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This article presents a critical overview of the European translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, including the Bulgarian ones. The problems of translation are discussed under three general rubrics: (1) problems owing to prosodic differences between English and other languages; (2) problems owing to differences between the English and other poetic traditions; (3) problems owing to the specific features of Shakespeare’s poetics. The last two sections of the article are devoted to a discussion of basic translation strategies and the tendencies in the historical development of the European translation of the Sonnets.
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Abstract: Short novel from Ivan Vazov, often referred to as “the Patriarch of Bulgarian literature”, “Valko in the War” is the first Bulgarian literature, which was first introduced to Chinese readers. The interpreter of this novel is Lu Xun, one of the leading figures of modern Chinese literature. Together with his brother, he initiated the movement to translate literary works from “underprivileged nations” from the Central and Eastern Europe. The movement is part of the ideological tendency in China in the early 20th century to look abroad in search of experience and ways to save the country from the imperialist invasion of the Great Powers. This is also the main reason for the entire treasury of Bulgarian literature Lu Xun to choose exactly Vazov and his Valko: the main features in the character of Valko and Vazov himself are also leading virtues in the struggle for independence of the Chinese nation.
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The work of François Cheng – writer, poet, calligrapher, essayist, academician of Chinese origin and laureate of the French Francophone Academy is undoubtedly part of the cross-cultural literature at the end of the 20th- and the beginning of the 21st century, – a time when writers and poets from various – in this case Eastern – background, such as Yoko Tawada, Anna Moi, Amy Tan, Salman Rushdie and Haruki Murakami, have adopted the cross-cultural perspective of the migrant, the person who finds himself/herself in a context in which one begins to make sense of the living world by reading the foreign signs, comparing cultures and traditions, and translating the foreign culture in a particular way. The term “cross-cultural” literature will be used here in the sense that the writer and researcher G. Chkhartishvili associates with the new cultural phenomenon he calls “androgynous”, “East-Western literature” (Chkhartishvili, 1996). I argue that what is common to these artists is the rejection of the binary East – West model of culture, or, in Sánchez’ words, “the challenging of the bipolar models” (Sánchez 2014, p. 55), the rejection of barriers and boundaries, because the cultures placed on both sides of such barriers are perceived either in terms of their own essential characteristics, or in ways that go beyond the proposed divisions.
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The beginning of the eighteenth century brought a shift in the general British attitude towards the Orient and specifically towards China. This change was gradual and did not become particularly conspicuous in travel accounts, works of fiction and other texts until the second half of the century but signs of it began to manifest themselves relatively early. Until the period of British Enlightenment the Middle Kingdom was regarded with general benevolence and approval. The paper focuses on some of the changes in this attitude during the eighteenth century.
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Polish philosopher Stanisław Brzozowski (1878–1911) spent the last five years of his life almost entirely in Italy (in Nervi and in Florence). The article traces back the chronology of his encounter with Italian culture, also explaining his idea of culture. In particular, his reading of Giacomo Leopardi is examined. Leopardi had been known in Poland since the 1880s, mainly through Edward Porębowicz’s translation of his poems, but Brzozowski in all probability first read him in Nervi in 1907. Subsequently, he mentioned Leopardi a few times in his own writings. These references are highly significant as they offer an original interpretation, which is not influenced by the ‘existentialist’ reading dominant at the beginning of the twentieth century. Instead, Brzozowski foregrounds other aspects of Leopardi’s philosophy, including his connection with Italian history and culture of the past (Brzozowski considered Leopardi’s demystifying urge interwoven with patriotic feelings to be a recommendable model for the moral renewal of Poland), the materialist and ‘pre-communist’ element, and the enigmatic juxtaposition of the figure of Leopardi and that of the Buddha. In the article, I compare these insights with other contemporaneous and prior readings of Leopardi (von Meysenbug, De Sanctis, Labriola, and Croce) in order to show that some of Brzozowski’s intuitions anticipated interpretations of Leopardi proposed by intellectuals in the following decades (from Rensi to Cioran). Brzozowski’s readings of Leopardi are retraced on the basis of the Polish philosopher’s correspondence, his published works, unpublished manuscripts and notes and by consulting the check-out log book of the Gabinetto di Lettura Vieusseux in Florence.
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The paper examines the changing cultural perceptions of one of the most famous and mysterious geographic expeditions of the 19th century,John Franklin’s search for the Northwest Passage. Analyzed here in in closer detail are two novels:The Discovery of Slowliness by Sten Nadolny and Wanting by Richard Flanagan, as well as three texts by Margaret Atwood:the short story The Age of Leadfrom the collection Wilderness Tips, her Oxford lecture “Concerning Franklin and his Gallant Crew”,published in the volume Strange Things.The Malevolant North in Canadian Literature,and the foreword to the reissue of O. Beatie and J. Geiger’s book Frozen in Time. The Fate of the Franklin Expedition. All of these tales of Franklin’s expedition reflect the vicissitudes of human fantasies about exploring unknown and menacing spaces – not just the mythical frozen North. They are also narratives about our relationship with Nature and all the fears and hopes associated with that relationship.
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Studies on modernism, especially modernist periodical studies, have always stressed the paramount importance of the little periodical/petite revue in the emergence of literary and artistic modernism. The revolution of the print for mass audience gave new relevance to the emerging little periodical as a new journalistic form and worldview as opposed to large-scale literary and journalistic production. The paper frames the first international journal of comparative literary studies, the Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum, as a little periodical. It highlights its critical position and comments against capitalism-driven mass production, journalistic speed, profit, large circulation, and popularity. Based on its position and practice, the ACLU seems to be one of the first global little periodicals, a sign of the emergence of this type of radical press and, thus, of early radical modernism. Recognizing ACLU as one of the pioneering little periodicals of modernism could also reconfigure modernism as a multi-centered phenomenon with major Eastern European starting points.
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Whether we like to admit it or not, most of us have enjoyed at least one mystery story. Sherlock Holmes, Hercules Poirot and Ellery Queen have transcended the limits of literature and have become major characters of the popular culture. The variety of names such as the English ‚courtroom drama’, ‚cozy’, ‚crime fiction’, ‚hard-boiled fiction’, ‚legal thriller’, ‚locked room mystery’, ‚mystery fiction’ or ‚whodunit’, the German‚ ‚Krimi’ (‚Kriminalroman’ or ‚Kriminalerzählung’), the Spanish ‚novela policiaca’ or novela detectivesca’ and the French ‚roman policier’ comes to prove the popularity of the genre even more. However, there is still a certain reserve, if not ignoration, of the literary critics towards the detective fiction. Our interest here lies in the mystery writings of the ‚non-mystery’ authors such as Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, Mark Twain, Daphne du Maurier, Georges Bernanos, Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco and Amélie Nothomb.
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Sweeping economic and social developments in the twelfth century gave rise to a series of intellectual and spiritual changes which laid emphasis on exploring and cultivating the self via personal experience and refining one’s virtues, which became the pivot of the romance genre. In the religious sphere, such tendencies gave rise to the emergence of new forms of religious life. One of these was anchoritism, striving to replicate the vita apostolica of the first followers of Christ. Ancrene Wisse was composed to provide spiritual guidance originally to three sisters from one noble family who devoted their lives to God as anchoresses. The text of the guide typically uses secular imagery, including romance motifs, for spiritual ends. This article discusses which romance motifs can be discerned in the text of Ancrene Wisse and assesses their function. It concentrates on comparing the romance topos of the lady in the bower with the symbolic space of the anchorhold and considers the issue of permeability of its borders in terms of the genres of anchoritic guide and romance. It also comments on the active/passive role of the romance lady and the anchoress, on their roles as a receiver and an initiator of action.
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Names and naming in general have always been an interesting, yet a challenging initiative, given the fact that nowadays parents devote numerous hours to reading forums and written articles when a child is on the way. The same strategy is sometimes applied when writers decide upon a certain title for their piece of writing, as well as the names of personages in their creation. In classical literature, finding the meaning behind a proper name is a challenging and hard task compared to children’s literature. Thus, a symbolic name makes the literary character a more powerful “weapon” in the hands of the author and creates yet a stronger emotional and more thorough understanding in the mind of the reader.
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Although the acceptance of a text into world literature is directly related to the importanceof its country and language of origin, works from so-called small literatures can also become partof the global canon. They establish their “worldliness” not on the power of extraliterary moments,but on the ability to constitute the world using the aestheticization of national images. This articleanalyzes four literary-historical examples of authors (Ivan Horváth, Karel Čapek, SandorMárai, and Witold Gombrowicz) attempting to become world authors through their “CentralEuropeanism”. Horváth seeks artistic inspiration for his dreamlike visions in French culture,Čapek attracts readers with the universality of his humanistic ideas, Márai embodies intellectualthe nostalgia for the vanished Habsburg Empire, and Gombrowicz intuitively anticipatesthe postmodern grotesque. Despite their differences in genre and theme, these authors areconnected by their inclination towards the West. At the same time, they all demonstrate thatin this distinctive and indigenous (in terms of values) “interspace” between the West andthe East, there is no “pure” national literature that does not synthesize a diverse foreign element.It is obvious that the way of this aestheticization of local “peripherality” implies their possiblepaths to “worldliness”.
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This section of the issue contains several texts about the personality and critical work of Eugen Negrici.
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Text about the Hungarian writer, Szilard Borbely, written by Raluca-Ana Prahoveanu.
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After the New Age, a period which many contemporary researchers define as the stage where the first foundations of modernity were laid in the society-wide mentality, we have another relationship with the mythical past, since they were no longer seen as figures with strength and size divine, but as creatures from which the past came through artistic whimsy. Thus, oral traditions and fairy tales had a much greater and direct influence on the literary process. They strengthened it and became a primary source of subjects, a wide gallery of characters further delineating the various literary genres and genres. Regarding the Albanian literature for children, we can affirm that during the period of the National Renaissance, in the wake of the numerous social, political, and cultural contributions undertaken by the protagonists of this great movement, a very useful work was done for the drafting of texts money for Albanian schools. The renaissance saw the creation of books for the younger generations as a major obligation, and in this way, the number of writings dedicated to children increased significantly. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to document the progress of Albanian children’s literature in distinctive styles, forms, and norms through which this literature passed and was consolidated. Method: To realize this article, I relied on two basic methods; in the synchronic and diachronic one, with the aim of bringing a more complete and analytical view of the phenomena that appear in this literature. Conclusion: Following the tradition and enriching it with works and authors of different periods with consolidated literary styles and physiognomy, is proven through a detailed analysis where the evolutionary process of this literature is verified.
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This paper analyses the latest, fifth book by contemporary author Vesna Kapor − The Sky, So Deep [Nebo, tako duboko] (2021). We first analysed the morphological features of the novel (which vacillates between shorter and longer narrative form, has a mosaic-based composition, is divided into three units uneven in length, has a fragmentary nature…), highlighted a number of specific procedures (e.g. rhythmic organisation of the narrative, symbolisation of the text, different forms of citations, the most frequent being the so-called self-citations (literal repetitions of own sentences) and interliterary citations (Miloš Crnjanski, Ivan V. Lalić, Miodrag Pavlović, Vladislav Petković Dis) and the stylistic-expressive means, typical of poetry (such as metaphor, personification, comparison, contrast). Given the conclusions we reached, we determined that the novel The Sky, So Deep belongs primarily to the lyrical novel genre, an essentially paradoxical phenomenon defined by the American literary theorist Ralph Freedman. Our thesis about the lyrical nature of this novel is corroborated not only by the high degree of emotiveness and illustrative, suggestive descriptions and superb comparisons, but also by the phenomenon of smells and sounds. However, one should also not disregard the omnipresence of colours (blue, white, red and green) and the importance of their symbolism, which can be interpreted as the author’s debt to expressionistic heritage.We also highlighted that the title The Sky, So Deep already suggests that the key focus of the novel is on the sky, i.e. the absolute, paving the way for a metaphysical meaning, but also on fathoming the depths of human existence. Moreover, the novel is not only dedicated to a girl with a symbolic name and surname – Tara Senica (Tara – name of a mountain; Senica – chickadee), but is also in its subtitle designated as “Letters for Tara”. Tara thus has the function of an addressee, i.e., the recipient of letters/messages, sent to her by addressers/senders, mother Mira, father Deki, an unnamed young man with whom she maintained a harmonious love relationship for some time, and the unnamed female narrator, who is an important part of the fictional world and actively participates in it, first in the role of a careful listener to the confessions of Tara’s mother, and later as the person writing down the memories that Mira, during numerous meetings, revived, choosing particularly the most important, emotional and moving content. In place is a polyphony of sorts, a dynamic shift of the expressed and unexpressed words, thoughts and feelings. As Tara is no longer among the living, this novel has the role of an ancient, almost mythic dialogue with a deceased, dear and close person. Tara’s voice can be added to the above voices as the messages, greetings, postcards and diary entries written by her hand during her life are introduced into the reader’s horizon. Whatsoever, the very first micro-unit, the only one consistently rendered in the first person, is a note taken from Tara’s notebook, i.e., a speech she prepared for a Serbian language class. The central, most extensive part elaborates on the agony that Tara’s parents experienced over a fourteen-day period, from the moment Tara got ill until she left this world. In addition, several fragments are devoted to memories of the days preceding Tara’s birth, while an incomparably larger number of fragments evoke the memories of the events and situations in which Tara’s closest ones participated after her sudden and tragic death. Unlike Tara’s dearest, particularly her inconsolable mother, the narrator of the novel The Sky, So Deep truly believes in the concept of the eternally recurring life, and her conviction is further supported by the shift of the seasons, the arrival of summer and ripening of a watermelon, which, red and succulent, becomes a clear signal that “life does not end”. With her latest book, Vesna Kapor has managed to delineate an entire process of such a flow.
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Ahmet Baytursinov is one of the most important poet writers who came to the fore among Kazakh scholars at the beginning of the 20th century. He is one of the pioneers of the idea of independence, which aims the Kazakh people to be independent by getting rid of captivity and to take their place among the modern countries in culture and civilization. He saw that the first condition for reaching his goal was education and he devoted an important part of his life to education. At the same time, he made an effort to keep the culture alive and transfer it to future generations by compiling and publishing Kazakh folklore products. He pioneered Kazakh language and literature studies. Especially the works of " Kіrk Mіsal " and " Masa" shed light on the development history of the independence literature at the beginning of the 20th century and became a turning point. Thus, Baytursinov laid the foundations of national libertarian poetry in Kazakh literature. Kazakh poetry has become an example of poetry fighting for freedom. This study has been done on the themes such as the concept of independence and awakening in Ahmet Baytursinov's works. At the same time, as the qualitative research method is used; In order to collect data in the research, the document analysis method from the qualitative research motifs was used. The data obtained are given within the framework of the works " Kіrk Mіsal " and " Masa".
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