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“They Were Such Skilled Craftsmen”. How to Manipulate a Dwarf. In Old Norse literature, dwarfs are first and foremost known as remarkable smiths and producers of weapons and other valuable, magic objects. Both gods and human protagonists need those products. However, dwarfs do not usually sell their products, neither to gods nor to humans. The closest thing to a sale contract is found in Sǫrla þáttr eða Heðins saga ok Hǫgna, a short narrative found in the Flateyjarbók manuscript. Here, Freyja intended to buy an exceptionally beautiful necklace, from the dwarfs, and offered them gold and silver in exchange for it. However, the dwarfs would only sell it to her in exchange for one night spent together and Freyja accepted the trade. But how can you make sure you get what you need from a dwarf if you do not happen to be Freyja? In this paper, I provide some case studies that seem to indicate a pattern. The most powerful gods, such as Óðinn, may issue a direct order, while less powerful beings, as Loki or Freyja, need to manipulate the dwarf into wanting to provide them the desired item. Human protagonists are able to manipulate dwarfs by exploiting the fact that the dwarfs reciprocate help and generosity. However, if someone attempts to treat dwarfs as servants, when, in reality, they do not have the same power over them as the mighty gods do, they risk severe retribution from the dwarf.
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Revisiting Norse Mythology: The Case of A.S. Byatt’s Ragnarök. In 2011, British author and Booker-prize winner A. S. Byatt publishes Ragnarök, her rewriting of the Norse myth about the death of the gods. Seen through the eyes of a thin child who is forced to witness the terrors of World War II, the story and characters of the Norse myth are reinterpreted and retold in accordance with the child’s vision, imagination and feelings. The paper here focuses on the association of the Scandinavian imaginary with specific moments in A. S. Byatt’s personal history, and highlights the use of certain patterns and ideas that are present in both, trying to pinpoint the elements that make possible the transformation of the mythical into the actual. The aim of this study is to explore the evolution of the mythological events as they are rewritten in Byatt’s 21st century book, in close connection with the main character’s personal development. To that end, the paper will also dwell upon the comparison drawn by Byatt herself between the Norse and the Christian mythological imaginary – a vision filtered through the eyes and thoughts of the focalizer of the text, the thin child.
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Interview with Jan Erik Vold by Raluca-Daniela Duinea. Jan Erik VOLD (b. 1939) is a prominent literary and public figure of the Norwegian literary and cultural space of the 1960s. And he is “still at work. […] Because if I didn’t, there would be one voice missing”, as the poet himself stated in the introduction of the first Norwegian-Romanian bilingual anthology of poetry entitled Briskeby blues, published at Casa Cărții de Știință Publishing House, in 2023, with the financial support of Norwegian Literature Abroad (NORLA).
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Review of: Roxana-Ema Dreve, Raluca-Daniela Duinea, Raluca Pop, Fartein Th. Øverland (eds.), A Lifetime Dedicated to Norwegian Language and Literature — Papers in Honour of Professor Sanda Tomescu Baciu, Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2021, 317 p.
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Review of: Sanda Tomescu-Baciu, Fartein Th. Øverland, Roxana-Ema Dreve, Raluca-Daniela Răduț, Raluca Pop (eds.), PhD Studies In Norwegian Literature, Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, 2020, 190 p.
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Review of: Lars Saabye Christensen, Bunica mea chinezoaică (Min kinesiske farmor/My Chinese Grandmother), traducere din limbile norvegiană și daneză cu note de Sanda Tomescu Baciu, Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, 2022, 232 p.
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Review of: Cristina Vișovan, Rewriting Norse Mythology in Contemporary Norwegian Literature. The Search for Identity in a Multicultural World, Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, 2021, 307 p.
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Review of: Ioana-Andreea Mureșan, The Quest for Identity in Norwegian-American Immigrant Narratives. Correspondences with the Romanian Immigrant Experience in America, Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2021, 296 p.
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Review of: Jeanyves Guérin, Camus, La Peste et le coronavirus. Contribution à des humanités citoyennes. Paris, Honoré Champion, 2022, 202 p.
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Review of: Sanda Tomescu Baciu, Roxana-Ema Dreve, Raluca-Daniela Duinea, Fartein Th. Øverland, Raluca Pop (eds.), 30 Years of Norwegian Language and Literature in Romania at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2021, 255 p.
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Review of: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Najskrytsza pamięć ludzi, tłum. Jacek Giszczak, Wydawnictwo Cyranka, Warszawa 2022, 435 s.
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This paper analyzes the motif of the golden goose and of the goose (or hen) that laid golden eggs that appear in both the Buddhist Suvaṇṇahaṃsa-jātaka and one of Aesop’s fables. Common characteristics of these works are analyzed and the history of the golden goose in Indian literature from both pre-Buddhist and Buddhist times is presented, which indicates that the story has an Indian origin.
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Claire Keegan is one of the most prominent voices within the contemporary Irish short story panorama. Internationally acclaimed, her prose has been praised for its frank and bitter portrayal of a rural world, whose outdated values, no matter how anchored in the past they might be, still prevail in a modern milieu. Keegan’s unsympathetic views on society, mainly on the Catholic Church and the family, are the main targets of her harsh criticism. Issues like gender and sexuality, two social constructs with which to validate an uneven distribution of power, constitute the pillars of most of her plots. Bearing these aspects in mind, my proposal focuses on the analysis of Keegan’s first collection of short stories, Antarctica (1999), in light of gender relations and female agency, in an attempt to find patterns of – often thwarted – female emancipation in the context of the rapid changes of a society that is still adjusting to a globalised world. This article will also engage in the discussion of her second collection,Walk the Blue Fields (2007), and her long short story Foster (2010).
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This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the rewriting of King Lear, the Shakespearean classic, as it appears in Ivan Turgenev’s novella King Lear of the Steppes, published in 1870. In order to study this case of appropriation in Russian literature, which was received with skepticism by many of his contemporaries and forgotten for a long time, the focus is placed on two fundamental aspects: characterisation and theatricality. These two features connect Turgenev’s work with the source text and exemplify how adaptation and appropriation function within target cultural systems. Far from being a mere literary experiment, the appropriation of some of Shakespeare’s characters in Turgenev’s works and their use as literary archetypes was based on ideological reasons that would influence the evolution of nineteenth-century Russian thought. The present research highlights the importance of processes of rewriting, such as adaptation and appropriation, for the development oftarget cultural systems and, in order to do so, the perspective of adaptation studies is adopted.
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This paper, part of a long-term programme of research into the forms and functions of the vernacular in late medieval liturgical practice in England, offers a “cultural map” of the Middle English poem known as The Lay Folks’ Mass Book (LFMB). Comparatively little research has been undertaken on LFMB since Simmons’s edition of 1879. However, new developments in the study of manuscript-reception in particular regions of the Middle English-speaking areas of Britain, combined with greater understanding of the cultural dynamics of “manuscript miscellanies” and of medieval liturgical practice, allow us to reconstruct with greater certainty the contexts within which LFMB was copied and used. LFMB survives in nine late medieval copies, but each copy presented a distinct version of the text. This article brings together linguistic, codicological, liturgical, and textual information, showing in detail how the poem was repurposed for a range of different cultural functions. In geographical terms, it seems clear that the work circulated in Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire, in Yorkshire, and in Norfolk, and can thus be related to other texts circulating in those areas. Some versions are likely to have emerged in parochial settings, possibly owned by local priests. There is also evidence that the text could be deployed in monastic contexts, while other versions probably formed part of the reading of pious gentry. What emerges from a study of the codices in which copies of LFMB were transmitted is that a range of shaping sensibilities for these manuscripts may be distinguished; the authorial role in texts such as LFMB was balanced with that of their copyists and audiences. In the manuscripts containing LFMB creativity was negotiated within textually-transmitted communities of practice.
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