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“Richard III” has fascinated the world of theatre and the intellectual endeavour of literary criticism for centuries by displaying Shakespeare's intemperate interest in portraying the tyrant’s psychology. To locate the psychogenesis and aetiological elements that influenced the protagonist's violent ambitions, the present article will focus on psychoanalytic interpretations of Richard III's psyche emphasising the underlying tyrannical propensity of his behaviour and environmental causes. As a result, this article will also look at the collective shortcomings portrayed in the play, such as the family and community's failure to accept responsibility for fostering tyrannical behavioural patterns in Richard. Given Richard's centrality and the play's minute investigations into the workings of a tyrant's mind, this article aims to present an interpretation of Shakespeare's first attempt at portraying the (psycho)genesis and demise of a tyrant concerning his later tragedies. Occasional comparisons might show how Shakespeare's portrayal of the psyche's tortuous development in tragedy has evolved from 1592-3, the years “Richard III” was written and first performed (Bloom “Invention” xv), into the "tragic period" (Bradley 84) of 1600-1606 (with “Hamlet”, “King Lear”, and “Macbeth” especially). Investigating Richard's descent from psychic integrity to psychic atrophy will best demonstrate Shakespeare's early attempt to depict a tyrant’s mental cosmetics by focusing on the Marlovian overabundances of character that make Richard III such a puzzling figure. This article shows how Richard is psychologically different from Shakespeare's later tragic protagonists, whose psyches are partly accessible to them, but are tapped into to an eventually fatal effect.
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The funeral rite is a fundamental aspect of the process of a person's passage from this world to the underworld. Throughout history, each culture and society has developed its own representations of this important moment of transition. In modern society, depictions of funerary ritual have evolved in accordance with social and technological changes. Individual traditions and increasing cultural diversity have brought with it a number of changes in the way people face and express their grief of loss. Currently, funeral rites can range from traditional religious ceremonies to personalized civil burials or even commemoration actions. Many beliefs and traditions we inherited from our ancestors, the Dacians and Romans, and as testimonies over time are the customs and rituals that we still find in rural life. Each civilization emphasized its own values and beliefs about the afterlife. Depictions of the funeral rite give us insight into human values and understanding in the face of the inevitable – death. The funeral rite among the Greeks, as in Romanian culture, involved certain practices of preparing the body of the deceased for the burial rite. The last road to the Greeks was marked by certain offerings and sacrifices, where the community expressed its regrets; they organized memorial dinners to honor the memory of the departed, a custom that is still practiced today among Romanians. In Ancient Rome, there is also that custom of purifying the family home. The ancient Romans used certain aromatic plants to banish all the energies left after death. From the Dacians we do not have so much information regarding the funeral ritual. However, following discoveries and historical accounts, a different aspect catches our attention: cremation, burning of the body of the deceased. We also remember the Dacian tombs where various personal objects were placed, traditions that we inherited and which are practiced today.
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The study "Aspects regarding the application of Article 8 of the Armistice Convention with the United Nations of September 12, 1944 in Satu Mare County" presents some novel aspects regarding the organization and operation of the County Office of Enemy Property in Satu Mare County. Structured in three parts, the paper presents, in the first part, brief general considerations regarding Article 8 of the Armistice Convention and the establishment and organization of the House for the Administration and Surveillance of Enemy Assets (C.A.S.B.I.). The second part is also the most consistent and is actually the purpose of this article. Based on unpublished archival documents studied, the organization and activity of the County Office of Enemy Assets in Satu Mare County is presented in detail, chronologically, with the emphasis placed especially on the first two years of activity. The final part contains the author's observations and conclusions. They refer to the ethnic situation of Satu Mare county in 1945 and the consequences of this situation on the application of art. 8 of the Armistice Convention, to the difficulties encountered in the organization and operation of the County Office of Enemy Assets, to the impact of the measures taken by the authorities to regulate the situation of absentees, etc.
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The union of the Principalities through the double election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza (1859) represented the foundation of the modern Romanian state and was followed by numerous legislative initiatives aimed at ensuring full unification, among them a new education law, namely the Law of Public Instruction. The new law was promulgated by the ruler on November 25, 1864 and represented the brick that was the basis of the construction of the modern Romanian education system. Since the beginning of the reign of Al. I. Cuza, the problem of the education system, its organization on modern and unitary principles was a priority not only of the ruler, but also of the politicians around him. That is why the Law of Instruction (1864) was the result of the long-term work of numerous political and cultural people, but nevertheless caused, from the beginning, two great controversies regarding its content as well as the context in which the normative act was developed. The first of these controversies was related to the wider circumstances of the adoption of foreign models in the Romanian society, and the second referred to the short time in which the new education law was drafted (June-November 1864). The adoption of the foreign models in the Romanian society was a problem that referred not only to education, but also to other fields, being one of the ways through which the modernization of the Romanian society was achieved. The Law of Instruction from 1864 represented a synthesis of the principles included in the Romanian political projects developed at the end of the 18th century and in the first half of the 19th century, but also of some principles taken from the Western models, all adapted to the realities of the Romanian society from the second half of the 19th century, a society in constant change especially after the Union of the Romanian Principalities in 1859. More than that, this law was the fruit of solid concepts and principles and that is why it lasted a long period of time, despite all the appeals and attempts of abolishment that have existed.
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Thanks to its destiny as a "royal residence", Sinaia was, at the end of the 19th century, the fastest growing town on the European continent. The first house was built in 1872, the settlement acquired its own administrative status in 1874, and became a town ten years later. All the attributes of a thriving town also emerged and grew rapidly. In 1890, the first printing press and the first newspaper were established here. The newspapers that are printed in Sinaia until the beginning of the First World War are varied, with different periodicity and highlight two distinct aspects, addressing different groups. On the one hand there are the inhabitants of the town (those who live here all year round, as well as those who have holiday homes in the resort), on the other hand there are the tourists who need information. Discovered at the Romanian Academy Library, these periodicals, published between 1890 and 1914, deserve a dedicated research in the context of the era.
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This work wants to bring in the attention of academic community, as well as those interested in this subject, a new research theme overlooked in the field of cultural studies, namely music festivals and their significance for contemporary Romanian culture. The festival market in Romania has grown significantly in recent years, with a variety of events such as theater festivals, music festivals, film festivals, gastronomic festivals, medieval festivals, and more. This is also the subject of my doctoral thesis, a brand new research in Romania. Such events not only signify entertainment but also involve elements of psychology, sociology, ethnology, as well as practical matters such as budgets and the impact on local tourism. In other countries, there are already university programs titled Festival Studies that address this branch of cultural studies. As an example, we can mention the Eurovision Song Contest, which has inspired numerous academic studies. Furthermore, psychology plays a crucial role in such events, especially as the audience experiences various emotional states, ranging from joy and euphoria to even sadness. We will attempt to address this topic from a psychological perspective as well.
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This thesis deals with the image of the Hungarians as they are depicted in the work of Joachim Wittstock. Firstly, there is a theoretical part that presents the main concepts of the Imagology: image, auto-image, hetero-image, stereotype and prejudice. Secondly, there is a part that elicits the personal and the professional life of the author. Furthermore, the Nation of the Hungarians is illustrated, followed by an imagologigal analysis of the Hungarians in the work of Joachim Wittstock.
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The purpose of the paper is to offer a panoramic view of a critical approach to totalitarianism in the past century. I am interested in observing how the French-Romanian writer manages to vituperate Fascism and Communism in a century where the Second World War appeared to destroy the lives of ordinary people. Also, I am interested in discussing how people can be foolish because authoritarian dirigents want to impose their point of view in a world where peace and fraternity are dominant. I will consider using the technique of close reading Eugene Ionesco’s masterpiece Lesson and heteroclite books to reflect in which way it is sought to express the idea of the necessity of democracy in a disparate universe. The creative use of language will be regarded as a means to make visible the new paradigm of fraternity can be understood by the readers in contemporaneity.
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The last decades of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century were also marked in the Romanian space by the agglutination and crystallization of two apparently contradictory processes: the establishment of the Romanian national identity and the organization of the national struggle, and the organization of civil society, with the mission of democratizing and making the political life of society transparent. In order to dislodge the old political arrangements based on police control, censorship, etc., the national elites resorted to various forms and means of action; on the one hand, to the politics of conspiracy and plotting, after the Italian Carbonari model, or to masonic lodges and fraternities, i.e. secret associations and societies, fashionable throughout Europe. They replaced the political activity carried out in legal forms (the political opposition in the Public Assembly) because the civil society was in the process of being organized and was still proving fragile, and they offered their members (conspirators, conjurers, freemasons) a space of freedom and personal security, for the spread of new ideas and new programs for social and national emancipation. As such, although secret or discrete structures of a special nature, surrounded by an imaginary conspiratorial halo, secret societies, masonic lodges fortified civil society and contributed to the realization of the ideals of this time (the decades of the middle of the 19th century).
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The study starts from Cyril Hovorun's book: Political Orthodoxies: The Unorthodoxies of the Church Coerced and analyzes several concepts present in the book: "Political Orthodoxies", "Unorthodoxies", "Heresies", "Church Coerced", "civil religion", "political religion", "ideology", "conservatism", "fundamentalism", etc.Once these concepts are clarified, it is shown that Hovorun does not define some concepts well, in many situations it is confusing, and the work presents many shortcomings from the point of view of historical documentation. The situation is even more complicated in the case of the Romanian translation, which subtly tries to criticize the Orthodox Church from a Protestant perspective, by manipulating some concepts.At the end, the study proposes a new grid for understanding the relations between Orthodoxy, ideology and political power in the contemporary era.
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This paper investigates the dichotomy between Dismaland, a dystopian inversion of Disneyland, and Disneyland as an enduring bastion of joyous illusion. Through the lenses of heterotopia, non-places, and chiasmus, it explores how their coexistence authentically grounds one while estranging the other. Banksy's inadvertent use of а chiastic structure in transforming Dismaland is analyzed for its reorganizational logic, and challenging norms. Drawing on Lefebvre, Foucault, Rancière, and Nikolchina, the paper examines cultural representations, spaces, and social relations. The analysis extends to non-places vs. heterotopias, emphasizing Dismaland's resistance to non-place classification. The paper advocates for heterotopias, like Dismaland, to challenge norms and foster alternative cultural production, critiquing interpretations of Situationist theories and proposing Rancière's spatial occupation. The conclusion explores how chiastic structure and heterotopian thinking fuel Dismaland's revolutionary potential, challenging predetermined environments, and underscores art's transformative role in societal evolution towards a renewed existence.
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The article by Pascal Mougin, a French literary scholar, delves into the concept of "conceptual literature" within the broader context of the relationship between literature and contemporary art. Mougin contrasts the modernist focus on form and autonomy with the contemporary shift towards intermediality and conceptualism. He discusses the influence of American art critic Clement Greenberg and the evolution of artistic practices from the 1960s onwards. Mougin identifies four pathways for conceptual literature, examining its connections to modernist and contemporary paradigms. He critiques the notion of "literature with constraints" and explores the integration of conceptual art principles into literary texts. The article highlights the unique synthesis of appropriation and constraint in contemporary conceptual writing, emphasizing its departure from traditional literary values. Mougin's work underscores the nuanced and multifaceted nature of conceptual literature, advocating for a critical examination of its various manifestations.
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This study deals with a chapter in the history of Czech genre theory, namely the second (corrected) edition of Josef Jungmann’s Slovesnost (‘Belles-lettres’; 1845) and its descriptions of genre systems, in particular his system of six poetic types. It also deals with the relationship of this system to the temporal context, i.e. the past (summarizing the thinking on genre at the time that Jungmann wrote Slovesnost) and future (indicating those aspects in which Jungmann’s system remains theoretically relevant today).
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In the European Union, although there is no "European Constitution" in the sense of a single constitution governing the entire Union, in a similar way to the national constitutions of its member states, there is a complex legal framework that is formed by treaties and intergovernmental agreements that governs its operation. The Union operates on the principles of the rule of law and respect for human rights. However, the idea of a "European Constitution" was a highly discussed and controversial one, especially in the 2000s. Although it was not adopted in the form of a proper Constitution, the Treaty of Lisbon introduced numerous reforms and changes in the structure and the functioning of the EU, largely reflecting the initial objectives of the European Constitution. Thus, the term "European Constitution" remains an important one in the history of European integration, even if the initial project was not implemented in its original form. In this paper we will try to present an overview of the history of the EU Constitution, as well as the structure and supporting pillars of the European legal order.
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With the 15th century in Western art in general, in visual art in particular, there are some clear signs of changes related to the form of beliefs, so to the soul intimacy of the Western man. Forms of religious consciousness, themselves the result of earlier changes, it changes and will change once more. The content of religious consciousness remains immutable. It has at its center the archetype of the savior from death. 14 centuries this archetype was personified in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the conqueror of hell and death. The period of the 15th - 21st centuries conveys, through visual and musical art, that the Christ personification of the savior gradually changes until it almost disappears, its place being taken by Orpheus, the mythological hero of ancient Greece.
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Among the most significant cosmic elements, Night brings into its mystical essence a multitude of myths and legends encountered since antiquity. If we refer to Greek mythology, Night is personified by the goddess Nyx, one of the most emblematic deities, also having the greatest cosmic forces in the Universe. It had the power to direct the shadows over the whole world, creating with their help, the Night. Goddess Nyx is presented as an enigmatic captivating entity, guiding the whole world to restful and healing hours. In Roman mythology, Night is associated with Nyx and Nox, respectively. The Roman goddess of night is presented to us as a woman with large black wings, wandering the sky throughout the night. She is the twin sister of the goddess Dia (day), also bearing the name Ceres. In Greco-Roman mythology, the time of night is considered the time when deities meet, a time dedicated to completing tasks. Even in mythological accounts, night is remembered in stories of Eurydice or Orpheus, Selene or Endymion. Romanian mythology brings to the fore a multitude of legends and mythological figures associated with the night. Its occurrence is associated with various mystical events. This connection between night and sacred space is marked by an inexhaustible source of rituals implemented in the consciousness of the person from the rural environment.
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The movement of religious and moral revival of the Army of the Lord, which appeared in the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1923, at the initiative of the priest Iosif Trifa (1888-1938) from Sibiu, will exert a strong influence on the Orthodox Church. The relations with the ecclesiastical authority, the Archdiocese of Ardeal, represented at that time by the Metropolitan Dr. Nicolae Bălan, and the de facto founder of the movement, the priest Iosif Trifa, at first very good, cooled down with the extension of the movement's activity beyond the borders of the Archdiocese of Sibiu, and his acquisition of a personal printing house. A tense situation built up which, in 1935-1938, degenerated into a conflict with unforeseen consequences for the Army of the Lord. Under the communist regime, which regarded the movement as anti-sectarian and chauvinist, the civil sentence of the Court of Sibiu of 22 December 1949 dissolved the Army of the Lord as a society and eliminated it from the register of legal entities. The Army of the Lord continued to exist underground and manifested itself through isolated actions of members in various parishes in the country until 1990 when it was legally and canonically rehabilitated.
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The philosophical starting point of the collective work "Pražské jaro: Logika nového světa. Od reforem k revoluci" [Prague Spring: The Logic of the New World. From Reform to Revolution], edited by philosopher Michael Hauser, is, according to the reviewer, the conviction in the real potential for development of historical alternatives that did not materialize. It is through this lens that the five authors (three philosophers, a sociologist and a legal historian) view the phenomenon of the Prague Spring of 1968 and explore some of its aspects. In a way, they follow the debate between the writers Václav Havel and Milan Kundera from the late 1960s, the core of which was the question of the peculiar possibilities of socialism in relation to th etraditional model of liberal democracy, linked to capitalism. The authors develop the ideological line of Kundera’s “pro-socialist” position, and the reviewer comments on the individual chapters, which deal with the “second life” of the Prague Spring, the social dynamics of the so-called revival process, the workers’ councils between 1968 and 1970, the transformation of the Czechoslovak legal system in the 1960s, and the contemporary role of interdisciplinary expert teams in relation to political leadership and citizen initiatives. The last chapter sharply criticizes the direction of Czechoslovak, or rather Czech, socio-economic transformation after November 1989, which, according to the author, through the significant contribution of Václav Klaus and Václav Havel in “building capitalism”, blocked alternative possibilities of development and, with the ideological legacy of the Prague Spring, rejected all left-wing concepts. The authors see the main lasting inspiration of the Prague Spring in the idea of workers’ councils. The emphasis on their direct participationin the management of the economy goes beyond the current social model.
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