„To jest wielki człowiek! A jaki skromny!” Uczłowieczony wizerunek Lenina w opowiadaniach

Author(s): Monika Goszczyńska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 147/2014

Recently, representatives of different disciplines, especially cultural anthropologists and philologists, take an active interest in the cult of Lenin. However, most of the available studies usually concern the socio-political conditions of this phenomenon. The authors devote little attention to the literary incarnation of Lenin, which is definitely worth taking a separate discussion. Therefore, the primary aim of this paper is to analyze the stories about Lenin from the philological perspective. In particular, there will be discussed the features, which have been blessed with their hero, as used literary, linguistic and stylistic conventions, and the functions of these works.

Społeczeństwo „oka” i tekst wielokodowy (na przykładzie rosyjskiej satyry politycznej)

Author(s): Żanna Sładkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 147/2014

In the last decades visual information takes a dominant position in the created and consumed by man texts, breaking previous monopoly of the printed word. The author describes the factors that led to a “visual turn”, which caused a homo sapiens’s transformation into a homo videns. In the medial space there are many texts that can be called creolized. Multicode satirical text is a complex semiotic unity, where each element is aimed at realizing communicative tasks of the message.

Jak czytać stronę. Modernizm i materialność tekstu

Author(s): George Bornstein / Language(s): Polish Issue: 31/2017

This article is a translation of the first chapter of George Bornstein’s book entitled Material Modernism. The Politics of the Page (2001). The first, theoretical section of the article discusses the notion of the “bibliographic code” (all material aspects of the text) as offering important supplements to the “linguistic code” (the words of the text). The article offers analogies to Walter Benjamin’s notion of the “aura” and to the concept of the “utterance,” coined by the speech-act theorists. Just as Benjamin argues that the “aura” locates the work of art in time and space and the speech-act theorists contend that the “utterance” (gesture, tone etc.) functions as an important carrier of meaning, so the author sees the “bibliographic code” as an important constituent of meaning. The remaining part of the article presents exemplary readings of four sonnets, written by John Keats, Emma Lazarus, William Butler Yeats and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Jak czytać stronę brulionu. Krytyka genetyczna i materialność tekstu

Author(s): Mateusz Antoniuk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 31/2017

The starting point of the study is the question whether the notions of the “bibliographic code”and “linguistic code” (introduced in George Bornstein’s article How to Read a Page. Modernism and Material Textuality) can be applied in the field of genetic criticism. Next, the author focuses on the genesis of Aleksander Wat’s poem U szczytu antynomij [At the Peak of Antinomies], whose subsequent drafts evolved in terms of not only their linguistic but also bibliographic code. In conclusion, some remarks are presented concerning the auracity of the manuscript, a possible new edition of Wat’s poem and the methodological alliance between genetic criticism and studies into the materiality of the text.

Zapiski Aleksandra Wata z Kaiser Hospital – fragmenty autobiografii heterotopicznej

Author(s): Michalina Kmiecik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 31/2017

The article’s purpose is to present Aleksander Wat’s essay written after his stay in Kaiser Hospital in Oakland in 1964, kept in the writer’s archive in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in New Haven. This essay seems to be relevant for several reasons: it is a commentary to Wat’s Dziennik bez samogłosek [DiaryWithoutVowels] and, above all, it is one of the poet’s pathographic texts devoted almost entirely to an analysis of the hospital space. Using the categories of heterotopia, total institution, and infirmary, an attempt is made to describe the phenomenon of an “autobiography of the state of imprisonment” (the notes from Kaiser Hospital are treated as part of a never-written memoir My Prisons – My Hospitals) and reconstruct the poetics of a heterotopical text created from the perspective of an inhabitant of the “counter-site.”

Kmotr Pietr. Tożsamość diabłów w III części Dziadów Adama Mickiewicza

Author(s): Wojciech Kruszewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 31/2017

Although much has been said on the Dresden Dziady by Adam Mickiewicz, a lot of points still remain to be explained. One of the keys to the world of the drama has been provided by the studies on its genesis. Of interest to me is a certain surprising detail in one of the hand-written versions of the scene entitled Senator’s Dream. This strange detail helps to explain what happens or might have happened to a character of the Dresden Dziady during sleep. It also brings us to a reconsideration of Mickiewicz’s demonology.

Culture as Profitable Memory at David Lodge

Author(s): Felix Nicolau / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

The world of academia is perceived as a competitive milieu full of rivalry. University teaching staff in Britain find themselves in the midst of a whirlpool of ideological and conceptual trends. The effort of academics to stay tuned and to keep up with every new intellectual issue transforms universities into a fierce professional environment. David Lodge humorously analyzes the effects of this excessive professionalization on the academics’ personalities and personal lives. His approach in Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975) and Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) is different from the tenser one adopted by Malcolm Bradbury in The History Man (1975).

Strategies of Cultural Memory and Cultural Identity Retrieval – the Case of Yvette Melanson’ s Looking for Lost Bird and Victoria Donda’s My Name Is Victoria

Author(s): Eliana Ionoaia / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

The article is focused on the autobiographical memories of two adoptees, a Native-American Lost Bird and an Argentinean Desaparecida. They are both similar and dissimilar in the way their cultural memories and cultural identities have been wiped out by the regimes of their countries. The two memoirs narrate the events leading to the discovery of their true cultural heritage and their reaction to the shocking reality of their identities. The cultural heritage that had been imposed on them through their kidnapping and subsequent adoptions had been that of Jewishness and of loyalty to the Argentinean political regime. The article proposes an analysis of the strategies used for appropriating the lost cultural heritage. At 43/45 years of age (in 1996), Melanson moved her family to the Navajo Reservation (Tolani Lake, AZ) to walk the traditional path her ancestors had walked before her, on a quest to retrieve the identity of which she had been deprived, hoping to find her twin brother. Analía Perez discovered her identity at 27/29 years of age (in 2004), and immediately embraced the name her biological parents had given her; moreover, she also followed in their footsteps both in terms of her education and her political involvement.

Racial Identity and the Influence of the Electronic Medium in Erik Loyer’s Chroma (2001)

Author(s): Sofia Politidou / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

This article explores racial identity and experience within the electronic environment. Through a close examination of Erik Loyer’s electronic text Chroma (2001), chapters 5 and 6, I focus on the self-identification and (self-) representation of African-American people, in particular, within the electronic environment. This essay employs the paradigm of a virtual society called “mnemonos” in order to create a parallel to the real world and comment against the restriction of self-identification of African-American people in the U.S. The present essay will also demonstrate that the electronic medium offers greater freedom for self-identification and self-representation to African-American people. However, it also argues that on occasions the aforementioned freedom can be illusionary

Mother Nature Pays Back Curiosity and Rapacity

Author(s): Valeria Micu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

Curiosity has helped people discover vast areas of this world, wild at the beginning, tamed, populated and helpful afterwards, when fairly dealt with. Literature mirrors plenty of negative, painful examples of the process of “exploring” Africa along the centuries, much of it being skilfully revealed in J. Reader’s Biography of Africa. The current paper argues that in spite of the fact that some writers have drawn the audience’s attention to the unfairness of such intrusions, as Joseph Conrad did with his novella Heart of Darkness, the situation has worsened dramatically, affecting its people and its environment. My focus is on Tim Butcher’s Blood River, a colorful and vibrant account of what life is like nowadays in the same place on the African map where Mother Nature has challenged the humans ever since H.M. Stanley, well known explorer and journalist, made important discoveries in Africa, then started to establish the first trading stations in the Congo. All through the book, Butcher keeps looking for an answer which is still bothering him at the end of the journey, as well as many other people who are worried for the Congo. Rodney is one of the African scholars who attempt a plausible answer.

Identity and Conflict in George Eliot’s Novels: The Self Vs. Society and Female Desire Vs. Male / Patriarchal Rule

Author(s): Alina Mihaela Stoica / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

George Eliot represents one of the greatest Victorian writers, as she took over the development of the psychological novel from Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen and depicted Victorian society with both its mundane and daily features. The issues of identity and conflict are currently important as feminists have rediscovered Eliot’s writings, including essays and reviews, as they examined her works from the perspective of female education. This research delineates identity conflicts in George Eliot’s novels and in her private life by examining the manner in which the individual is depicted and/or is assimilated into society, and by analyzing the representation of the self and the female desire in comparison to male rule. We evince instances where the self and female desire are repressed by patriarchal society and other cases where they are compatible with the strict requirements of patriarchal society. We also highlight George Eliot’s enigmatic personality and the issue of her identity that today’s readers and critics examine alike. We consider this research paper relevant from a scientific point of view, as it includes multidisciplinary analytic elements of literary criticism, a psychoanalytic and feminist interpretation of her novels, essays, reviews, and private letters.

Crossing the Boundaries: From Irishness to Britishness and Beyond

Author(s): Elena Carmen Bobocescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

The paper intends to explore a series of strategies employed by Oscar Wilde in order to achieve a transnational dimension for his art and artistic persona. Among these, we can mention: the subverting of the official colonial discourse of power, the promotion of a transnational type of art and literature, which reflects, however, indirectly the writer’s Irish origin, the subversive treatment of the British establishment and of favorite themes of the Victorian colonial empire through the reversion of the hierarchies established by the economy of the dominant patriarchal discourse and the reconsideration of the power relations within the binary couples masculine/feminine, colonizer/colonized. Last but not least, it will assess the relevance of Wilde’s choice of French for the play Salomé in shaping the artist’s personality as a “complex, multiform creature’’, who needs to self-invent continuously by experimenting with foreign languages and spaces.

Kennedy and Kahlo: Identity and Gender Issues in Biography

Author(s): Barbara Nelson / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2013

The following article pairs John F. Kennedy and Frida Kahlo with the intent of probing identity issues. The upshot of this investigation also poses questions regarding gender and biography as well. While Kahlo, the renowned Mexican postcolonial artist and life-long Communist supporter may seem an unlikely bedfellow for Kennedy, the privileged Irish son who tried to dismantle Communism, I argue this coupling serves to place in relief issues about identity. Kahlo is a kind of political and gendered Other. In discussing this pairing, the following discussion relies on Chris Matthews’ core biography Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero and Hayden Herrera’s biographical studies of Frida Kalho, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo and Frida Kahlo: The Paintings.

The Reproduction of Violence in Alice Walker’s Novels: from Heroic to Victimized Rapist

Author(s): Adelina Vartolomei / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

The paper analyzes the reproduction of violence in three novels written by Alice Walker (The Color Purple, Meridian, The Third Life of Grange Copeland). This physical and psychological abuse is not blamed on a certain race or ethnicity. More specifically, this system of injustice is reiterated by African Americans who have been submitted to it during and after slavery. Calvin Hernton, for instance, observes how the roles of masters and slaves are reassigned in Walker’s novels as African American men are “masters” while the women are still oppressed. The paper focuses especially on African American women and the suffering they endure on account of the fact that before and after freedom they are still in chains. The main instrument of oppression is that of rape, reason why Martha Cutter, for example, states that the myth of Philomela has greatly influenced the writing of African American women. However, a conflict is born as Alice Walker depicts black men as both peaceful and violent, description with which Angela Davis disagrees because the negative examples might create fake stereotypes as they did in the past such as that of the black rapist and black whore.

The Game of Double Meanings in Andrea Levy’s Small Island and The Long Song

Author(s): Cristina Chifane / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

Double-edged phrases, apparent contradictions and subsequent discoveries make up the intricate narrative web of Andrea Levy’s novels Small Island (2004) and The Long Song (2010). This paper aims at identifying some of the narrative techniques meant to generate multiple interpretations of the characters’ actions in their search of an identity in a multicultural society. If the story in Small Island is told from the viewpoints of four different characters, each of them representative of a different mentality, the single narrator in The Long Song is aware of her own position and willing to offer a vivid account of a changing world.

Book Review: Africa Is Not My Home

Author(s): Sorina Georgescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

Book Review

False Identities of Self-Proposed Heroes

Author(s): Felix Nicolau / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2012

Many times memory assumes fictitious developments. In this way, reality becomes imagination or, better said, hypothesis. As we never get to know reality in all its aspects, we are forced to make suppositions. In Peter Ackroyd’s novel The Fall of Troy, history is recreated in order to support the myth. Because the myth has energy and charisma, it incentivises the soul of a nation. In Julian Barnes’s The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters and Flaubert’s Parrot imagination is used to reconsider mentalities, religions and characters. In both novels, imagination works as a deconstructionist factor. By creating a simulacrum of reality, we can better understand the nature of our beliefs and attitudes. The conclusion would be that the only useful reality resides in the realm of imagination.

Cultural Meanings of Figurative Speech in Contemporary Caribbean British Poetry

Author(s): Monica Manolachi / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2012

This essay combines close reading and contemporary cultural theories, in order to explore several figurative patterns in which individual and collective identity are shaped in contemporary Caribbean British poetry. In the context of the post-war multicultural Great Britain and of the transatlantic cultural traffic connected with the Caribbean, the poetic discourse has become a site of cultural negotiation and visionary expression. It will be shown that none of the values associated with multiculturalism, transculturalism or cosmopolitanism are taken as fixed, but they are rather options and positions on the continuum global-local, as well as facets of an emerging complex cultural reality. The authors included in the present analysis – three Guyanese poets, David Dabydeen, Grace Nichols and John Agard, and the Barbadian Dorothea Smartt – display a great awareness of contemporary cultural change, best rendered using a culturally hybrid poetic language.

Where Do We Go from Here? The Globalized World as Reflected in Rose Tremain’s The Swimming-Pool Season, Letter to Sister Benedicta and The Road Home

Author(s): Cristina Mihaela Nistor / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2012

There are certain words that seem to have become definitory for our European lifestyle. Among those, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘globalization’ and ‘the European Union’ have become the labels that are applied everywhere and every time. It is no wonder that, for quite some time now, writers have tried to exploit the newly found pro-European Union theme of cultural diversity sans frontières, in an attempt to catch up with their times. It is also true that the issue of post-colonialism still provides writers with rich sources for books. British contemporary author Rose Tremain is by no means an exception; on the contrary, she has always welcomed controversy and challenge in a book of fiction. Therefore, my paper will focus on three of Rose Tremain’s novels, in an attempt to answer the question in the title, ‘Where do we go from here?’. In our contemporary world, nobody is happy ‘at home’, and the mirage of other horizons haunts the contemporary mind and soul. This paper will examine the journeys that Tremain’s characters make from Britain to France or India and back, and Eastern Europe to Britain and back. Irrespective of the characters’ destination, the result of travelling half the world in search for work/one’s lost self is the same: redefing and/or reinventing oneself in the process.

Volkskulturen/ Alltagskulturen des Balkans

Author(s): Gabriella Schubert / Language(s): German Issue: 149/2013