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In the nineteenth century, many writers went to Auvergne to describe the hot springs, recording their impressions in travel diaries or letters to relatives. They are largely fuelled by representations, even fantasies. What is the relationship with space and time as established in a region considered to be harsh and wild, through the testimonies of these writers?
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Almeida Garrett (1799-1854) is considered nowadays one of the most important writers of the 19th century. Garrett’s writings, especially the poems from the volume Folhas Caídas, the play Frei Luís de Sousa and the novel Viagensnaminha terra are studied in Portugal not only at school, but also at university. His play Frei Luís de Sousahas been performed for dozens of years on the stage of the National Theater D. Maria II, one of the biggest public theaters in Lisbon and Portugal. Even though Almeida Garrett is mostly known by the contemporary readers as a Romantic writer, he was also an important journalist and politician who played multiple roles in the national institutions, especially between 1830 and 1840, and, at a lesser degree, in the early 1850s. He wrote articles and manifestos in journals, such as O Cronista and O Portuguêz. One of the aims of our paper is to present and analyze Garrett’s political activity. He supported the Liberal Revolution from 1820 by writing two poems Hymno Constitucional and Hymno Patriótico, which were distributed to civilians in Porto. In the following years, he became more and more active in the political affairs of the country and he even participated in various protests and insurrections, including in Vilafrancada, which was an attempt of D. Miguel to seize the power of the country in 1823. In 1832, he joined the liberal troupes of D. Pedro I of Brazil/ IV of Portugal to fight against the ones led by D. Miguel, who defended the absolute monarchy. In 1836, Garrett helped the ministers with the definition of a new Constitution, which was later adopted in 1838. During his lifetime, he was sent as consul of Portugal in Belgium, he was several times named deputy in the Portuguese Parliament and, finally, he received the title of viscount. Another aim of our paper is to analyze to which degree Garrett’s political views are included in his fictional writings, especially the novel Viagensna Minha Terra(1846),but also the plays Frei Luís de Sousa e Um Auto de Gil Vicente (1841). In order to obtain the expected results, we will take into consideration not only the articles that he published in the national journals of that time, but also his manifestos, including O Dia Vinte e Quatro de Agosto (1821) and Portugal na Balança da Europa (1830).
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R. S. Thomas relates the story of a person who cannot feel at home in the established institutions of the society. This study starts with a brief explanation of Welsh poetry and Thomas’s place in it. Then the study analyses the selected poems of R.S Thomas from his early and later collections in order to trace the emotional breaking points in the poems. The study also attempts to read Thomas’s poetry with respect to the nomadic subjectivity and nomadic time sense. Deliberately choosing to be at the margin, the poetic persona walks on the borders of reality and illusion by trying to find an outlet that would let him out of the long-felt restlessness. By discovering the impossibility of such an option, he turns back to the temporality of the order, but he grasps the glimpses of what he yearns for in the flux and reflux.
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This study analyses the bucolic poems of three humanist poets of the 15th century, Caspar Tribrachus, Baptista Mantuanus and Faustus Andrelinus, whose eclogues are characterized by both a realistic mode of depiction utterly differing from the idealized landscape of the pastoral and the influence of Roman satire. Although in the case of Mantuanus several allusions had already been noted by his contemporaneous commentator, Jodocus Badius, except for the obvious inspiration of Eclogue 5 by Juvenal, little attention has been devoted to the allusions to Persius and Juvenal by recent research. Th e analyses aims at a more thorough examination of this influence, dealing not only with the imagery and the vocabulary of the eclogues, but also with imitations of idyllic pictures from the satirists, as well as with the cases of double imitation, where the allusions to satire simultaneously parody classical passages of Vergil. Further, the important role of both Juvenal’s Umbricius and the medieval commentaries on Juvenal in the forming of Umber, the key figure in Mantuanus ’ eclogues, shall be pointed out. Finally, on the basis of the theoretical background of the two genres and their possible interrelations, it shall be argued that the satire played a decisive role in the establishment of this new variant of pastoral poetry, which is realistic in its imagery and didactic in its intention.
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“Hughie or the Tale of a Memory” is the working title of the first play that the experienced artist Alexa Visarion has directed for the independent theater (a production released in 2017). The purpose of my paper, which is an investigation of several drama reviews that discuss the play’s first night, is to prove that – despite difficulties with cultural reception and public taste (given a text by O’Neill that is 80 years old, as well as the director’s first time with an informal theater production) - this performance was a succesful attempt at communicating and debating the conflicted values of American pragmatism and equally a crowning of the Romanian director’s effort to stage O’Neill’s plays in our country. Relying on insights from the Amercan doctrine of Pragmatism, I will try to show how O’Neill’s text challenges philosophical premises that are inbred in the American status-quo, thereby making his plays “anti-materialistic” by promoting a fatalistic approach to existence.
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The article focuses on the anti-modernist representation of London, as revealed by Mrs. Crowe, the protagonist of Virginia Woolf’s essay “Portrait of a Londoner”. Despite being sketchy and highly descriptive, the essay foregrounds London not only as a setting, but also as a symbolic image, constructed by the female heroine, who maps out the city through gossip and anecdotes related by the guests she welcomes in her Victorian home. I claim that Mrs. Crowe creates a mental cityscape which enables her to act metaphorically both as an urban historian and as a biographer of London who makes the fragmented and discontinuous modernist city comprehensible.
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“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.”
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Journey to the West (Xiyou Ji西游记) and Flowers in the Mirror (Jinghua Yuan镜花缘) are two of the best-known stories of travel in ancient Chinese literature. Both works contain descriptions of outlandish sights and foreign customs, particularly the vivid descriptions of the fantastic and outlandish Womanland (Nv’er Guo 女儿国), which embodies traditional Chinese scholars’ understanding of the outside world. Comparativists tend to regard the portrayals of these exotic women and their talents, and the subverted roles of men and women, as the authors’ statements about the inferior status of women in feudal China and their denunciations of the oppression of women. Flowers in the Mirror is seen as more radical in its pursuit of women’s rights and gender equality. This article argues that androcentrism still prevails even in the positive depictions of the expression of women’s desires. Furthermore, the delineation of these exotic women and of supernatural spirits demonstrates the authors’ praise of China’s pre-eminence and its condescending views of foreign places.
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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.
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Shakespeare’s Coriolanus projects a psychological account of a nation that is crushed under an economic crisis and stricken with both internal and external conflict. The masses of Rome are fighting the Senate internally while the external conflict between Rome and the Volscian army. Viewed from the perspective of a 21st century setting, one cannot escape the haunting feeling that Coriolanus symptomatically displays on page, on stage and on film. This paper will attempt to shed light on the manner political psychology operates within Coriolanus. This paper will focus on the issue of how situating Coriolanus in our contemporary time and age can be a fitting context for observing the unease tied to the revolt of the people. This is best seen when set against a cultural materialist analysis of the 2011 Ralph Fiennes adaptation. His portrayal of Coriolanus, a vicious Roman general, ironically finds its rightful place in our contemporary world – a world that is as plagued by war and death as it was in Coriolanus’ time. Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut with Coriolanus (2011) situates its main character in the contemporary world and gives an astonishingly accurate account of a modern political strife. Furthermore, this paper will examine Fiennes’ focus on the issue of ‘body politics’ by examining Coriolanus as a part of ruling society of the ‘body’ of Rome. As a representative of the patrician class of Rome, Coriolanus’ prowess in battle would seem to make him an ideal hero for the masses.
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Although interaction as well as conflict with the United States is definitely not new to Iranian politics and society, the idea of American Studies as a university degree program is surprisingly rather new in the country. The idea is only six years old and the North American Studies department itself was established at the University of Tehran in 2005.For those closely involved with the program, the last few years have been eventful to say the least. Many American and European colleagues are often surprised that there actually is an American Studies program in the country and they often assume that our main problem with the program would be with Iranian government officials or, alternatively, that the students in the program are fed with anti-American rhetoric, perhaps in accordance with the constructions of Iran predominant in the Western media. It should be noted that despite its financial restrictions, the University of Tehran has been particularly supportive towards the Institute for North American and European Studies and its North American studies program in particular. In reality the easiest part of our journey was the establishment of the department within the Institute.
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The article takes up the theme of Agamben’s violence without a form of justice and reads Shakespeare’s tragedy as spanned between Cordelia’s “nothing” at the start of the play and Lear’s “never” at its end. It also approaches a question of the relationship between, in Rousseau’s word, “l’homme naturel” and “citoyen.” Lear’s push towards a position of being “unaccommodated” suggests a move away from the organization of life previously holding its rule over men towards a marginal, peripheral zone with uncertain rules where man has to risk his own decisions rather than merely follow the custom.
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Apart from the Edige epic, the story of Čora Batir is the best-known and most popular Nogay epic of Kipchak origin. Since the first publication of a version by the Russian Turcologist, I. Berezin (1862), a large number of variants, among them Nogay, Crimean and Dobrudjan Tatar, Kazak, Karakalpak, Kazan Tatar, Bashkir and Karachay-Balkar versions, have cropped up and been brought to light. An early variant of the epic was recorded by the Hungarian Turcologist, Ignác Kúnos, but it has remained in manuscript. He collected his material from Crimean Tatar informants in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp near Esztergom (Hungary) in 1915. The present work, published for the first time in print, contains the original Crimean Tatar text and its translation, supplied with an introductory study and annotations. The main value of the epic variant recorded by Kúnos lies in that its content and plot show close relationship with the earliest recorded Nogay texts.
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In the short stories of Mulk Raj Anand, the character’s psyche is revealed to the readers. Anand focuses on the psyche of a character and relatively develops the character’s outer world. Mulk Raj Anand was born and brought up in and around the British Camps in India as his father was an administrator in the Indian Army, which was a transferable job. These experiences of his childhood, of moving around, of meeting new people, of adjusting, etc, gave him an introduction of the varied behavior of human and an insight in the human mind. This paper discusses role and contribution of minor characters in the select short stories of Mulk Raj Anand.
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This essay focuses on the analysis of the “translatability” of the 51st and the 160th poems of The Book of Songs. By a historical survey the author describes the characteristics of philological and cultural approach of classical Chinese texts and points to the main difficulties of their interpretations. These poems had been regarded — by interpretators, mostly synologists — as lyric works, however, because of the cultural and philosophical references, these literary translations generally needed further comments. By analysing the best known translations the author concludes that in understanding and recreating of Chinese poems there has always been a dilemma: saving the unity of the poems and at the same time creating a philologically exact translation or by including necessary comments overstepping the limits of literary translation.
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This article presents new research on a Dutch prayer book from the collections of the University Library of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (BU KUL, Lublin, Ms. 2626). This codex, which transmits devotional texts in a translation by Geert Grote, a pioneer of the Modern Devotion movement, especially the Small Office of the Virgin Mary and the Middle Dutch adaptation of Heinrich Suso’s Hundert Betrachtungen und Begehrungen, offers valuable evidence of literary and religious culture in the late-medieval Netherlands. The article begins with a codicological description, followed by a preliminary analysis of the artistic program of the manuscript, a description of the structure of the codex and the identification of the most important texts. Textual evidence indicates that the codex most probably originated from the diocese of Utrecht.
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The article is an attempt at studying the image of Hannibal as presented in “Punica”. The aim of the paper is to sketch a portrait of the Carthaginian in “Punica” (with the image preserved both in historiography and in poetic epithets in mind), which would be a literary realisation of historiographic matter, with variatio typical for poetry, which was extended, shortened and mixed by Silius. The following review also looks at the topic of cruelty, which was a feature attributed to Hannibal himself as well as to Carthaginians in general, and that of death – demonstrated by such actions as (not) burying the bodies of Roman consuls or utilising bodies of the dead to build a bridge.
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On the basis of Joy Kogawa’s “Obasan”, the main objective of this paper is to take under the scrutinizing eye how the central protagonist retrieves a selective portion of her childhood memories during the Second World War in an effort to reshape her fragmented identity as a Japanese-Canadian and to deal with the feeling of displacement. Analyzing essential memories, conversations, and stories within the plotline, the aim is to demonstrate that Naomi, in order to fight her identity crisis and feeling of displacement — due to the Japanese community’s sense of belonging in Canada being shuttered by the Canadian government — recasts her personal experiences to her own needs for the identity refashioning in-between cultures, therefore, in Homi Bhabha’s terms, giving life to a sort of “Third Space.” This paper will therefore demonstrate numerous ways in terms of which the protagonist intrudes upon iconic wilderness and rural landscapes in Canada — hitherto emptied of the indigenous and minorities and thus functioning as a sort of privileged sites of national identity — so as to transform them into heterogeneous and more inclusive spaces, breaking the binary opposition between away and home, a newcomer and native. Significantly, the protagonist’s storytelling may be distinguished by great attention to nature, botanical imagery, and landscapes shaped by experiences of displacement, and it may be argued that the novel is targeted at re-visiting traditional sites of identity construction as well as bringing into tensions historicizing and idealizing visions of the natural environment to challenge the myths of Japanese-Canadians’ identity that these sites were hitherto created to support. It brings into life a “Third Space” in the form of a personal island which will neither float to the Japanese Archipelago nor towards Canada, but it will be a separate entity including both. Hence, the dialogic relation between identity and rural and wilderness landscapes provides alternative forms of meaningful emplacement for the self — a personal “floating homeland” anchored in-between the two cultures.
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Here we edit a second leaf of an Old Uigur manuscript preserved in the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage. While the leaf published in 2011 is an account of the history of the West Uigur Kingdom of Qočo, the present text refers to the early years of Buddhism as well as to the relationship between religion and state, the inner and outer sphere in Old Uigur historiography. We consider the possibility that the manuscript was a kind of World History.
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