WITH CONSTANTIN NOICA, ON LITERATURE AND LITERARY CRITICISM

Author(s): Magda Wächter / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

With Constantin Noica, On Literature and Literary Criticism. This study analyses the views expressed by Constantin Noica in the articles he published on literature and literary criticism during the interwar period. Somewhat reserved towards the literary-artistic phenomenon in general, the philosopher proved nonetheless to be an avid critic, an excellent essayist and a brilliant polemicist. In fact, his entire work was to be appreciated, both by literary critics and by philosophers, for its literary qualities, at a time when philosophical discourse itself displayed a penchant for literariness.

ANCA PEIU, ROMANTIC RENDERINGS OF SELFHOOD IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE. BUCUREŞTI: C.H. BECK, 2017, 380 P.

Author(s): Andrada Danilescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

Anca Peiu connects eleven essential American writers under the central theme of self and its expressions, seen as rejecting the anxiety of influence and constructing profoundly original, characteristic modes of expression. Peiu focuses on the theme of selfhood "in/or poetry" for five of the trademark figures and "in/or story-telling for other six in an attempt to investigate the thematic as well as the foundational pillar of the American literature. Aware of her markedly ex-centric, East European position, the author decides to reiterate her standing as an advantage which offers her the opportunity to read and interpret these canonical, widely discussed and analyzed figures from a novel point of view. Peiu insists on the highly selective and subjective nature of the process, the final products serving as a guide for both students and American literature novices eager to expand their vision of the world literature and its continuum which spans continents and centuries.

FLORIN ONCESCU, JURNALUL LUI SAKE [SAKE’S DIARY]. CLUJ-NAPOCA: LIMES, 2017, 224 P.

Author(s): Monika Koșa / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

Florin Oncescu’s most recently published novel, Jurnalul lui Sake [Sake’s Diary], is a delightful and humorous piece of writing that playfully thematizes contemporary issues such as the complex articulations of relocation and bicultural identities. Florin Oncescu is a prominent and idiosyncratic contemporary Romanian writer, who was born in 1960 in Constanța. He has graduated from Polytechnic University of Bucharest in 1985 and permanently moved to Canada in 1995. He has been living in Montréal ever since, with short periods spent in the United States. Nevertheless, he is a well-known and active writer in the Romanian literary landscape. Florin Oncescu has published several volumes of fiction so far: Dispoziție depresivă (Ramuri, Craiova, 1994), La umbra unui enciclopedist (Omniscop, Craiova, 1999), Întoarcerea (Ramuri, Craiova, 2003), Ilustrate din America (Limes, Cluj-Napoca, 2007). He is a member of the Romanian Writers’ Union and regularly publishes in Pagini românești.

CRISTINA CHEVEREȘAN, ADINA BAYA. CELULOZĂ VS. CELULOID – DESPRE CĂRȚI ȘI ECRANIZĂRI. TIMIȘOARA: EDITURA UNIVERSITĂȚII DE VEST, 2015, 240 P.

Author(s): Nóra Máthé / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

Celuloză vs. Celuloid – Despre cărți și ecranizări is a collaborative effort by Cristina Chevereșan and Adina Baya. The two authors come from different backgrounds: Chevereșan’s main research interests include American studies, while Baya’s academic formation revolves around media studies. Both of them, however, show interest in a comparative approach. In an interview with Richard Martin for the British Association for American Studies, Chevereșan describes her own teaching method for American studies as interdisciplinary, which means she applies varied tools to understand American literature and culture. Baya focuses on the intersections of journalism, cinematography, and literature. Her article titled “Relax and Enjoy These Disasters”: News Media Consumption and Family Life in Don DeLillo’s White Noise (Neohelicon, June 2013) examines representations of media in a work of fiction. The collaboration between the two authors results in a special synthesis of different perspectives.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, SONNETS/SONETE: O NOUĂ VERSIUNE ROMÂNEASCĂ, TRANSLATED BY CRISTINA TĂTARU. CLUJ-NAPOCA: LIMES, 2011, 315 P.

Author(s): Diana Melnic,Vlad Melnic / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

To translate poetry of any kind always takes a certain amount of courage on behalf of the translator. Indeed, some argue that the poetry itself is precisely what is lost in the process, yet, as Allen Tate once famously stated, translation remains “forever impossible and forever necessary.” This is particularly the case with Shakespeare’s sonnets, a kind of poetry riddled with rhetorical devices, powerful imagery, as well as figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, and synecdoche, all of which confer to it its aesthetic quality, but are, at the same time, nearly impossible to isolate from their source language. Furthermore, while Shakespeare did write about ageless themes, including love, lust, the brevity of life, or the impermanence of beauty, his sonnets are nevertheless deeply rooted in their time by means of clever uses of intertextuality and the nuances of a sixteenth century, rural Stratfordean parlance.

VASILE MUSCĂ, ILUMINISM ȘI ISTORISM [ENLIGHTENMENT AND HISTORICISM]. CLUJ-NAPOCA: GRINTA, 2008, 191 P.

Author(s): Amelia Precup / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

What is the Enlightenment?” is one of the most significant questions ever asked, a question that, in many ways, has shaped the world we live in. Either blaming or celebrating the movement, the answers to this question have attempted to contribute to the understanding of the modern world for more than two centuries now. The question started to infiltrate the European political and philosophical thought in the seventeenth century , although it received full articulation only in the late eighteenth century, when it engendered a spirited discussion about what had already been perceived as a decisive shift in Europe’s sense of itself.

SIMONA JIȘA, BUATA B. MALELA, SERGIU MIȘCOIU, LITTERATURE ET POLITIQUE EN AFRIQUE – APPROCHE TRANSDISCIPLINAIRE. PARIS: ÉDITIONS DU CERF, COLL. « PATRIMOINES », 2018, 368 P.

Author(s): Mădălina Timu / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2019

L’ouvrage Littérature et politique en Afrique – approche transdisciplinaire paru aux Éditions du Cerf, recueille vingt-cinq articles qui proposent au lecteur des réflexions sur les réalités sociales, économiques, politiques et artistiques du continent africain.

Србистика данас 2018

Author(s): Danijela D. Jelić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 17/2018

Report on: Naučna konferencija Srbistika danas – Srpska filologija i nacionalno stradanje (Filološki fakultet Univerziteta u Banjoj Luci, 2018).

С грижа за съдбата на българистиката

Author(s): Magdalena Kostova-Panayotova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2019

Od Psałterza floriańskiego do Psałterza Wujka, czyli o trwałości polszczyzny biblijnej

Author(s): Danuta Kowalska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2018

The aim of the article is to show the role medieval Polish translations of The Psalter (the Saint Florian Psalter, the Pulawski Psalter, the Cracow Psalter) played in shaping the Polish Psalter and biblical style, as well as to point out their stylistic influence on later Renaissance translations of The Book of Psalms and free translations (the Psalter by Walenty Wróbel, the David’s Psalter by Mikołaj Rej). The analyses show meticulous, conscious work of medieval translators done in order to shape the stylistic and linguistic layer of the translation. They also deal with the translators’ efforts and stylistic choices, such as conscious archaization or synonymy, that often are the effect of abandoning literal translation, which is against popular views of only word-for-word, mechanical translation of Latin Vulgate. The analyses indicate that the process of creating native biblical style of poetry is reflected in the earliest translations and editions of The Book of Psalms. Some of its features are preserved in Renaissance translations despite the revolution which happened in Polish biblical texts due to the Reformation and Humanism.

Spațiul trăit ca determinant al relațiilor umane în romanul „Dervișul si moartea” de Meša Selimović

Author(s): Gabriela Chiciudean / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 9/2018

The problematic of space and character has been of constant interest to us and, along the way, we have approached the subject of both space and literary character in different studies. Now we wish to underline the connection existing between the space of the text and the characters of Meša Selimović’s novel, “Death and the Dervish.The idea of proxemics, which deals with the study of the correlations between the two major categories of the literary text, namely the text and the characters, when applied to literature, such a privileged space of the imaginary, serves to prove that, within the text, the characters are self-constructed according to their available playing space, whereas the space has its own specific characteristics and is symbolic only if perceived as such by the same character. Space is a place of experiences, of encountering the other, both in a private and a social setting. Obviously, such an analysis is not exhaustive, it is only one step, but a step that offers possibilities and opens the way towards surprising analyses. We have always been tempted by this subject primarily because the issue of space and time continues to attract and provoke, as proven over the years by the multitude of published works and conferences on the chronotope.

Тема «Интеллигенция и война» в контексте художественной литературы

Author(s): Anatoliy Matveyevich Bazhenov,Tatyana Mikhailovna Martynova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 4/2018

The article analyzes the role of the artistic intelligentsia in understandding the phenomenon of war. With the help of literary images reveals the horror and inhumanity of any war. To achieve this goal, works belonging to outstanding writers are involved. These works reproduce the events of the Thirty years’ war (1618—1648), the Patriotic war of 1812, the First world war (1914—1918) and the Second world war (1939—1945). Worthy place in this series is the novel «Simplicissimus», owned by the German writer Hans Jakob Christoph Grimmelshausen. His work is a peculiar and unique canvas, full of bitterness and humor, reflecting the disasters and horrors of the Thirty years’ war. After the end of the war, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed. It marked the beginning of the formation of the system of national States and the state-centrist model of the world. A special status in the study of war is occupied by the novel-epic of Leo Tolstoy «War and peace». One of the best works devoted to the First World War, is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque «On the Western front without changes». A separate story in the article is the study of the events of the Second World War by the Nobel Prize — winning writers Heinrich Bell, Gunter Grass and Svetlana Alekseevich. And the first two writers were themselves participants in the Second World War. This gave them a reason to use their own military experience, which gave more convincing coverage of the events of the war. All conclusions are confirmed by the given fragments from the works of writers. All these writers are united by the desire to reveal and show the antihuman content of military operations.

Мастацкiя асаблiвасцi аповесцяў Лукаша Калюгi «Дзе косцi мелюць» i «Зэнка малы нiколi не быў»

Author(s): Nadzieja Zujewa / Language(s): Belarusian Issue: 10/2018

In this article, the artistic features of two camp stories by Lukash Kalyuga “Дзе косцi мелюць” and “Зэнка малы нiколi не быў” are analyzed. The author examines the identification of the national character, culture, life of the Belarusian people. The work presents their psychology in the early twentieth century, their defining mental features, both positive and negative.

La création du monde, du paulicianisme arménien au bogomilisme bulgare et au catharisme occidental.

Author(s): Alain Vuillemin / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2019

According to a Cathar legend retold in 1960 in the tale The Santa Estela del Centenari (The Holy Estella of the Centennial, written by Occitan and French author Joan Bodon or Jean Boudou, Satanael or Satan, the evil demiurge, had created the world. This account of the origins is also the story of the Bogomils in Bulgaria. The belief originated in Armenia, on the border between the Persian Sasanian Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire, between the 5th and the 7th centuries A.D. Since the end of the 19th century, however, these conceptions have resurfaced again in modern literature, theatre, novels, and poetry, both in Bulgaria and in France. What can a comparativist literary approach based on the scarce Cathar, Bogomil, and Paulician texts we have at our disposal reveal about this lost account of the origins of the world, and about the questions posed by Paulicians, Bogomils and Cathars on the existence of God, evil, and man?

Сравнителното балканско литературознание в Софийския университет. Основания за сравнението между литературите на Европейския югоизток.

Author(s): Roumiana L. Stantcheva / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2019

This article presents the methodological grounds for teaching Comparative Literature of the Balkans as a subject within the syllabus of the Balkan Studies master’s degree programme at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. The examples borrowed from the reception of Romanian literature in Bulgaria show the absence of targeted interest in neighbouring countries’ literatures. The reasoning continues with the discussion of cases in which a hypotext from French literature acquires a unifying role and allows for finding grounds for comparative studies (around ideas expressed in Naturalism and Symbolism) of the otherwise indifferent to one another South-Eastern European literatures, and quotes examples from Romanian, Bulgarian, and Greek literatures.

За книгата: Alain Vuillemin. Cathares, Bogomiles, Pauliciens à travers les arts, l’histoire et la littérature.

Author(s): Penka Danova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2019

Предложение за промяна. За книгата: Амелия Личева. Световен ли е „Нобел“?

Author(s): Miglena Nikolchina / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2019

NEEDS ANALYSIS AND ENGLISH FOR LEGAL PURPOSES COURSE DEVELOPMENT: A CASE STUDY ON AN ELP SYLLABUS DESIGN FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Author(s): Bianca Doris Bretan / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

Needs analysis and English for Legal Purposes Course Development: A Case Study on an ELP Syllabus Design for University Students. The present paper investigates the connection between students’ learning needs as reflected in the initial needs analysis and ELP syllabus design. Initiated at the beginning of the academic year the study investigates solutions to bridge the gap between the linguistic and professional needs of students attending legal English classes and their course syllabus. A typical challenge for the students’ instructor is the fact that they have little, typically no prior experience with the profession for which they hope to qualify during their studies. The fact that compulsory language courses are often placed in the students’ first year of bachelor study programmes makes the intention to offer relevant course content even more difficult. The structure of the article is the following: first is given a scope for the study, then needs analysis is presented in relation to teaching ESP for the general public and university students; finally, the findings are interpreted in the context of changes in teaching strategies and course design. The article concludes by pointing out that taking into consideration students’ expectations and needs is strongly correlated with the quality and the relevance of the course.

ECONOMICS AND THE HUMANITIES. A SWOT ANALYSIS

Author(s): Ioana-Gabriela Nan / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

Economics and the Humanities. A SWOT Analysis. According to some authors, economists and humanists have nothing in common, given the diametrically opposed intellectual approaches. In this article, I wish to probe the validity of that opinion by seeing whether “humanomics” departments (understood as the outposts of the humanities inside a field populated by economists) can make any positive contribution that both research areas may benefit from. In my description of the present state of the humanities in relation to economics, I will adopt a specific technique usually employed to analyse the state of a business organisation: its current strengths and weaknesses, but also the opportunities it should take advantage of and the threats it should try to avoid, in an attempt to see my own field with the clarity allowed by this particular economic research tool.

DESIGNING AN ESP COURSE ACCORDING TO WHAT STUDENTS WANT AND NEED. AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ NEEDS AND EXPECTATIONS

Author(s): Roxana Maria Nistor / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

Designing and ESP course according to what students want and need. An analysis of students’ needs and expectations. Starting from the premise that, in designing a course of English for Specific Purposes, the language instructor should also check and take into account what students want, the purpose of this article is to present information about the proficiency and diagnostic test and the needs analysis questionnaire applied to some first-year students enrolled at the Faculty of European Studies within Babeș-Bolyai University. The findings of our study showed the needs and the problems of our students, and revealed that they want to improve their communication, grammar, and writing skills, but they also want the English course to be enjoyable and to focus on various specialised topics, not only on their specific field of study.