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Letter from the editor and author guidelines
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Letter from the editor and author guidelines
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This article begins with a reading of a diary which is not explicitly “literary”; namely, the diary of the theologian Father Alexander Schmemann; it continues with A Writer’s Diary by Fyodor Dostoevsky and ends with the “diary of a country priest” from the novel of the same name by the French author Georges Bernanos. Under what conditions, to what extent and from what angle can we compare the journals of a renowned theologian, a well-known novelist like Dostoevsky and an anonymous novel character? The three texts turn out to be united by the search for an interface between everyday life and transcendent reality, as well as by the fact that in all three cases this interface is found through the revelation of “transcendent beauty” (as beauty simultaneously being and not being part of this world). The texts also have in common the fact that beauty was discovered in each case through an experience that marked the existence of the diarists and gave them strength to follow their life paths to the end.
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The article examines the special role of the journey - spiritual and physical, in three novels by immigrant authors from the Balkans: Paris-Athens by Vassilis Alexakis, Hotel Europe by Dumitru Tsepeneag and Murder in Byzantium by Julia Kristeva. Represented is the idea that, by leaving his motherland, the immigrant could never attach himself the same way to any place and be fully accepted in the new community. Thus, his constant movement appears as a peculiar reaction to this specific ‘uprooting’ and becomes a way of life and thinking – i.e. a modern ‘nomadism’.
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This article examines Southeast-European stories and novels, where for the first time a rejection of the Beautiful in favour of scientific perception can be observed: "Dimo the Orderly" by Gheorghi P. Stamatov (1869-1942), "Parasites" by Barbu Delavrancea (1858-1918), "Rich and Poor" by Grigorios Xenopoulos (1867-1951) are compared with Emile Zola’s (1840-1902) "Nana". These similar themes and topics (the class division of society, the interest in the poor, heredity, pathology, symbolized by money, illness, and death) provide arguments in order to emphasize the existence of a common "system of European values" in a much broader perimeter than that of Western literatures.Thanks to the ideas of literary Naturalism, the materialistic view of life, scientifically legitimized during the Nineteenth century, obtained the credibility to be seen as a literary value. From a literary perspective, we are faced with an objective position of the narrator, adopted by writers (at the expense of the Beautiful, considered until that point as an intrinsic aesthetic value and essential to the art).This article applied the Triangular Pattern, introduced by the author, which implies a constant referring to the phenomena, common to European literatures and does not recommend that scholars remain incarcerated within the study of parallels between Southeаst-European literatures.
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Comments on the articles under the head-title Outstanding Romanian Personalities in World Literature and Literature Studies
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Review of the book on the topic of French literature and its influence
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Comments on the topic in the book: Cosmopolitan and the postnational. Literature and the New Europe.
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Thomas Mann dealt with the topic of Europe on several levels: literary, theoretically and in the course of time. In his novel The Magic Mountain, the – symbolically speaking – “sick Europe” is meeting in a Swiss sanatorium. André Gide, who is like Thomas Mann a European in spirit, commented on Mann’s essay “Achtung, Europa!” (1936) with these words: “Mann reste […] un humaniste dans le sens le plus plein du mot.” Hans-Magnus Enzensberger – poet and critical observer of European developments – counters this humanistic idea of Europe with a new concept in, among other texts, “Eurozentrismus wider Willen” and Ach Europa (Europe, Europe: Forays into a Continent), which can be considered a mixture of essay and literary travelogue. Enzensberger opposes the political and economic attempts at harmonization imposed from Brussels and emphasizes the cultural distinctions of each individual European country. Linked to this commitment to alterity is a postmodern concept, which at the same time questions the grown humanistic discourse on Europe.
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The paper examines the selection, structuring and dramatic rendition of the fairy tale plots in the Francophone and the Slavic symbolist dramas, to point out their typological resemblances and inner richness. The study finds out that rewriting the magic stories and their syncretic approach characterize both theatres and mark out their similitudes. However, the Francophone symbolists attempt to intensify the universal and mystical meaning of the folktales. On the other hand, the Slavic authors insert some national and parodic trends in their plays, strengthen the art synthesis and anticipate, in that way, the dramatic experiments in the European vanguards.
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Rakoczy questions the definition of writing as a sort of linguistic symbolism related to the idea of ‘expressing thoughts’ and ‘communication’ through words. Based on Western calligraphic practices, her analysis suggests that the bodily, material and visual aspects of writing also shape its cultural significance. Their role often remains implicit, which determines the functioning of writing and its cultural specificity.
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Jurkowska discusses the nineteenth-century guest books signed by visitors to the Temple of the Sibyl in Puławy, Poland’s first museum. As an anthropologist of literacy practices, she re-contextualizes the entries and focuses the materiality and functionality of the volumes that contain the autographs. She also explores the visual strategies and performativity in the Puławy books, as well as the visitors’ writing tactics, which revolve around national memory and identity.
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The “Declaration Toward a Global Ethic” adopted by the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993 and the “Earth Charter” (UNESCO, 2000) both hinge on the notion that in the era of increasing globalization the world needs a “charter of global ethics”. Wierzbicka develops this idea, engaging with the Dalai Lama’s suggestion that the “charter of global ethics” should be translated into all the languages of the world. Wierzbicka argues that this goal can be achieved if the norms of global ethics are formulated in a Minimal Language based on the universal “alphabet of human thought,” which emerges from several years of empirical study on many of the world’s languages. She presents two version of her “charter of global ethics” – a Polish version and an English one – suggesting they could act as a platform for global dialogue on ethical norms for all of humanity.
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The article deals with the Slavic words *gluxъ ‘deaf’, *glupъ ‘stupide’ and *glumъ, *gluma ‘idle talk, mockery; noise; amusement’. It is well known that the notions of ‘dumb’/‘deaf’ and ‘stupid’ are related in many languages. The author follows St. Mladenov’s view that these lexemes go back to IE *ghlew- ‘joy, frolic, joke, play’, but reconsiders it from the semantic point of view. According to her opinion the basic meaning of the root is ‘noise, rumble, rumbling sound’. This assumption is supported by OIcel. glymja ‘to resonate’ and MHG glumen ‘to resound, boom, rumble’. The root *ghlew- has undergone a specific semantic evolution in Slavic: ‘rumbling sound’ > ‘loud and incomprehensible speech; prattle, gibberish’ > ‘inability to speak, dumbness, dumb’. The primary sense of Common Slavic *gluma, *glumъ < IE *ghlow-m- is not ‘joke’ or ‘idle talk, vaunting’, but ‘incomprehensible speech, stammering’ from which evolved the meaning ‘unable to speak, dumb’, cf. S.Cr. glȗm, glúma, glúmo which signifies ‘deaf-and-dumb’.
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Several local names are attested as of a certain or probable Thracian origin in Greek and Latin inscriptions from the 4-6th centuries A.D. in the territory of contemporary Bulgaria. The following paper summarizes and supplements the information about their origin, distribution and use. The names Βειθ[υ...]- μίης and Ζυακοζρερων are observed from the point of view of word formation and their Thracian origin is very possible. Κοκελωνε[ων], Δηζικα, Γερεα, Artacia, Calso are toponyms located in the hub of Thrace and they have parallels with other similar Thracian names as Κοκκος, Διζας, Γέρραι, Ἀρτάκης. The research of the linguistic facts and circumstantial evidence of the focused names confirms their Thracian origin and they can be attributed to the Thracian onomastic fund.
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The hypothesis that Thracian and Dacian are two separate languages belongs to Vladimir Georgiev. It has both supporters and opponents. On the basis of analysis both of onomastic material (hydronyms, names of settlements, anthroponyms, theonyms and ethnonyms), and of appellatives (glosses), the paper checks the claim of considerable phonetic differences (presence or absence of a shift of the voiced and voiceless consonants) between the Thracian and the Dacian-Moesian region. Attention is devoted to the data on proper names formed on the same roots in both areas. An analysis is made of different graphic variants of other names with a view to studying the reasons for the appearance of the varying transcripts.
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The article examines the origin of the nomination of the herbaceous plant oregano (Rus. душица обыкновeнная). The main object of analysis are the linguistic manifestations of specific and functional signs as the basis of name, and the ways of their expression. Based on this are determined the models of nominative row in Russian and Bulgarian languages. The study of nominative rows of the plant oregano entering the thematic group of phytonyms „Medicinal herbaceous plants of the family Lamiaceae,“ is the most acceptable method for the study of the principles and ways of nomination of objects possessing common properties. This method facilitates the study to focus on the many names and identify the current relations between marked objects and their names, as well as to reveal the systemic organization of thematic vocabulary groups. Furthermore, comparison of current models of nominative rows in the system of the two languages (Russian and Bulgarian) provides an opportunity to indicate the integrity of nominations of the studied thematic group.
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The paper introduces the topic of Japanese loan-words in Bulgarian. The main text touches upon the place of Japanese among world languages, the main characteristics of its phonological system, its lexical layers and their respective word-formation patterns, some mediator-languages that have been important in borrowing from Japanese, as well as well as existing variation within the same loan-word. A glossary appendix introduces some of the Japanese loan-words attested in Bulgarian.
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The basic moments of teaching in stylistics of future journalists and PR specialists from the Center of the Humanities are discussed in the article. Attention is paid to the linguistic peculiarities of the journalistic style texts. The meaning of the linguistic analysis in the teaching of the students is revealed.
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