Хенри Дейвид Торо между

Author(s): Plamen Antov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2-3/2017

This essay situates H. D. Thoreau in a row of large cultural aporiae. The author argues an uncommon approach to Thoreau, not in the Kantian key of Transcendentalism, but as situated at the midpoint where Transcendentalism meets its antipode corporeality and reality: the author views the gesture Walden as a hidden expression of the kind of activeness that is of the essence of modern bourgeois-capitalist aggression against nature.Thoreau is seen as an American proto-philosopher who revolts against the European Cartesian metaphysization of philosophy, a trend whose ultimate manifestation is precisely Kant. Thoreau is seen as restoring the primordial totality of philosophy, similarly as the ancient philosopher who, in order to refute the assertion of his opponent that there is no motion in the world, simply stood up and took a few steps. – The gesture Walden is interpreted as an attempt to walk back those steps. As an attempt to restore the reality of the world, which has been lost in the course of civilization (seen as a process of increasingly dense veiling of reality under a network of symbols-simulations). Walden is at the center of this plot, personified by two mutually contrary cultural myths – the “European” Hamlet and the “American” Robinson Crusoe.Thus, on the other hand, Thoreau is seen as situated at the beginning of American Pragmatism considered as a philosophy of the “lower part” of the body (Bakhtin), of the thinking stomach. This fundamental non-metaphysicality of the American cultural genotype (world view) – the domination of bodily activity over reflection – has been paraphrased by a number of US presidents in the 20th and 21st century as the maxim “Bomb first, seek arguments later”. Yet at the same time, precisely in moving away from the European tradition, Thoreau finds himself at the point where the East begins. In Thoreau’s gesture Walden, the author finds and interprets the potential of this whole complex of dialectically “sublating” aporiae (at the core of which is the radical anti-cultural gesture, which is also a radical cultural gesture).

Из старините на Западна Грузия

Author(s): Vladimir Dimitrov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 40/2020

A travelogue that combines modern pilgrimage with subtle observations of an art historian focused on the Christian Orthodox art and its astonishing monuments and relics in West Georgia.

RE-FRAMING MASCULINITY IN JAPAN: TOM CRUISE, THE LAST SAMURAI AND THE FLUID METANARRATIVES OF HISTORY

Author(s): Maria Grajdian / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

After its release in 2003, The Last Samurai became a major success at the Japanese (and international) box-office, simultaneously marking a turning point in the illustration of Japan by Western media, and more specifically, by US-American institutions of mass entertainment, such as Hollywood. The Last Samurai has been mostly discussed on the background of the historical realities it depicts (the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the unconditional import of Western artefacts and values, the clash between old and new in Japan by mid-19th century) or from the perspective of the impact it had on the representation of Asian or other non-European cultures by American mainstream mass-media. Based on a 15-year empiric-phenomenological fieldwork in the slippery domain of Japanese mass-media, as well as in-depth literature research on new media, masculinity studies and entertainment industry with specific focus on Japan, this paper argues that the character embodied by Tom Cruise – the typical white male from Japanese perspective – displayed an unexpectedly refreshing insight into the prevalent masculinity ideal in Japan, as subliminally suggested by the Japanese characters. On the one hand, it challenges the image of the samurai, both in its historical idealization (stoic warriors and social elite) and in their contemporary adaptation (carriers of Japan’s post-war recovery). On the other hand, it questions the values incorporated by classical Japanese masculinity and suggests a credible alternative, with emotional flexibility, human warmth and mental vulnerability as potential core attributes.

REWRITING THE AMERICAN CULTURESCAPE

Author(s): Anca Teodora Şerban-Oprescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

Светът на възрастните през погледа на едно подрастващо дете – един абсурден, несъвършен, подлежащ на промяна свят

Author(s): Teodora Valova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2020

The article presents linguistic and stylistic analysis of a chapter from the novel by Elitsa Georgieva „The Cosmonauts are just passing by“ and have been used for teaching Bulgarian for medical purposes. The novel was written in Paris, where the author lives and studies, and won the Andre Debbroy Award for a debut book, written with humor and critical sentiments and was nominated for a Fleur prize (founded by Beigbeder) and 111th page. The chance E. Georgieva to be noticed by the pretentious French criticism is due to the fact that she graduated with Master degree of filmmaking and creative writing at the National Film Academy in Paris (La Fémis) and has an experience as a documentary director. During this school year the novel of the Bulgarian writer will be studied in some of the French high schools

ANDRIĆISM: An Aesthetics for Genocide

Author(s): Rusmir Mahmutćehajić / Language(s): English Issue: 04/2013

Andrić’s fiction is closely identified with Bosnia and often taken for a faithful reflection of that country’s culture, social relations, and tragic history. Rather than reflecting Bosnian pluralism, however, his oeuvre undermines its very metaphysical underpinnings, in part because his works are so firmly rooted in the European experience of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the perspective of a dominant modernity, certain cultures and peoples came to be presented as un-European, Oriental, and essentially foreign. Bosnia, which had always been a religiously plural society, now became one where ideological models excluded its Muslim inhabitants. In line with longstanding European practice, Andrić drew an image of the Bosnian Muslim as Turk and the Turk as Bosnian Muslim, converting the real content of Bosnian society into a plastic material for the ideologues of homogenous societies to use in modelling external and internal enemies that were essentially identical. This process required as its precondition the destruction of that enemy through a process described as the social and cultural liberation of the Christian subject. Over time, this exclusion took on forms now termed genocide. In creating this image, Andrić deployed narrative techniques whose function may fairly be characterized as the aesthetic dissimulation of our ethical responsibilities towards the other and the different. Such elements from his oeuvre have been used in the nationalist ideologies anti-Muslimism serves as a building block. In this paper, certain aspects of the ideological reading and interpretation of Andrić’s oeuvre are presented.

From Communal Being to Individual Belonging: Potential Selves in Shobha Rao’s Short Fiction

Author(s): Andrea Llano Busta / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2020

Shobha Rao’s An Unrestored Woman: And Other Short Stories (2016) sheds light on gendered traumas that span decades as they adopt new forms: from the often neglected figure of the abducted woman in post-Partition India to sexually abused girls in 1980s New York, to name a few. Most of the female characters in the collection face a suppression of their agency enforced by legal dictates and patriarchal attitudes. This evinces the sharp contrast between everyday reality and social constructions which, despite being meant to create a sense of community, exclude some of the intended members. By drawing on Agamben’s theorisation of potentiality (1999), and through the analysis of two of the short stories—“An Unrestored Woman” and “Unleashed”—, it will be argued that being part of a group is not so much a result of yielding to pressure as it is of realising and subverting imposed circumstances. Characters on a quest to fulfil their potential will ultimately demonstrate that, in the absence of social cohesion, individuality and the exercise of free will are essential for belonging.

Historical, Religious, and Political Content in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird

Author(s): Saeid Rahimipour / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2020

Literary works have contributed a crucial role to the manifestation of the dominant themes of the time and the era to which they belong. Each writer and each work has a special orientation in its approach to convey the intended message. This article, having as its approach context and metacontext analysis of the text, scrutinizes Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mocking Bird in order to assess the writer’s tact in the illustration of specific issues through the manifestation of their cultural, historical, and religious context and background. Through the introduction of these materials, this study has also tried to answer the question concerning the manner in which the writer has captured the theme of racism via the projection of the unseen, unfathomable, and the unobjectionable information of the mentioned origins to touch upon our consciousness and arouse sympathy towards the humanitarian crisis practised at that time. The article reveals the plausibility of the interpretation of the novel based on religious, historical, and cultural background references. It renders the fact that Lee contributed a significant share to the illustration of such themes as racism and inhumanness at that time and stands as a landmark of inspiration for others as well.

Cultural Perspectives and “the Tomahawk Man”

Author(s): Saša Simović / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2020

This paper deals with a classic of American literature, a master of the short story and poetry, a literary critic who demanded seriousness, professionalism and high standards of literature – Edgar Allan Poe – along with his contribution to literature in his native Appalachia and to world literature, and the way his literary legacy has been cherished in modern times and seen from different cultural perspectives. The paper will also shine additional light on the way the literary works of the “Tomahawk Man” influenced new generations of artists.

The Lımıts Of Translatıng Postcolonıal Experıence Into A Foreıgn Culture

Author(s): Berrin N. Aksoy / Language(s): Turkish,English Issue: 2/2020

In this twofold study, I will focus on the exilic/ diasporic Nigerian-born black British author Ben Okri as a postcolonial author reflecting the issues of postcolonial literature in his novel The Famished Road from a translational point of view. I will first discuss the qualities of the exilic/diasporic experience in postcolonial literature in terms of theme, style and language use; language is the key element in postcolonial literature which reflects the hybridity of cultures and the hybridity of the language used in postcolonial texts, which is closely associated with the translation challenges of a postcolonial text into a culture which is alien to postcolonial experience. My aim in this study firstly will be to discuss whether the novel The Famished Road which displays the characteristics of a postcolonial text in terms of style, themes and the hybrid language use avails itself with all its generic qualities in the Turkish translation and creates the same effect and impressions on the Turkish reader in terms of voicing the postcolonial experience as it has on the English reader and, secondly, how the generic qualities are transferred into the language of a culture which does not possess a similar literary or cultural medium.

Disappearance of the Self and Its Constitutive Outside in Kafka and Woody Allen's Zelig

Author(s): Lukas Mozdeika / Language(s): English Issue: 10/2020

Although parallels between Kafka’s hybrid characters and Woody Allen’s Leonard Zelig have been noted in literature studies (Bruce 1998), the underlying interpretative synergy is not exhausted and occasions a revisit, timely in light of the social tensions of the century-later-present. Juxtaposing counterfactual history with actual highbrow commentary in quasi- or mockumentary film genre allows Woody Allen to transpose Kafka’s grotesque into American realm of the 20s and thus Americanize it. The contention of this article is to suggest that Leonard Zelig, a changing man, is a derivative of Kafka’s characters, primarily cat-lamb in Hybrid, but Allen’s postmodern visual language in Zelig radically alters their inner metamorphoses and hybridity serving as a social critique, if only seen through triviality of its humour. Interpreting Zelig alongside Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Hybrid, we can trace genealogy of themes of anti-Semitism, racism and fascism resolve into contradiction of individualism versus petit-bourgeois mass culture marked by commercialization, commodification and assimilation, features that still define our present. The takeaway may be phrased in terms of a constitutive outside. That is, Leonard Zelig, the omnipresent-self, renders certain truth about society predefined by the cult of individualism by re-constituting his lack of individuality as inherently social phenomenon—constitutive outside, and thus disturbing it. In an ironic twist then, Zelig, released around the time of Margaret Thatcher’s famous denial of society, can be read as a structuring-absence revealing fiction, that of a non-existent society.

No More Hugs: Depictions of the Prodigal Son in 1920s Art and Literature

Author(s): Christian Arffmann / Language(s): English Issue: 10/2020

This essay examines the parable of the prodigal son in the New Testament and compares it to different visual and literary representations from the 1920s in Europe. The story of the prodigal son revolving around themes such as family, home, resistance, order and restoration will be juxtaposed with texts and art works from the so-called Lost Generation, a generation of artists and thinkers developing and rebuilding new art in a continent shattered by the atrocities of World War I. The essay examines the conflict between generations and worldviews that emerges in the 1920s and the prodigal artists’ reorientation in a fragmented world in which it is hard to feel at home.

TOD DES AGAMEMNON UND ´TOD DES AGAMEMNON´. ZUR GÜLTIGKEIT LITERATURWISSENSCHAFTLICHEN ÄUßERUNGEN MIT FIKTIONALEN TERMINI

Author(s): Alexandru Popa / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2018

The following article discusses particular problems concerning the acceptability of a category of statements regarding fictional literature, i.e. those comprising fictional terms. Some theoretical prerequisites of an established institutional literary scholarly treatment of fictional literature are outlined. It is pointed out that this theoretical background allows the distinction between acceptable and not acceptable statements in consideration of fictional literature. It is argued that, given this theoretical framework, the use of expressions mentioning fictive characters that occur in literary texts and referring to fictional structures should be considered acceptable. The use of expressions referring to fictive characters should not be considered acceptable. “Fictional” is used in this article when meaning

Five-Year Plan as a Science-Fiction Picturebook from 1948

Author(s): Berislav Majhut / Language(s): English,Croatian Issue: 02/2020

After World War II Croatia was one of the six constituents of the newly founded Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia – FPRY (1945–1963). It was in this period that a very unusual picturebook appeared, aimed at young readers. In 1949 the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of Serbia published the booklet A Selection of Books for Children from 3 to 14 Years of Age. The selection drew on the publishing industry of the entire Yugoslavia, i.e. including books published in Zagreb, Sarajevo and other parts of “our country”... [...]

UNE OEUVRE SINGULIERE

Author(s): Alain Vuillemin / Language(s): French Issue: 2/2021

Lubomir Guentchev’s work holds a special place in Bulgarian literature and in 20th century French-speaking European literature. This author was born on November 26, 1907 in Pazardzhik, Bulgaria. He died on August 28, 1981 in Plovdiv. He has always lived in Bulgaria. He has never been to France. Yet he left a work written in a remarkable French language. He also wrote in Bulgarian. In total, in several stages, a collection of seventy-six manuscripts, left in French and Bulgarian by Lubomir Guentchev, was found between 1999 and 2005, whose proofing was completed in 2020. Ten volumes of his Écrits inédits (“Unpublished Writings”) have been published in France since 2003. How does this unique work appear? How were these manuscripts analyzed? What finds have been made? What about the translations, poetic creations and lyrical dramas those constitute the material?

Compte-rendu: Simona Carretta, Bernard Franco et Judith Sarfati Lanter dir. La Pensée sur l’art dans le roman des XXe et XXIe siècles.

Author(s): Antoaneta Robova / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2021

Book review: La Pensée sur l’art dans le roman des XXe et XXIe siècles. Edited by Simona Carretta, Bernard Franco and Judith Sarfati Lanter. Classiques Garnier, 2019, ISBN : 978-2-406-08394-8.

The Role Of Kate In Goldsmith’s She Stoops To Conquer: An Analytical Approach

Author(s): Hassan Mariwan N. / Language(s): English Issue: 14/2020

This research is about Kate’s role in play She Stoops to Conquer, which was written by Oliver Goldsmith in 1773 in England. It is a comedy play which consists of some ethical themes. In this play, women’s role and rights are focused on, in the eighteenth century in a patriarchal society and also it talks about the relation between women and their reflection in English Literature.The purpose of this research is to analyze Kate's role, whether she has a good role or not and how does she play her part. Kate generally has a good role in this play, considering all the abnormalities, eventually she could resolve, helping others, and achieves her own ambitions. Thenthe role women played in the eighteenth century will be explored. An Analytical Approach has been used to analyse the play.

RE-INTERPRETATIONS AND EXTENSION OF THE THEORIES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

Author(s): Daniela Jeder / Language(s): English Issue: 14/2020

This paper aims at an analysis of some extensions and reinterpretations of the classical theories of moral development such as the theories of Carol Gilligan (moral / ethical worries), M. Swainson, Norman J. Bull etc. and, last but not least, a presentation of new directions of approach to morality - from the perspective of neuromoral and theories proposed by specialists such as Paul Jak and the renowned neurologist and biologist Robert Sapolsky. All this, in order to draw conclusions about how the theories of moral development can be capitalized in the educational space.

How To Teach Financial Education In Schools Though Books And Educational Board-Games As A Part Of School Curriculum

Author(s): Opinca Madalina / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2020

Financial education in schools is an issue that has generated controversy during its development. Currently most of the European population and the world have financial problems related to some lack of financial education from a young age. The main topic will be current education and whether it is feasible or not the fact that institutions have financial education or if they don’t, which are the ways the schools could introduce it in their school curriculum. The present article tries to dive some ideas of how the school curriculum should be adapted or modified in order to introduce financial education as a subject in schools, even for the kids at a young age.

The rāg that Burned down Delhi: Music and Memory between 1857 and 1947

Author(s): Richard David Williams / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

The Urdu litterateur Shahid Ahmad Dehlvi (1906–1967) recorded a series of reflections and reminiscences about Delhi, its culture, and how that culture was brought to an end by the violence of Partition in 1947. In his essays on music, he documented the performances and personal histories of a range of singers, dancers, and instrumentalists based in Delhi in the first half of the 20th century and considered their plight after Independence. In this article, I examine three of these essays—two in Urdu and one in English—and ask two questions. Firstly, how does this author develop a sense of historical depth to the social and cultural rupture he experienced in 1947? I suggest that his Urdu essays draw upon a longer history of literary nostalgia and connect a Delhicentric understanding of Partition to the earlier crisis of 1857. Secondly, how did attending to music allow Shahid Dehlvi to explore the nuances of cultural rupture and personal loss?