“People Eat Their Dinner, Just Eat Their Dinner…”: Food Discourse in Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart

Author(s): Natalia Vysotska / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The essay sets out to explore the functions of food discourse in the plays Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov and Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley. Based on the critically established continuity between the two plays, the essay looks at the ways the dramatists capitalize on food imagery to achieve their artistic goals. It seemed logical to discuss the alimentary practices within the framework of everyday life studies (Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schütz, Fernand Braudel, Bernhard Waldenfels and others), moved to the forefront of literary scholarship by the anthropological turn in the humanities. Enhanced by a semiotic approach, this perspective enables one to understand food products and consumption manners as performing a variety of functions in each play. Most obviously, they are instrumental in creating the illusion of “everydayness” vital for new drama. Then, for Chekhov, food comes to epitomize the spiritless materiality of contemporary life, while in Henley’s play it is predominantly used, in accordance with the play’s feminist agenda, as a grotesque substitute for the lack of human affection. Relying upon the fundamental cultural distinction between everyday and noneveryday makes it possible to compare representations of festive occasions in the two plays seen through the gastronomical lens of “eating together.”

“Turn back if possible!” On Fears Related to the “End” and Hopes for a “Continuation” in Plays by Jarosław Jakubowski

Author(s): Joanna Michalczuk / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2019

The article comprises an analysis of selected plays by Jarosław Jakubowski, one of the most interesting Polish playwrights of the recent years. The analyzed plays were published in two collections of, respectively, 2014 and 2017. Jakubowski’s works address the questions of the foundation of the humanity and of the actual meaning of a human life. In his plays, he unveils the consequences of the cultural transformations of modernity. His special focus is the results of the erosion of traditional values (shaped within the Judeo-Christian culture) and he investigates in particular the implications of replacing them with ones that are merely contingent and short-term. Among others, he issues a warning against the destructive tendency to rid the area of public discourse of the spiritual element. His plays are literary exemplifications of the prevalence of anthropological reductionism in the ideational realm, triggered by modern day philosophy. The insights into the social reality of today he offers describe the process of the gradual passing of what is ‘human’ in our world and are contrasted with the popular view that humankind has power and dominion over everything. Jakubowski’s futurological dramas make use of catastrophic and postapocalyptic motifs, which he turns into metaphors. The quotations used in the title of this article come from the play entitled “Kosmonauci” [The Astronauts], in which a severely damaged spaceship with its crew on board drifting in the space becomes a metaphor of the postmodern world. In the wobbly reality that leads to nowhere, Jakubowski’s protagonists long for a stable and certain element in their lives and start an unequal fight so as to save both their lives and their humanity. Although the disaster seems unavoidable, Jakubowski leaves his readers with a hope for a “continuation” which is far from naive optimism. It is a hope for the return of what has been rejected and rendered no longer valid by the modern world: the spiritual dimension of human existence and a stable value hierarchy which can become a reliable foundation of human relations.

ЈОШ ЈЕДАН ДАН ЖИВОТА

Author(s): Ryszard Kapuściński / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 522/2020

Odlomci iz knjige "Još jedan dan života" Rišarda Kapušćinskog

Софийският международен литературен фестивал – декември 2021

Author(s): Daria Karapetkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

The text offers a review of the 9th edition of the Sofia International Literary Festival which took place in December 2021, trying to discover the conceptual threads that determine its structure and contents. It describes the meetings and the conversations with the participants at the festival, as well as the subjects of the discussions which were aimed to analyse some significant phenomena from the present days and also the perspectives they develop for all of us.

Срце за трун љубави

Author(s): Živko Kareski Gornoselec / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3-4/2019

Сцена представља затворску ћелију. На фронталном зиду примећује се име „Душица“, незграпно исписано.

Стари Дубровник осветљен новим историзмом

Author(s): Nevena Varnica / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 14/2016

Review of: Topličanin, Tamara (2016), Dubrovnik Marina Držića, Beograd: Zadužbina Vladete Jerotića – Ars Libri.

Статус медија у савременом експерименталном писању

Author(s): Dubravka Đurić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3/2011

In this paper I am dealing with the experiments in poetry and postdrama theater. New British drama in the work of Sarah Kane and Martin Crimp are taken as exhamples of postdrama experiment, realized in the First world country. In my focus then is Ivana Sajko’s work, which is realized in the context of postcommunist Croatia. Experiment in poetry is investigated in the work of American language poets Bob Perelman and Charles Bernstein, and poets such as Jerome Sala and Elaine Equi. Then I am dealing with Jelena Savić and Ljiljana Jovanović’s work, which is realized in postsocialist Serbia. My interest is to investigate the relation of experimental writing, its cultural contexts and its relation to media culture.

СТО ДОБРИХ РАЗЛОГА ДА СЕ ОДМАХ УБИЈЕМ

Author(s): Roland Topor / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 522/2020

СТРУКТУРА САТИРИЧНИХ ТЕКСТОВА ПЕТРА ПАЈИЋА

Author(s): Snežana S. Baščarević / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3/2019

Сатирични текстови Петра Пајића у контексту српске савремене сатире још увек су недовољно истражени. У раду полазимо од хипотезе да пајићевску сатиру одликује индивидуализација и субјективност која је присутна у досетки, шеретлуку, лукавству, препредености и погађа у центар ствари, па се као таква упечатљиво намеће читаоцу. Рад има за циљ да аналитичко-синтетичком методом размотри структуру сатиричних текстова Дневник нашег савременика. Закључено је да су они: 1. продукт бриге за егзистенцију и проблеме садашњег друштва, 2. критички, информативни, социјални, двосмислени, релаксирајући, 3. са троструком естетском валоризацијом (јунак, аутор, читалац).

Сусрети Луиђија Пирандела са војвођанским гледаоцима и критичарима између два светска рата

Author(s): Marijana Savatović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 10/2014

Luigi Pirandello in the Eyes of the Audience and the Critics of Vojvodina Between the Two World WarsFrom the foundation of the Serbian National Theater in 1861 to the final applose in 1941, Italian writers were present on the Vojvodinian scene. Their encounters with the audience were at times very successful, and at time less successful, but they left a significant mark on the theatrical life of Vojvodina. Among them were the great writers like Goldoni and Pirandello as well as those less renowned in Italy. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the impressions on the spectators and the theatre critics after the encounter with the pirandelle theatre, but also to try to shed light on reasons why this writer could not remain on the scene.

Танец в художественной структуре пьес русских, белорусских и польских драматургов 1990-х – 2010-х годов

Author(s): Jelena Lepiszewa,Maciej Pieczyński / Language(s): Russian Issue: 20/2020

In this paper, dance is considered as an element of the artistic structure of dramatic works of Russian, Belarusian and Polish authors of the 1990s–2010s. It was revealed that this element represents the level of the chronotope: it becomes one of its expressive modes (creating an atmosphere due to emotional «charge»), manifests itself as a «non-everyday form of behavior» of a character (J. Faryno), as a «spatial motive» (O. Bagdasaryan) as a sense-forming centre of the artistic universe. A comparative analysis of the plays written by Russian, Belarusian and Polish playwrights of the indicated period showed that in Russian drama the transition occured from the dance – a «spatial motive» to the dance – a semantic center representing author’s model of the world and a Nietzschean man in the terms of a spontaneous, unstable world order. That was caused by the strengthening of the performative and receptive potential of modern drama. At the same time, in the Belarusian drama, due to more strong genetic ties with folklore, the dance for a long time has been manifesting itself as a game form of non-everyday behavior, however, since the mid-1990s it is often introduced as a «spatial motive» representing the extremely deformed consciousness of characters. If it comes to Polish drama, despite the actualization of the dance in the significant for its development works, in the latest plays it rarely functions as a semantic center, because of political and social themes predomination. The authors of this paper made an attempt to clarify the reasons for differents of the dance in the Russian, Belarusian, Polish drama of the 1990s–2010s, based on sociocultural factors, as well as on the logic of the development of the literary proces.

Театърът на Радко Радков. История, памет, интерпретации. Теофанó

Author(s): Galia Simeonova-Konach / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2017

The article is dedicated to the problems of historical drama, one of the ways of interpreting the past. The study is placed in the context of the sociology of culture and the historical memory of society, with a focus on the transposition and the symbolical representation of the history of Byzantium and the Second Bulgarian Kingdom (1181 – 1396) in literature. The subject of the analysis are the works of the Bulgarian poet and playwright Radko Radkov (1940 – 2009), above all his play Theophano, written in the convention of classical drama in verse and the so-called ritual drama, according to the title of the author, a synthesis of text borrowed from Old Bulgarian Literature, and Byzantine hymnograohy, inspired visually by the images of the Middle Age Miniatures included in Codex Vaticanus Slav II. The historical theme in the work of Radko Radkov is substantially different from the interpretation of the Bulgarian history of other Bulgarian writers of the second half of the 20th Century, by which the author is opposing the ideological constructs of the official authorities during this period. The playwright has found semiotic and stylistic devices that recreate the classical past of the people, the orthodox Christianity and culture in the universal perspective of the Byzantine Commonwealth, and artistically voice his historiosophic views concerning Bulgarian national history and the Byzantine-Bulgarian cultural community. The paper analyses the tribulations of the performance of Theophano, staged in Bulgaria by the French Director Pierre Della Torre, who sees in the poetic world of Radko Radkov “the monumental force of the masters of French theatre, Racine and Corneille“.

Теорія індійського санскритського походження китайської драми Чжуцзюйшо у контексті студій історії культури Сходу

Author(s): Yaroslav Igorovich Shcherbakov / Language(s): Ukrainian Issue: 2/2019

The purpose of the article is to illuminate the influence of Sanskrit drama on the process of traditional Chinese drama genesis, to introduce into a Ukrainian- language scientific turn of a series of information on the history of Chinese culture that is only available in modern and ancient Chinese. The research methodology is to use a combination of historical, structural, typological-comparative research methods. This methodological approach allows us to reveal and analyze the influence of the Indian Sanskrit drama on the formation of Chinese drama. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the comprehensive coverage of the problems of the genesis of the Chinese traditional drama in the context of the Indian influence on the formation of the genre paradigm of Chinese traditional drama, as well as the systematization of material provided by Chinese researchers in Chinese, which has not yet been translated into the Ukrainian language and, in most cases, not entered into a scientific rush within the framework of the English literary criticism and cultural discourse. Conclusions. The idea of a dramatic action originated in India, and later, during the first millennium AD, the Indian Sanskrit drama was exported to the territory of East Turkestan and to the territory of Southeast Asia. Subsequently, the Uighur theater had a direct influence on the formation of the Chinese civilizational and cultural environment, which can be considered proven in the context of the actual material presented in the works of Chinese researchers, systematized and presented above. In the process of forming a genre paradigm of Chinese drama, in particular, the structure of the system of the role of Indian drama had a direct influence, as well as Indian influence was the structure of drama, there is a significant number of Chinese dramas, which present the motives of Chinese Buddhism.

ТИПОЛОГИЈА ХЕРОЈА У СРПСКОЈ ДРАМИ ДЕВЕДЕСЕТИХ ГОДИНА XX ВЕКА – ЂЕНЕРАЛ МИЛАН НЕДИЋ СИНИШЕ КОВАЧЕВИЋА

Author(s): Zlatko Grušanović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3/2019

Полазиште за истраживање у овом раду је концепт хероја као истовремено социолошког и књижевног конструкта. На примеру драме Ђенерал Милан Недић Синише Ковачевића у овом раду се разматра како су идеолошке и политичке промене у друштву условљавале промену доживљавања и разумевања националних митова и сходно томе њихову обраду у уметничким делима. На примеру историјске личности Милана Недића и његовог књижевног уобличења, овај рад настоји да покаже процес настанка хероја као слојевите структуре, који у себи има карактеристике трагичке кривице, народног издајника и борца за националне интересе, у зависности од историјског и идеолошког тренутка у којем се посматра његова личност и обликује његов драмски лик.

Тихо в саду: об одном элементе последней пьесы чехова

Author(s): Jurij Domanskyi / Language(s): Russian Issue: 4/2011

The paper addresses one element of Chekhov’s play entitled The Cherry Orchard: a note in which the word “silently” is repeated twice. It is proved that the semantics of the character in Chekhov’s plays can be formed on the basis of confrontation words and events.

Тица у кавезу

Author(s): Joanna Mueller / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 4/2014

A play based on the novel "Nove" (The New Women) by Jelena Dimitrijević.

Три драмска писца: идејне и поетичке сродности и разлике (Владимир Велмар-Јанковић, Душан Николајевић и Боривоје Јевтић)

Author(s): Andreja Ž. Marić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 6/2012

This paper contains analysis of eleven plays by Vladimir Velmar-Janković, Dušan Nikolajević and Borivoje Jevtić, which belong to the corpus of those pieces from the interwar period characterized by harsh criticism of the social and political reality and moral deviations of civil society. The analysis showed that the main characteristic of the socio-critical dramas written between the two wars is their social relevance and a strong ideological message that warns of disintegration of civil society and culture. Ideological-critical line in these plays dominates over dramatic plot, and social criticism is always combined with family and romantic intrigues, typical for the classic psychological drama.

Удвояване или за любословието на филологията

(Рецензия на „Модерният мимесис: Саморефлексията в литературата“ на Камелия Спасова, 2021)

Author(s): Miglena Nikolchina / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 10/2021

Modern Mimesis: Self-Reflexivity in Literature is a passionate defence of philology that traverses the distances from Ancient Hellas to present-day Japan, from Ulysses to robots. This movement follows a logic described by the author as reconceptualization, and creates conceptual nodes configured through horizontal and vertical, temporal and spatial self-reflexive reduplications. The broad arc from the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum to the mimetic valleys of robotics thus turns out to be underpinned by the reconceptualization of the ancient dispute between ‘analogy’ and ‘anomaly’, turning any attempt at ordering into an ‘endless series of rearrangements’.

Хамлет / Hamlet / Двуезично издание

Author(s): William Shakespeare / Language(s): English,Bulgarian

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the first book of the new bilingual library "English Poetic Classics" by the East-West Publishing House. The bilingual format of this library provides readers with the opportunity to get deeper into the subtleties of the text regarding some of the most valuable works of English literature by comparing original text and its translation, and also to get into the specifics of poetic translation of classical works. Hamlet is Shakespeare's most popular, and most puzzling, play. It follows the form of a "revenge tragedy," in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against his father's murderer, his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its fascination, however, lies in its uncertainties. Among them: What is the Ghost--Hamlet's father demanding justice, a tempting demon, an angelic messenger? Does Hamlet go mad, or merely pretend to? Once he is sure that Claudius is a murderer, why does he not act? Was his mother, Gertrude, unfaithful to her husband or complicit in his murder?

ХЕНРИX IV

Author(s): Luigi Pirandello / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3-4/2020

Tragedy play by Luigi Pirandello ("Henry IV")