Edice textu Jaroslava Werstadta – Hlas odporu z přítmí druhé republiky a z prvních měsíců nacistické okupace

Author(s): Tomáš Pánek / Language(s): Czech Issue: 47/2015

In the edited text, written in 1966, the Czech historian Jaroslav Werstadt (1888–1970) describes his experience of publishing in the Second Republic (that is, after the Munich Agreement in late September 1938) and in the early months of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (established in mid-March 1939), including his ideas and why he published them. In his published work from the period, the content of which he provides a concise summary of, Werstadt focused on Second Republic critics who attacked the ideological foundations of the Czechoslovak Republic, which they accused of having brought about the Munich catastrophe. He, by contrast, saw the causes of the catastrophe more in external factors, particularly in the Western powers unfortunate policy towards Germany and in the linking of the political demands of the Sudeten Germans with the Nazi movement in Germany. Criticism of France and Great Britain, the Sudeten-German political leadership, and, most of all, Nazi ideology constitute (with the pointing out of many historic parallels and the search for the historic roots of the present crisis) other important topics of Werstadt’s articles from that period. His campaign in the press represented a daring defence of the official ideology of the First Republic, the work of President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) and his foreign minister, Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), and is also an expression of Werstadt’s conviction that the current situation was only a brief deviation in the democratization of Europe and indeed the whole world, which had been under way since the First World War. It was also an expression of his faith in the possibility of improving human society. Considering that the edited text was written in the 1960s, it is fair to see it also as evidence of a striking continuity in Werstadt’s thinking and Weltanschauung, which were essentially unchanged since the First Republic, despite the many political and social ups and downs. An introductory essay links Werstadt’s connection with First Republic ideology together with similar positions held by men from the group of so-called ‘Castle historians’, including (apart from Werstadt), Kamil Krofta (1876–1945), Jan Slavík (1885–1978), and Josef Borovička (1885–1971).

Szilágyi Júlia íróasztaláról

Author(s): Lajos Kántor / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 10/2016

Voyage éducatif de Johann Reinhold Forster dans le Mémoire sur Waïhou ou l’Isle de Pâques

Author(s): Sara Wilkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 6/2013

The manuscript entitled Mémoire sur Waïhou ou l’Isle de Pâques comes from the Berlin Collection of the Jagiellonian Library and it is a lesser known work by Johann Reinhold Forster, who was a well-known naturalist and a member of the second trip around the world under the command of James Cook. This is an excellent example of travel literature, a mature and well thought-out work, in which the author publishes detailed descriptions and necessary information concerning the Easter Island. Forster compares the behavior and customs of the ‘savages’ and the ‘civilized people’. As a scientist, he is disappointed with Europe, and uses the myth of a ‘noble savage’ to idealize the world being discovered by the Europeans. However, he often presents curious observations describing the language and the great statues of the island.

Tristan and Isolde – a Contemporary Perspective

Author(s): Paula-Andreea Onofrei / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

IN THE AUTUMN OF LIFE: SEAMUS HEANEY’S HUMAN CHAIN

Author(s): Aleksandra Kędzierska / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2016

Based on Seamus Heaney’s last collection of verse, Human Chain (2010), the paper addresses the issues of old age as experienced by the poet aware of his dwindling potential; it also demonstrates how, despite his brush with death, and grappling with frailty and memory loss, he is determined to make the best of what life has in store for him.

TIME BEING ON TIME: A POSTMODERN TALE

Author(s): Mojca Krevel / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2016

Analysing Ruth Ozeki’sA Tale for the Time Being from the perspective of the established governing principles of postmodernity, the paper addresses both the effects of the paradigm shift on fiction and the consequences of the modification of the dominant medium that accompany the instigation of each new historical age, for the perception of literature, and literacy in general.

CONTRADICTIONS OF SOCIETY IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ PLAYS

Author(s): Vesna Tripković-Samardžić / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2016

The paper examines the picture of society in four of Williams’ plays. Even though portrayals of four different periods of the 20th century America, the plays reflect a single, apocalyptic vision of society, whose main determinant is paradox, an intrinsic feature of southern mentality, Williams's personality, and contemporary events.

CORRUPT CHILDHOOD. DOROTHEA TANNING’S CHASM: A WEEKEND

Author(s): Gabriela Glăvan / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2016

A celebrated surrealist artist, Dorothea Tanning is also the author of a few literary publications that reveal the constant mirroring between painting and literature in her work. Her only novel, Chasm: A Weekend reflects many of the artist’s predilect themes and metaphors, among which childhood stands out as a recurrent artistic obsession. This paper investigates the metamorphoses and mutations of the infantile in Dorothea Tanning’s novel, focusing on the particularities of an unusual dialogue between plastic representation and literature.

GOING PLACES, BLENDING SPACES

Author(s): Mihaela-Elisabeta Popuța / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2016

The paper analyses Paul Auster’s main characters, his doubles, as they have been called by critics along the years, and examines how they react in different situations. In this sense, it looks at their behavior inside and outside social norms, their adaptation to the surrounding environment, as well as their perception of space and their quest for identity. The paper focuses on the way in which the interior collides with the exterior and this collision affects the characters in Auster’s novels.

RETRACING LIMINAL EPISTEMOLOGY IN JAMAICA KINCAID’S BILDUNGSROMAN

Author(s): Kej Vackermann / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2016

Jamaica Kincaid’s eponymous protagonists Annie John and Lucy negotiate between multiple knowledge currents that join the archipelagic and the diasporic Caribbean via routes stretching across the Black Atlantic. Their maturation in-between grand narratives is determined by the insular version of the epistemic condition of the borderlands that is loaded with meanings both heavy and charged. In Kincaid’s imagery, they acquaint the reader with the intersectional reach of producers of knowledge that are ultimately dismantled by the protagonists that seek to inhabit a world without polarities.

MEDITERRANEAN GOTHIC: M. G. SANCHEZ’S GIBRALTAR FICTION IN ITS CONTEXTS

Author(s): John A Stotesbury / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2016

Until the present millennium, very little creative literary writing in either English or Spanish had been published in the British colonial enclave of Gibraltar. In the course of the past decade, however, an expatriate Gibraltarian, M. G. [Mark Gerard] Sanchez, has produced a growing body of fiction and non-fiction aimed at constructing the foundations of a new literary tradition. The present article explores the connections between two significant aspects of his fiction: a located identity and the post/colonial gothic.

EDUCATION AS A TOOL FOR ACHIEVING FREEDOM: THE CASES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND TOPSY

Author(s): Serban-Dan Blidariu / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2016

It almost goes without saying that slaves were supposed to be as uneducated as possible, yet few rules are without exceptions. In my paper I shall look at two cases. The first (Douglass) will focus on how education was sought with a clear purpose in mind: freedom. The second (Topsy) will offer a new perspective: education was offered without ever being wished.

POST 9/11 AMERICA: IN SEARCH OF A NARRATIVE

Author(s): Mirela Lăpugean / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2016

Post 9/11 America was a nation in search of a narrative that could help it rebuild the threads that had been severed by the trauma of the attacks. The paper explores the different ways in which this shattered narrative had been reconstructed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of World Trade Centre.

THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF FORGETTING IN JENNA BLUM’S NOVEL THOSE WHO SAVE US

Author(s): Aurelija Daukšaitė / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2016

Relying on trauma and memory studies, the article discusses to what extent it is (im)possible to forget traumatic experience. It looks at how this issue is represented in Jenna Blum’s novel Those Who Save Us (2004) that is about Anna who used to live in Weimar at the time of the Holocaust and help camp prisoners. After WWII she moves to the United States and has never spoken about the past since then. Thus, her forgetting becomes possible through denial and refusal to speak about it. Nevertheless, her daughter is affected by the Holocaust.

L’ultimo sogno di volo: Lamento sopra Belgrado (II)

Author(s): Rosanna Morabito / Language(s): Italian Issue: 156/2015

Sala declamationum

Author(s): Leo Rafolt / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 156/2015

The article brings forward an interesting phenomena of Jesuit tragedy, as an integrative part of the pedagogical and rhetorical tradition of the 17th century Dubrovnik theatre practice. Introductory parts bring forward theoretical background of the 17th century tragic dram, especially in the context of contemporary tragic theory, starting from George Steiner, Erika Fischer-Lichte and Walter Benjamin, all the way to transcultural approaches in tragic genre history applied by Nicola Savarese. Second part reexamines a history of the Jesuit pedagogical integration in the society and culture of Dubrovnik Republic, from the first post Trentefforts by Gundulić family all the way to their full integration in the 18th century. Thus, main authors of this genre are mentioned and their works, not only those preserved in archival way but also the lost tragic texts, known only by their authors or foreign intertextual source. Furthermore, missing corpus of the Jesuit tragedy is elaborated according to all available historical, theatrical and archival data, and consequentially put in the context of the European performance practices of the 17th century. Special emphasis is put on the Italian tragediography, a natural source for all dramatists of Dubrovnik Republic, but some parallels are given considering the classical tragic legacy of the French 17th and 18th century. Three of the authors were elaborated in more details because of their paradigmatic status in the context of Dubrovnik early modern drama and theatre production: Bartol Kašić, Ivan Gučetić Jr. and Juraj Žuvetić. Finally, elaborated dramas are thus categorized according to their performative status (especially those that are performance-potent, as St. Venefrid by Bartol Kašić), rhetorical apparatus they employ (especially considering Jesuit rhetoric text books and regulations of Ratio studiorum), according to available research materials about them or about their succession, as well as their intercultural habitus. All of the material is tested regarding primary assumptions about the differences between classical tragic legacy and the baroque Trauerspiel made by Walter Benjamin, following Carl Schmitt. In the end, European and Dubrovnik Jesuit drama is defined as a specific genre of the early modern European literary and theatre/performance history, lying somewhere betwixt-and-between rhetorical employment and ideological apparatus, as sala declamationumimmanent topost-Trent council years.

У одсуству мајстора

Author(s): Aleksandra M. Ugrenović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 156/2015

Unuci i preci

Author(s): Maciej Czerwiński / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 156/2015

Постоји ли (српска) наука о књижевности?

Author(s): Tihomir Brajović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 156/2015

Истина тела, драма теорије

Author(s): Svetislav Jovanov / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 156/2015