominated by the binary opposition male power/female weakness, both novels try to break with traditional thought and bring to the fore strong, assertive female characters who strive to preserve their independence. I demonstrate that Beatrice Okoh and Dina Dalal, the main female characters in the above mentioned novels, are constructed as foils to African and Indian stereotypical representations of gender.

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LA NOSTALGIE ET LES TRACES DES ORIGINES CHEZ CES ECRIVAINS FRANCOPHONES VENUS D’AILLEURS : JULIEN GREEN, IONESCO, SENGHOR…

Author(s): Daniela Cătău-Vereș / Language(s): French Issue: 21/2020

The richness of a national literature is the result of a fusion of writing acts belonging to native authors and those coming from elsewhere, pushed by the troubling winds of History or having chosen to settle in another country on a voluntary basis, driven by the inner desire to discover another place. Assimilation by the host country is not only economic and social, but also of a cultural nature, going as far as the adoption of the writer by the literary territory and full integration into the big family of feather people. How are "these writers from elsewhere" still defined? Who are they for French culture, for example? They were born in a culture and a language other than French, they come from territories colonized in the past or, quite simply, they come from countries where freedom of expression was limited by the political regime, without forgetting cross-border countries, like Germany, Belgium or Switzerland. For France, the list of intellectuals and writers who have joined the national territory, the French language and culture is impressive: around two hundred names, including Green, Ionesco, Senghor.

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THE EPISTOLARY HISTORY OF A SHORT DOMESTIC LOVE: MARIN PREDA-AURORA CORNU

Author(s): Petronela Mureșan / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 21/2020

The paper aims to highlight the role of epistolary literature in shaping the complete profile of a writer's personality. In the case of the prose writer Marin Preda, the love correspondence with his first wife, Aurora Cornu, reveals a unique, surprising side of the one who was known as a difficult, pragmatic, sarcastic individual, the letters completing his portrait with the domestic hypostasis of a lover.

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SYSTEMS WITH FLUID BORDERS. WORD LITERATURE AND THE INTERNET

Author(s): Ana Pușcașu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 21/2020

The present study aims to analyze the relationship between world literature and the Internet, both perceived as large systems with fluid borders, determining paradoxical approaches. The comparative analysis takes into account the structural profiles of world literature and the Internet, in an attempt to underline similarities between two systems using different semantic units in terms of inclusiveness, decentralization, accessibility, and open circulation of ideas or information. Also, the study will focus on the intersection between these systems discussing the position and functioning of world literature on the Internet.

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