Varia: The Intermundium of S. T. Coleridge’s Genius in Biographia Literaria

Author(s): Lubomir Terziev / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

The focus of this article is on the peculiar space that S.T. Coleridge constructs for his own genius in Chapter II and Chapter IX of Biographia Literaria. Specific attention is devoted to some rhetorical ploys that Coleridge uses to accommodate his own figure among paragons like William Shakespeare and William Wordsworth. The text then explores Coleridge’s attachment to and detachment from the figures of Friedrich Schelling and Jacob Böhme. In the conclusion, a statement is made on the intermundium between enthusiasm and metaphysical reasoning in which Coleridge’s genius is located.

Citizenship, Gender, and Democracy Building, edited by Euromed Feminist Initiative

Author(s): Pavel Petkov / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

By Way of Old Petersburg: Desmond O’Grady and Russian Poetry

Author(s): Alla Kononova / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

The article takes on a direction which has great potential for further studies of contemporary Irish poetry: studying the work of Irish poets through their relation to Russian literature. It focuses on the reception and reimagining of Russian poetry in the work of Desmond O’Grady, one of the leading figures in Irish poetry, who started writing in mid-1950s. The article studies three poems by O’Grady which are ad¬dressed to his Russian counterparts: “Missing Andrei Voznesensky,” “Joseph Brodsky Visits Kinsale,” and “My City,” a translation from Anna Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero.” None of these poems has yet been subject of thorough critical analysis. Each of the poems has become a signpost on O’Grady’s poetic map and an important element of his own “private mythology.” When analysed in the wider context of Irish poetry, they help form a clearer picture of the influence Russian literature has had on contemporary Irish poets.

Bodies in Service: Representations of the Servant’s Body in Two Victorian Novels

Author(s): Maria Dimitrova / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The article discusses the representation of the servant‘s body in George Moore‘s 𝐸𝑠𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑊𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 and the Mayhew brothers‘ 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑔𝑢𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒: 𝑂𝑟, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑑𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝐿𝑎𝑑𝑦 𝑖𝑛 𝑆𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑐ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝐺𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑆𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑡. It considers the various uses that the servant‘s body is put to, focusing in particular on the figures of the wetnurse (𝐸𝑠𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑊𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠) and the footman (𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑔𝑢𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒). The article explores the numerous acts of appropriation and commodification of the servant‘s body – including its costing – and its peculiar vulnerability. It also considers instances of the body‘s intransigence: its refusal to abide by class boundaries and its subversion of the purposes it is required to fulfil. By addressing these issues, the article demonstrates the intimate connections which Victorian fiction traced between problems of class and social identity and problems of the body.

Variations of Death in Richard K. Morgan’s 𝐴𝑙𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑜𝑛. From Cybergothic to Candygothic

Author(s): Constantina Raveca Buleu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The article presents an analysis of Richard K. Morgan‘s novel 𝐴𝑙𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑜𝑛 with a focus on postmodern, neo-Gothic perspectives on death. More generally, it explores Gothic thanatology in the postmodern world. Attention is also drawn to the representations of death and technological survival in Morgan‘s novel 𝐴𝑙𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑜𝑛.

Individual and Collective Memory in Shakespeare’s First Tetralogy, Between Myth and National Identity

Author(s): Nicoletta Caputo / Language(s): English Issue: 44/2023

In Richard III, Act 3, young Prince Edward’s insistent questions about the origins of the Tower of London bring the issue of historical transmission to the foreground. Furthermore, the survival of truth across time is thematised throughout the first tetralogy. References to fame recur obsessively in the three parts of Henry VI, while in Richard III, Shakespeare subtly plays with a historical and historiographical tradition that is much indebted to memorial transmission. In this play, historical distortion is materialised in the deformed body of its protagonist, who becomes the emblem of a past reinterpreted and rewritten in the light of present interests. The article will show how, on the one hand, the dramatist goes beyond what already was a “vituperative history” and brings the so-called Tudor myth to its apex while, on the other hand, undermining this same myth.

Perspectives on Conrad’s Transcultural Protagonists in the Malay Trilogy

Author(s): Anna Szczepan-Wojnarska / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

Joseph Conrad, a writer of Polish origin, who wrote in English, could be seen as a precursor of today’s transnational writers. It seems that few, if any, other writers of the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods had Conrad’s open-minded view of other cultures. The variety of nationalities represented in his novels and short stories reflects his thorough immersion in the cultures that he encountered during his travels and proves that his imagination was not limited by imaginary notions of geographical boundaries. The present article focuses on the Malay trilogy where none of the characters seems to be complete or sufficiently able to express themselves. Self-identification is achieved dialogically in their interactions with each other, but also in the ways in which they relate to their own complex selves. In this process, Conrad deliberately reverses and/or deforms certain categories of self-definition.

Facing History: A Comparative Study of Howard Barker and Bahram Beyzaie's Selected Plays

Author(s): Sarah Moghadam,Zohreh Ramin,Alireza Anushirvani / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

This article attempts to compare Bahram Beyzaie and Howard Barker, two tragedians with a critical-historical approach towards the past, formal history, and canonical texts. The plays by Beyzaie and Barker (Judith and Possibilities by Barker and Fath-Nameh-Kalat by Beyzaie) are studied based on the theories of Hegel, Theodor Adorno, and Hayden White including historicizing and the matter of truth, the process of subjectivity, the moral philosophy of rationality/irrationality, and sacrifice. Rereading and representing historical events through tragedies and via personal ethics, aesthetics, and critical approaches pave the way for the audience and readers’ understanding of the past. This offers them the power of imagination and creation and saves them from habitual repetitions as well as the imitation of Grand Narratives. This negation gives self-consciousness to the individual and leads her/him in transforming from a passive and obedient object to an active and rebellious subject in the society. Beyzaie’s and Barker’s challenging and complex views of the past, historical narrations, and patriotic/patriarchal morality, along with the literary techniques they use which provide a shocking, skeptical, and delusional atmosphere for the audience to encourage it to deny, guess, and create are the notable and radical artistic and philosophical characteristics of these playwrights.

DOUBLE CULTURAL IDENTITY. PANAIT ISTRATI AND SALMAN RUSHDIE

Author(s): Eliza-Maria Biță / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 16/2019

This work is a brief account of its author’s PhD thesis, which will be held and published in October 2020. It synthesises Eliza Biță’s intentions to undertake a rigorous research as to the multiple cultural identities of two authors, a Romanian-born one, Panait Istrati, and an Indian-born one Ŕ Salman Rushdie, whose literary paths are similar up to one particular point, namely the country they finally choose as their homeland: in nuce, both Istrati and Rushdie are born in countries located closer or further to the east than the country in whose language they publish and which appears to be their real homeland. The author exposes here in a few lines her way of reflecting on the matter of multiple identities and selves and of analysing the two writers’ works from this particular point of view their being both Oriental, in feelings, and Occidental, in thought. Relying on previous research from French and Romanian critics and on works written by modern-lifestyle philosophers and sociologists who experienced similar disruptions in their lives and literary expressions, such as Tzvetan Todorov, as well as on modern several narratologists’ studies, Biță concludes such cosmopolitism is inevitable nowadays and will probably become a rule in the future.

AMBIGUITY—UNCERTAINTY—AFFORDANCE

Author(s): Dragoş Avădanei / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2019

The paper comments on three works titled Seven Types of Ambiguity (William Empson’s critical book of 1930, Shirley Jackson’s 1943 short story and Elliot Perlman’s 2003 novel), and another one titled Seven Modes of Uncertainty (2014) by Carla Namwali Serpell, i.e. four authors of four continents. Ambiguity is fundamentally rejected in science and philosophy, uncertainty is the subject of (drastic) reductions in communication theory, computer science, environmental studies, business/management, economics, engineering…, mathematics, and affordance is not as yet convincingly defined conceptually, but all three, as permanent resources of errors, imprecision, indeterminacies and unreliability, are richly and fruitfully present in literature; so the last author uses her modes of uncertainty to discuss ambiguity and affordance (less convincingly) and, paradoxically, uncertainty itself; consequently, this is a paper of uncertainty about ambiguity, uncertainty and affordance, after all.

A POSTSTRUCTURALIST ANALYSIS OF MILTON’S SONNET 19

Author(s): Edward Robert Raupp / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2022

Theories of literary criticism may approach a text from different, often conflicting, perspectives. This study set out to determine whether and, if so, to what extent, the perspective of poststructuralism, a successor literary theory to structuralism, may inform our understanding of the text of John Milton’s Sonnet 19, “When I consider how my light is spent,” sometimes referred to as “On His Blindness.” The study examined by close reading the semantic, semiotic, and syntactical tools of Milton’s language to make that determination. While those tools may be useful in the examination of any particular text, and of any genre, they were found to be especially appropriate to the analysis of an English poem, given the narrator’s freedom from the traditional constraints of the language, including the order of words and phrases, their common meaning, and the symbols embedded in a poetic narrative. What are the recognizable signs in the sonnet, and did Milton intentionally leave those signs as a kind of “trail of breadcrumbs” for us to follow, or are they revealed only by the application of some modern theory of literary criticism? Poststructuralism offers a frame within which that freedom may be most readily realized, and it proved useful in attaining semantic, semiotic, and syntactical insights into Sonnet 19 beyond those commonly found in the literature. There is not just one meaning in the sonnet, not just the meaning intended by the author. Poststructuralist analysis suggests that there are as many meanings as there are readers of the poem.

Amikor a középosztálybeli nő írni kezdett. Interjú Séllei Nóra irodalomtörténésszel, műfordítóval

Author(s): Júlia-Réka Vallasek,Nóra Séllei / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 865/2023

Interview with Literary Historian and Translator Nóra Séllei by Júlia Vallasek.

Monstrosity in a Ballet Adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Author(s): Magdalena Berechowska / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2022

The article focuses on the analysis of the 2016 ballet adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein created by Liam Scarlett for the Royal Opera House and the San Francisco Ballet. The purpose of the article is to show that this production presents the novel’s motif of monstrosity as queer desire and the prevailing societal conventions. The paper is divided into theoretical and analysis sections. The first one provides a brief overview of approaching the novel and its chosen cinematic adaptations through queer studies. The second section focuses on the narrative developed over the course of the 2016 ballet adaptation. It also discusses the formal devices, such as: choreography, costumes, characterisation, stage design, and theatrical properties, which together reinforce the narrative and allow the proposed interpretation of monstrosity.

“GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER” BY BERNARDINE EVARISTO VERSUS ”THE WAVES” BY VIRGINIA WOOLF

Author(s): Anca Bădulescu / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2020

Comparing “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernardine Evaristo to Virginia Woolf’s most experimental novel proved to be a challenging endeavor. The highlights of this brief study are the characters telling their stories – objectively by means of a narrative voice or by using the free indirect style – but also the linguistic component, and the readers’ potential response. The conclusion is that, even though some common traits were discovered, a close association of the two novels would be far-fetched. In a span of eighty-eight years, from 1931 to 2019, marking the publications of the two novels, literature has moved on, society has greatly changed, authors have become louder mouthpieces of their communities.

Переклад і переспів як форми міжлітературної взаємодії (на матеріалі українськомовного перевтілення балад Р. Бернза)

Author(s): Anatolii Tkachenko / Language(s): Ukrainian Issue: 10/2023

The concept of artistic translation, and the criteria for its requirements, are constantly evolving: what used to be considered a translation, now, based on a vastly expanded range of forms of inter-artistic interaction and intertextuality, qualifies translation, as a rehash process, as imitation, motifs’ creation, stylisation, adaptation, transplantation, borrowing, processing, citation, figurative analogy, reminiscence. Mixing them sometimes leads to arbitrary interpretations of the translation freedom degree. Ideally, the translator should know perfectly, in addition to his native language, the language and culture of the people whose literature they are working on to be congenial to the author of the original to create not only in a rational but also in an emotional register, with complete spiritual dedication. Such was the master of Ukrainian translation Mykola Lukash, who could perfectly harmonise antinomies of spirit/letter, content/form, and more. Entirely original are his transformations of Robert Burn’s ballads. The author compares the versions of the interpretation of R. Burn’s ballad “My Heart’s in the Highlands” by P. Grabovsky, V. Mysyk, S. Karavanskyi, V. Chernyshenko, M. Lukash, and concludes that the freest and melodic one is the rehash attempt by M. Lukash. This is probably the most related to folk motifs variation on the famous work of Robert Burns. The ballad “The Lass that Made the Bed for Me” is the most popular in today’s media space. Ever since the Soviet times, the translation of this ballad, made by Samuel Marshak, is still considered a classic one in the trade of translation, where both the substantive and formal parameters of the original are pretty accurately reproduced.

HORTENSIA PAPADAT-BENGESCU SAU O CAMERĂ SEPARATĂ

Author(s): Iulian Băicuș / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 24/2021

I have been trying in this particular critical essay to compare the work of one of the most notorious woman writers of European literature, Virginia Woof, with the work of the most important Modernist writer, Hortensia-Papadat Bengescu. This parallel doesn’t imply o direct influence but an archetypal use of symbols, coming from the deep psychoanalytical roots of the feminine gender. I have also been using the approach of Gender studies, in order to translate these particular themes to a better understanding of feminine mythic figures and symbolism of blood and of different metaphors used in several texts, in a totally deconstructive discourse, focusing on early texts written by Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu, the Grand European Lady of the Romanian novel, in between the two great World Wars.

ELEMENTS OF BOVARISM IN MIDDLEMARCH

Author(s): Mădălina Elena Mandici / Language(s): English Issue: 24/2021

This paper attempts to examine the reading habits of George Eliot’s Dorothea Brooke, one of the main characters in Middlemarch (1871-72), who takes after Flaubert’s Emma Bovary as she inserts herself in the fictional realm of her readings and builds a gap between ideal and trivial versions of a suitor. Reading becomes the raison d’être of the two British and French female characters, setting them apart from their fictional siblings and delivering them to the public as heroines provided with an aesthetic penchant for literature. Throughout the novels, both Flaubert and Eliot address the issue of women’s troubling engagement with fiction and superficial chances at formal education and access to books. With their eyes feasting upon the written word, women readers begin to over-identify with the narrative constructs they devour with intellectual insatiability. They are at the mercy of day dreams induced by poorly assimilated reading matter. Such anxieties governed not only the surface-realm of Middlemarch, but also the mindset of the Victorian society at large. Thus, this paper considers Dorothea Brooke and Emma Bovary’s reading or, rather, misreading. Both shape their lives according to what they read – the first is a pursuer of knowledge and desires to attain a classical education; the second is preoccupied with the lives of romantic heroines. Dorothea is interested in serious, “elite” literature; Emma is fond of “shlock” prose. The yawning gap between kitsch and its counterpart differentiates the two females’ acts of reading.

Semantic Interpretations of Proper Names in Literary Translation: Terry Pratchett's "Wyrd Sisters" in Bulgarian

Author(s): Yana Manova-Georgieva / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

Name crafting has been and still is of importance when devising a literary character with certain traits and features that are meant to outstand a character's personality. Thus, literary names serve as a handy tool in any piece of writing, since they complete their bearers in a discrete, yet a vivid way when given an appropriate name by the author of a piece of writing. As far as fantasy is concerned, the choice of literary names is freer, but still requires more creativity, given the fact that fantasy names can be translated. When rendered from one language into another, names undergo various structural alterations, semantic modulations, or even syntactic reconstructions. Therefore, the current paper aims at analysing literary names in Terry Pratchett's fantasy novel "Wyrd Sisters" with focus on their rendering into Bulgarian. Etymology and semantic interpretations are to be sought for as well as morphological and syntactic structure of names in both languages of interest in favour of the hypothesis that literary names carry meaning which, when revealed, gives a more concrete idea of a personage in a novel.

MARTINA POWER, Hory a moře mezi „námi“. Vnímání hranic a prostoru v německé a britské cestopisné literatuře o Čechách a Irsku v letech 1750–1850

Author(s): Lenka Řezníková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 01/2017

Review of. MARTINA POWER, Hory a moře mezi „námi“. Vnímání hranic a prostoru v německé a britské cestopisné literatuře o Čechách a Irsku v letech 1750–1850, Praha 2015, Karolinum, 394 s., ISBN 978-80-246-2260-6.

AN INTERDISDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO TIME’S ARROW BY MARTIN AMIS AND DEVILISH PLAN BY RODICA OJOG-BRAȘOVEAN VIA GEORGE KELLY’S PERSONAL CONSTRUCT THEORY

Author(s): Clementina Alexandra Mihăilescu,Stela Pleșa / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 30/2022

The paper expands upon a parallel interdisciplinary approach to Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow and Rodica Ojog-Brașoveanu’s Devilish Plan via George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory with a view to showing how, through the innovative postmodern techniques of fast rewind, on the one hand, and irony, stream of consciousness, inner monologue, reverse chronology, on the other, the two novelists have imaginatively recreated and refreshed the old topic related to the atrocities from the concentration camps in order to teach their contemporary readers a moral lesson.