A DIARY OF WILD EAST: CODRIN-LIVIU CUŢITARU’S CREATIVE LOCALISM

Author(s): Roxana Patraș / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

The essay endeavors to apply Edward Said’s remarks on traveling theory by sketching a three-stage model, grounded on the evolution of critical consciousness from locality (specialization and selection of theory), to localization (loan and adaptation of theory) and creative localism (resistance to theory). Our analysis addresses Codrin-Liviu Cuţitaru’s books, from The Depersonalized History (1997) to The Present Discontinuous (2014), which contain pertinent illustrations of traveling theories, mainly localizations of Derrida’s “dissemination”, Fineman’s “historeme”, and Fukuyama’s “post-history”. Cuţitaru’s reflection on the subject’s displacement from history grows into a more nuanced vision, enhanced by a bitter awareness of literature’s role as a discipline within the changing curricula experimented by the Romanian universities after the fall of Communism. Experiencing both the locality of his own specialization (Professor of English/ American Studies), and the localization of foreign theories in a provincialized academic center (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi, established in the capital of the former Principality of Moldavia), the Romanian scholar arrives at a very original theory of creative localism. This provides the critic not only with arguments for resisting foreign theory, but also for opening himself towards the tradition of previous schools of criticism from Iaşi.

A Dystopian Universe: ˮOmul din care a fost extras rǎulˮ (ˮThe Evil-Free Manˮ) by Matei Vişniec

Author(s): Adriana Sala (Vlăduț) / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

Matei Visniec`s play, Omul din care a fost extras răul (The Evil-Free Man) is a dystopia, casting the partnership between human brain and rat brain as the only possible model for an alleged progress in a society where positive thinking has taken the lead. Rats are called to ease man from the burden of having anything to do with his/her conscience. Man has given up the fight for humanity. This makes man vulnerable to a request expressed by rats to form a man-animal partnership but in which the rats must act like the inner self, like the innermost voice of the conscience. Should man accept such partnership, apart from its nauseating and anxiety-inducing effects, it would mean that man has given up any hope for mankind. Poetry could bring salvation, people need the imprecision, the lack of determination, the space for ambiguity but also for the visionarism which they find in poetical language.

A existat o terminologie politică în limba română la cumpăna veacurilor al XVIII-lea şi al XIX-lea ?

Author(s): Gheorghe Chivu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2012

In an era marked by a well known cultural and political circumstance, in which language reflects the change of the South-Eastern European social and political patterns with the Western ones, the analysis of some of the components of the literary vocabulary shows the emergence of some incipient terminological specializations for designating the activity in the different areas of the Romanian political life.

A határmenti falu: út a transznacionalizmus felé

Author(s): Snejana Ung / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 12/2020

Drawing on spatial theory and border studies, the article tackles the representation of the border village in two Romanian novels — Femeia în roşu (1990) and Noapte bună, copii! (2010). Starting from the assumption that spatiality is more than background, the author argues that the manner in which the two villages are depicted insists mainly on their border position and that herein the border is perceived as junction rather than as barrier. The first part of the text focuses on the particularities of the rural periphery, such as the proximity to Yugoslavia, the closed/open border, its materiality, and the dependency on larger settlements. The second part explores the significance of a specific peculiarity, namely the open border. Far from being a mere metaphor, the path to transnationalism opened up by proximity to Yugoslavia develops into a concentric mapping that goes from the rural periphery to the United States of America via Yugoslavia.

A LEXICAL, MORPHOLOGICAL, SEMANTIC AND ETYMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE DENOMINATIONS OF MONEY IN ROMANIAN NOVEL FROM 19TH CENTURY, CIOCOII VECHI ȘI NOI, N. FILIMON

Author(s): Andreea Brigitte Baștea (Godan) / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

This paper is a study of terms that concern lexical fields approaching money in Ciocoii vechi și noi novel by Nicolae Filimon, a well-known Romanian novel from the 19th century. The main inquiry from this research was how money is conceptualized within the context of our approach of the novel according to the meaning of money identified in this novel. In order to find an answer, we conducted an analysis of money related terms. The data consists of all identified terms referring to money as the main field of interest. 17 terms referring to money have been identified. A lexical, morphological and semantic analysis of the terms was performed and the terms were grouped into two main etymological branches - 5 Romanian terms, and foreign branches - 12 terms from Turkish, Greek and German, and then classified according to the frequency of use. The most important and frequently used foreign currency, besides Romanian currency, are Turkey, Greece, and Germany, as identified and mentioned in the novel. This predominance reflects the money movement outlined by the characters description of setting or commerce products, and this is owing to the circulation of money and the international trade or abroad commerce, owing to political and cultural Phanariot influences in Wallachia, during the first decades of the 19th century. The present paper could be useful as a theoretical background of the relationship between language and culture in the context of Romanian literature from the 19th century, the researched lexemes mentioned here may be considered as approaches of linguistic analysis.

A Light in a Dark Age

Author(s): Alessandro Zuliani / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The Italian philologist and former professor of Romanian language and literature Adriana Senatore is the author of an important monographic study on the Moldavian chronicler Miron Costin and his historical and poetic work.

A logikátlanság logikája

Author(s): Yvett Tóth / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 03/2021

Florin Lãzãrescu: Zsibbadtság. Ford. Bertóti Johanna. Napkút Kiadó – Kalota Művészeti Alapítvány, Bp., 2018.

A magyar a titkok nyelve volt. Interjú Alexandru Potcoavă íróval, költővel

Author(s): Evelin Márton / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 839/2022

Interview With Writer and Poet Alexandru Potcoavă.

A MANUSCRIPT OF TITUS POPOVICI, THE NOVEL: THE DEATH OF HAPPY OBJECTS

Author(s): Sonia Grec-Stef / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Little is known about Titus Popovici’s novel, Moartea obiectelor fericite (The Death of Happy Objects). This novel, dating from 1972, was never published integrally. The novel hides, under the general literary motifs of death and the misfit intellectual hero, subtle ironies for the current political state of that year: the communism. War, history, the issue of freedom, the psychological and the human decay, are just some landmarks of the novel. The novel is unfinished and unfortunately not known by the readers. However, the evil and the cruel violent scenes, evocation of the childhood and family love relations, or the grotesque appointments of individual and life, define Titus Popovici as fabulous writer and interpreter, who harnesses a unique political-historical experience. The Death of Happy Objects is the core, the deck between Ipu’s death (1970) and The stranger (1955) and the post-december prose The boots’ box (1990), and The discipline of mess (1998).

A micro-centric network. Post-communist Romanian mainstream and indie publishers of U.S. and Canadian contemporary poetry in translation

Author(s): Raluca Andreia Tanasescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This essay examines the corpus of contemporary American and Canadian poetry translated into Romanian in stand-alone volumes between 1990 and 2017 and argues that translators had a deciding impact on the selection of authors, as well as on the configuration of the overall translation network. Romanian poet-translators engaged in an outward cultural movement that galvanized both their own writing and the national literature in general. In doing so, they developed various types of agency covering a wide range of translating patters, from no agency at all to full self-reliance, and a poetics of fecundity that testifies to their engagement with global events and with the microcosm of local literature. Engendered by an assumed material precariousness and by an overt desire for permanent change and synchronous alignment with world literature, these practices should be seen from a micro-centric perspective, that is, paramount in establishing positive relationships with U.S. and Canadian poetries and energizing the local literary scene, rather than simply reflective of a ‘minor’ mode of existence in the global and geopolitical arenas.

A MULTI-FACETED LOOK UPON GABRIELA ADAMEȘTEANU’S SHORT-STORIES: CRITICAL APARATUS, STRUCTURAL ASPECTS

Author(s): Florina Georgiana Olaru / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 14/2018

Short-stories have sometimes been considered as a creative-writing exercise, intermezzo to the ‘big novel’, as ‘hinterland to future novels’. This is a valid reason to focus upon the manner in which the literary exegesis approaches the narrative formula of the short-story, with main emphasis upon Gabriela Adameșteanu’s short-stories. The central themes pondered upon in her writings are history, life of the individual within buildings and institutions, silence, solitude, superficial marriage of convenience. Our essay focuses upon catching the similarities and particularities found in Gabriela Adameșteanu’s short-stories. On the one hand, we aim at portraying the lack of communication within the couple and analysis of dysfunctional relationships between spouses, ideas found in most of her short-stories and, on the other hand, those details that make her writings be unique, i.e. familiar hours spent with colleagues (in O plimbare scurtă după orele de serviciu), the theme of illness (in Vară-primăvară) or street images (in În tramvai and Ora de navetă). All these create that multi-faceted perspective upon a dysphoric world.

A NEW CONCEPT OF LITERARY HISTORY

ROMANIAN LITERATURE AND THE NETWORK STRUCTURES

Author(s): Anamaria Omer / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

If we take into account the new technologies of the 21st century, could we imagine a concept of literary history which, in terms of its structural criteria, is fundamentally different from the traditional concepts we are accustomed to? Could we imagine the content of an alternative literary history abandoning the usual classification (based on literary epochs, literary currents or literary moments) and functioning on a network of interdisciplinary intersections between authors and texts? The present study attempts to draw the picture of a literary history based on network structures which connect authors and texts belonging to different epochs and currents by means of hypertextual nodes and links, rather than through linear chronologies.

A New Digital Solution for Promoting of the Romanian Literary Patrimony

Author(s): Lidia Bajenaru,Veronica Gavrilă,Irina Cristescu,Dragos Daniel Iordache,Ciprian Dobre / Language(s): English Issue: Suppl. 1/2019

A way of highlighting and promoting the most important and significant components of the national heritage is to harness them through Internet-based technologies. This paper presents the proposed digital solution for the promotion and preservation of collections of information from the Romanian literary patrimony using intelligent digital solutions for the extraction and systematization of knowledge. This digital solution, a platform, will offer advanced, intelligent semantic search and analysis services and prediction forms concerning Romanian literature. This paper presents several important platforms, systems and projects that are linked to the Literary Heritage. Then, a comparative analysis of the functionality, limitations and opportunities of the most relevant online platforms is presented, followed by the description of the main features of INTELLIT platform.

A PERSPECTIVE UPON DEATH IN ANTIM IVIREANUL’S DIDAHII

Author(s): Doina Pologea / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10/2017

The author evokes the four ,,funeral ovations”of Saint Antim of Iviria, projecting a Christian perspective on death, as well as the care of the priest for the comfort of those who lose their beloved ones .Therefore, death is , “without distress to the faithful and righteous man” and deserves to be celebrated with sacred hymns and prayers.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL NOVEL, APPARENTLY FOR CHILDREN: JOHNNY BOAMBĂ, BY THEODOR CONSTANTIN

Author(s): Larisa Ileana Casangiu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10/2017

Published for the first time in 1968 and becoming almost unknown in the 90‘, the novel Johnny Boambă (by Theodor Constantin) is republished in 2008 by „Adevărul Holding‖ Publishing House, this latest edition confirming the actuality of its subject and bricking it in attention of the readers. The book has not become a bestseller and that it‘s why, in 2016, its prize is reduced in hypermarkets. In the absence of adequate commercials, an affirmation of the editor has conducted us to a possible explication of the low popularity of the book: ―Frustrations of the abandoned child would be reflected even later in some of his writings.‖1 Such an observation is connected with biographical criticism, considered antiquated nowadays, and discourages a potential reader to become reader indeed. Considering this novel a precious source of inspiration for the parents and for the educators, we try to reanalyze it (our first short presentation of this novel being done in 2006), in order to increase, in this way, the number of its readers.

A Quantitative Analysis of the Romanian Translations of Shakespeare’s Bawdy Puns

Author(s): Anca Simina Martin / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

This article proposes a quantitative analysis of the Romanian translations of 325 ribald Shakespearean puns, which originate in 20 plays and 71 renditions, with special focus on assessing the impact of translator-subjective and objective factors on the rendition process in the pre-communist, communist, and post-communist periods. The findings invalidate several widespread beliefs: Dragoș Protopopescu’s renditions, banned by the communist regime for their ‘modernizing’ approach to the Shakespearean text, bowdlerized more bawdy puns than ‘ESPLA’, which replaced it as the Party-approved Romanian edition of the dramatist’s plays; Adolphe Stern’s translations, harshly criticized in his period, fare better in terms of ribald pun rendition than Scarlat Ghica’s and Dimitrie Ghica’s, hailed as the most successful of their time; modern translations of Shakespeare display a heterogeneous distribution of target-text puns across the surveyed rendition strategies, despite enjoying similar availability of and access to pun translation studies.

A RE-READING OF THE TRANSFIGURATION OF ROMANIA –A DEFENCE OF A NEW EASTERN LATINITY

Author(s): Amalia Drăgulănescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 15/2018

Cioran’s vitalistic youth affords to mock most of the Romanian features, in the volume Schimbarea la faţă a României/ The Transfiguration of Romania, while allowing them the expected advantage. Undoubtedly, in line with D. Cantemir, Ion Heliade-Rădulescu, B.P. Haşdeu, Const. Rădulescu-Motru, G. Călinescu, C. Noica, and even N. Steinhardt, concerning the national specificity, the author tackles a Romanian apology in fact, with the air dissolving the Romanian frailties, at least for the future. The cultural synthesis, metaphysical vision, political criticism, sociological analysis, and especially the defense regarding the perfection of the Romanian features, which can never be expressed in well-defined patterns, this support “book” keeps a certain topicality, integrating itself by the well-cited transience, both into the postmodern paradigm, as well as to a series of further prolific readings.

A RESCRIE FOLCLORUL. BASMELE ROMÂNE LUI LAZĂR ȘĂINEANU CA PRIMA SINTEZĂ A REPERTORIULUI INTERNAȚIONAL DE BASME POPULARE

Author(s): Nicola Perencin / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1 (15)/2022

Published in 1895, Lazăr Șăineanu’s Romanian Fairy Tales: A Comparative Study made a significant number of European folk tales available in a single volume for the first time. Some 500 Romanian fairy tales and their international variants are presented in condensed form, classified after Hahn’s typology. This encyclopaedic synthesis is also made searchable by keywords, thanks to an innovative “folkloric index”, which anticipates Thompson’s more extensive and advanced Motif-Index. Focusing on unique aspects of Șăineanu’s work, which include a wide use of summaries as a form of rewriting, the article reassesses the author’s significance to international folklore studies.

A SHORT HISTORY OF GASTRONOMIC LITERATURE

Author(s): Nagy Imola Katalin / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 11/2017

This paper focuses on the history of Romanian gastronomic literature, namely the first century of Romanian cookbook writing. Cookery books and gastronomic texts are one of the most interesting text types, which can be fruitfully analyzed and approached from multiple perspectives: linguistics, cultural history, language history, terminology and history can contribute to exploit the multiple resources of such texts, which mirror not only the gastronomy of certain historical periods, but reflect the linguistic and social habits of a century or another. Recipes are not scientific texts, nevertheless they can be considered technical texts, as they contain the lexicon and terminology of cooking and gastronomy, one of the most ancient human activities. Romanian gastronomic literature is a topic approached by many researchers. Despite this fact, during a previous research we conducted upon the history of Hungarian gastronomic literature and the history of ”kürtőskalács”, we reached the conclusion that there is no comprehensive study upon the beginnings and history of Romanian cookbooks. That is why we attempt to fill this gap and offer a list of the most important cookbooks written and/or published in Romanian. We intend to cover the first century of this kind of literature, the period between 1841 and the 1940s.

A stylistic approach to Mihail Jora's pianistics as reflected in the cycle “Five Songs for Voice and Piano on Poems” by Octavian Goga, op. 11

Author(s): Andreea Dobia / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

Jora’s songs are musical architectural miniatures with a significant dramatic component, carefully wrought with regard to prosody and diction. The performer’s stage presence, gestures attitude next to sound and word are constitutive parts of the musical discourse. The philosophical state that the composer projects in his sonorities is specific to the early 20th century. His interest in philosophical concepts and his views on life, the attention to love, nature and symbolism are found in the selection of the lyrics alongside compositional means, prosody, the art of singing and that of piano playing.