![Epica magna. Melania Bancea, Capitolul 6](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2019_51161.jpg)
Epica magna. Melania Bancea, Capitolul 6
The text is a fragment from a novel written by Melania Bancea.
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The text is a fragment from a novel written by Melania Bancea.
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The novel The Last Road belongs to the prose writer, the folklorist and the ethnographer, to an encyclopedic spirit and to a man who grew up among the mocans and the gold miners of the Apuseni Mountains. Undoubtedly, it can be perceived as a novel-document, a monograph of the world of mocans from Mogoș Valley, Alba County. Being the author's native region, this explains both the interest in these places and his very good knowledge of them, from all points of view – geography, climate, vegetation, history, toponyms, names, occupations, holidays, clothing, language, social relations, animal names. The fruit of a very painstaking documentation, the work is a vivid portrait of a picturesque and variegated world trying to heal the wounds caused by the First World War, without knowing that it is heading to the second.
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This article is part of a larger study aimed to study the mediatic discourse in modernist fiction. During our research, we discovered several clues linking the Romanina historical figure George Constantin Bibescu and the Camil Petrescu`s fictional character Fred Vasilescu, from one of the most technical Romanian modernist novels, which is Patul lui Procust (Procrustes`s Bed). We know already from Professor Ioana Pârvulescu`s Return to Interwar Bucharest that the Jewish actress Leny Caler was a female model behind some of Camil Petrescu`s female characters. The Romanian modernist confesses that he was significantly inspired for his novels by reading the newspapers and magazines of the time, estimating that this mediatic documentation took him some 10-15 years. However, he is left with enough clippings to last him for another two novels. Back to Procrustes`s Bed, we follow this mediated relationship between reality and representation, in report to Fred Vasilescu.
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This article examines the structure of Maurice Sandoz’s novel Le Labyrinthe (The Maze) in order to determine to what extent that novel belongs to the fantastic genre. Drawing on classical theories of the fantastic, the present article demonstrates that Sandoz’s Labyrinthe raises terminological issues, since it contains elements that canonical theories consider as fantastiques but also merveilleux (Todorov, Caillois). A detailed analysis of the Sandozian forewords’ characteristics makes it possible to show that the author plays with the notions of limit and hesitation. The latter are crucial in the seminal theories on the fantastique and are at the core of the Sandozian strategy that consists in the blurring of the boundaries between author, narrator, narrative, and “reality”. This study constitutes a first step towards a more detailed analysis of Sandoz’s fantastique and its goal is to underlines the necessity of a perspective shift in the comprehension thereof.
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The object of this article is to present and organize the religious motifs found in contemporary speculative fiction. This type of literature very often reacts to the social trends and tendencies ex- isting in popular culture. The motifs presented in this article are arranged thematically, so that one can see a certain outline of the paradigm of literary figures through which the writers who create them refer to the religious content. The juxtaposition of motifs determines three main perspectives of treating religion in the discussed type of literature.
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The article contains an analysis of the function of second-person narrative in selected works of science fiction. This experimental type of narrative is characterised by a tendency to blur the line between the fictional and non-fictional worlds and to strengthen the reader’s empathic attitude. As the article shows, the combination of the possibility of deepening the psychological images of fictional characters with the complication of the ontological hierarchy of worlds and undermining their stability leads to interesting effects. Among them, the most promising seems the potential for strengthening the meanings that result from the confrontation of subjective worlds with the fictional worlds, understood as arenas for the characters’ actions.
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This article proposes an analysis of Laura Restrepo’s Leopardo al sol (1993), a novel that proposes a sociocultural interpretation of the impact of the illegal economies of drug trafficking on traditional society. By analyzing the ingredients of the convention and poetics narco in the text, we observe how the violence represented in Leopardo al sol takes the form of a particular syncretism of modern elements of a civilization of spectacle and archaic elements intrinsic to mentalities anchored in mythical and magical thinking.
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The article is devoted to a particular issue of artistic topography of the most St. Petersburg work of Russian literature — “Crime and Punishment” by F. M. Dostoevsky. Using address books, atlases, and other reference literature of the 19th century, it traces the routes of the novel’s main hero Rodion Raskolnikov in relation to the urban realities of the Northern capital in the mid-1860s. The author of the article focuses on Raskolnikov’s meetings with Zametov in the Crystal Palace tavern and with Svidrigailov in an unnamed tavern on —sky Prospekt “thirty or forty steps from Sennaya” Square, as well as real St. Petersburg taverns — “Palais de Cristal” and “Sukharevka”, which served as prototypes for the places where the above-named episodes of the novel are played out. The article revises the traditional view, which already has a century-old tradition, according to which the meetings of the protagonist with Zametov and Svidrigailov took place in the same tavern on Obukhovsky (now Moskovsky) Prospekt. The Svidrigailovsky tavern is identified in the article with the real Sukharevka, vividly depicted in the novel by Vs. Krestovsky “Petersburg Slums” (1864–1867), and the “Crystal Palace” in the novel — with a tavern at the “Palais de Cristal” hotel on the corner of Sadovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt (a long-established fact, which, however, was subjected to skepticism in the traditional approach). For the first time, there was a solid factual basis for the existence on Obukhovsky Prospekt of the “Palais de Cristal” café, which was homonymous with the hotel on Sadovaya and opened in 1874, eight years after the writing of Dostoevsky’s novel, and which obscured the real picture of the artistic topography of “Crime and Punishment”.
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The article examines the synthesis of heterogeneous genres containing a teleological plot about the curse of a sinner: a synodic tale about the retribution of a sinner and a newspaper criminal chronicle. This plot is realized in Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” with the help of the reception of the story about the merchant-perjurer A. A. Mazurin and his descendants who were punished for their sins. One of them is his grandson V. F. Mazurin, who killed his friend the jeweler Kalmykov. The sensational criminal case, known to Dostoevsky from the newspapers, made a strong impression on the writer. Thanks to this, the image of Rogozhin appeared in the novel, and the development of his relationship with Nastasia Filippovna, who foresaw her imminent death by his hand, was rethought. The legend of the ancestral curse that befell A. A. Mazurin is presented according to the memoirs of the famous Moscow entrepreneur N. A. Varentsov and is connected in the article with the description of death and the afterlife torments of sinners in synodic prefaces. The details of V. F. Mazurin’s murder of the jeweler Kalmykov are covered by the court materials of the issues of the newspaper “Moskovskie Vedomosti,” to which Dostoevsky could also refer.
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The article analyzes the material of the draft manuscript of F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons”, specifically, the pages containing the scene of Karmazinov reading his work “Merci”. The draft manuscript of the novel “Demons” is a syntactically coherent text containing a large number of author’s edits between the lines and in the margins. The analysis of the manuscript made it possible to identify inaccuracies in its reading by publishers that negatively affect the interpretation of the text. In addition, this analysis helped to correct these errors and accompany them with the necessary textual commentary, affecting, in particular, such problems as the establishment of the text, the identification and analysis of new discrepancies (variants) between the sources of the text, as well as text omissions in print. The textual part of the work is continued by the historical-literary and real commentary proposed in the article based on the newly discovered information about the features of the creation of the artistic concept of “Demons,” explaining the significance of literary and historical motifs that are associated with ancient culture and history for the novel plot. In the process of analyzing handwritten and printed sources, literary and historical allusions were established, which the specified episode of the novel “Demons” contains. In addition, the article examined the historical subtext and symbolism of ancient motifs that were reflected in the scene of literary reading in “Demons,” as well as the content of some historical sources (works by ancient authors on the history of Ancient Rome; lectures by T. N. Granovsky, who became the prototype of the hero of the novel, Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky). New information revealed during the study of the draft manuscript of “Demons” indicates, on the one hand, that the ancient “trace” played an important role in the development of the idea of this novel, on the other hand, the complexity of the novel’s narrative structure.
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In F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel, the emotional monologue of Ivan Karamazov, who metaphorically explains his refusal of harmony obtained at the cost of a child’s tear and compares it with returning to God a ticket granting admission to the world, has determined the sense and tradition of the functioning motif in Russian literature. In scientific literature the character’s statement about the ticket returned to God is investigated as a quotation from three possible sources: the poem “Resignation” by F. Schiller, the letter of V. G. Belinsky to V. P. Botkin, and “St. Petersburg Evenings” by J. de Maistre. In the article these works are viewed as the texts that determined the formation of the motif of returning the ticket to God for both “The Brothers Karamazov” by F. M. Dostoevsky and the entire Russian culture. These texts clarify, update, identify, and designate this motif. The influence of the texts by Schiller, Belinsky, and J. de Maistre determines the artistic logic of the choice of the word “ticket.” The poem “Resignation” by F. Schiller, a letter by V. G. Belinsky, the novel “St. Petersburg Evenings” by J. de Maistre are diverse options that determine the formation by the writer of the ideological and emotional fullness of the motif of the ticket returned to God. The texts of Schiller and Belinsky focused on the idea of a rejection of the world and a rebellion against it. The theodicy of J. de Maistre is opposite: the world created by God is accepted, no matter what. The influence of works with such a contradictory potential is the reason for F. M. Dostoevsky’s choice of the phrase “the most respectful” rebellion. The motif of returning the ticket to God, based on the deistic concept, determined F. M. Dostoevsky’s brilliant premonition about the future path of Russia and filled it with a deep philosophical and universal resonance.
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This article is based on the hypothesis that Catherine Mavrikakis’s debut novel Deuils cannibales et mélancoliques (A cannibal and melancholy mourning, 2000), with its many autobiographic features, should not be treated as a mere therapeutic piece of writing. The introductory section takes a closer look at the autofictional practices of this contemporary Quebec writer. Subsequently, the article demonstrates that the novel’s preoccupation with mourning represents an original way of approaching life from the perspective of finitude and enables Mavrikakis, who is stuck in an identity crisis, to question her becoming a writer through a network of both real and imaginary relationships.
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This paper presents one possible reading of Igor Stanojoski's novel "Dyssomnias" interpreted through Bauman's fluid interpersonal relations and the ethical norms of the postmodern age. It is a novel in which the narrator's personal family drama is intertwined with the collective drama of the revolutionary protests on Maidan Square in 2013 in Ukraine, as well as with the conditions in Macedonian society, fake democracy, psychological warfare and fake news, and the influence of the new forms of propaganda on the psychological state of the individual. The starting point for the interpretation of the novel are the critical views of Malcolm Waters on globalization and the global village where the interests of powerful transnational structures can be easily incorporated, and realized through various manipulations The paper also uses the recommendations of the psychologist Claude Steiner for recognizing and exposing the manipulations of the two involved parties in the global conflicts and their transmission through the working style of of individual media personalities, which then also affects their private love life. Through a detailed analysis of the two parts of the novel, which have as their motto statements from the collection of short stories "War Doesn’t Have a Female Face" by the Nobel laureate Svetlana Aleksievich, the paper concludes that in the postmodern globalized society, in order to achieve the goals of the globalizers, people are often subject to manipulations that have a negative impact on ethics and interpersonal relations. Subsequently we are still far from the end of unification, which shall be preceded by long exhausting military conflicts involving all resources of humanity.
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This paper examines autobiographical writing in the context of modern theories and research, using Witold Gombrowiczʼs Diary as an example. Specifically, it analyzes the degree to which the Diary leans towards autofiction, or the fusion of autobiography and fiction, and the extent to which it remains rooted in reality. Gombrowiczʼs Diary covers the period between 1953 and 1966, and is characterized by a mixture of self-reflection and autopoetics. Although the author draws from his own experiences and real events, he also explores the limits of the diary as a literary genre by fictionalizing it. While Gombrowiczʼs use of the diary form places him within the tradition of autobiographical discourse, his thematic focus on the experience of exile aligns him with the literature of exile. Through his Diary, Gombrowicz seeks to articulate the fundamental existential state of being in exile during a specific period of his life. The aim of this paper is to examine the concept of otherness in Gombrowicz's magnum opus, respecting the authorʼs determination to communicate his experience in a formally non-literary text. In doing so, several questions are raised: Is the narrator of the autobiographical prose identical to the author? To what extent does literariness feature in the text, as compared to the presence of an aesthetic component in the sense of Russian Formalism? How is the supposed binary opposition of domestic and foreign reconciled?
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The author of the article shows that the bucolic genre is already perceived as something marginal, and literary studies focus mainly on local descriptions, the contrast between the village and the city, inscribing its own understanding in the concept of genre, and so on. At the same time, bucolic is captured not in synchronic episodes of one or another synchronic, but in historical diachrony, mainly in the perspective of the change of types of literature on the border between antiquity and Christianity, when the life-affirming ideals of classical bucolic were subjected to religious and philosophical reflection, which led to transformations, starting with the revival of the chamber lyric form into a socially and psychologically saturated novel and drama in the Renaissance era. The author of the article relies on the methodology of ritual-mythological literary studies, as bucolic literature echoes ancient rituals of renewing life and overcoming death. The re-searcher follows Jonathan Z. Smith’s view, according to which for hunters and gatherers the most important form of ritual activity is initiation, and for farmers – sacrifice. This idea buttresses the author’s detailed comparison of ancient bucolicism, which from the beginning was characterized by a certain “urban” irony, not only from the general spiritualistic concept of the Bible, but also specifically with the pastoral motifs in the Song of Songs, showing how similar filiations of ideas influenced the complication and deepening of the genre as a whole. It traces how the ancient glorification of the carefree life of the peasant is complicated by the Christian sense of memento mori. In the Age of Enlightenment, the philosophical saturation of the bucolic is greatly increased: nature becomes a desirable living environment and a source of inspiration, even a criterion of truth. It is also noted that the bucolic novel, like any novel under the rule of classicism, was declared “outlawed” – as a genre, by its folkloric genesis, which did not prevent it from reaching heights in the discourse of sentimentalism as a representation of the inner world of feelings. Thus, the article represents a generalized panoramic picture of the existence of the genre in its diachronic movement. It is shown in detail how idyllic-pastoral motifs not only condensed the spirit of rituals born in pagan antiquity that perpetuated the eternal struggle of Life and Death, but also entered into a dialogue with biblical values that marked the development and continuous expansion of the boundaries of the bucolic genre.
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The article focuses on Family Myths, a forgotten novel by Adam Ważyk, a member of the Kraków Avant-Garde. Zdunik analyzes “family myths” in the context of social changes that resulted from the First World War, as depicted in the novel. He discusses the recep- tion of the work in relation to the historical and literary categories of a memoir and bildungsroman. This helps recognize the “family myth” as a cognitive category, which organizes the way the characters perceive reality, especially everyday family life. In Ważyk’s novel, the “family myth” has a similar function to its psychological counterpart, well known in the family systems therapy. In both cases, it helps come to terms with a difficult and neurotic reality. In other words, these conservative, traditional beliefs, or the epony- mous “myths”, help one adapt to the ever-changing world. Paradoxically, however, the family myth plays a role in creating that very neurosis, as it traps the characters in their formulaic ways of perceiving the world, hampering individual development which is necessary to keep up with changing social mores.To address this problem, Zdunik examines the story of two characters in Ważyk’s novel, Ewa Karcz and Karol Karcz. He calls the first myth “the myth of resistance to puberty”, as it shows how the female protagonist, despite her emancipatory gestures (running away from her family home, getting married young, getting pregnant), is unable to become an independent individual. In the case of Karol Karcz, the “myth of pseudo- initiation” is conspicuous in his becoming romantically involved with a maid, Zenobia Ożarowska. Karcz, however, does not opt for a mature relationship; he takes advantage of Zenobia, thus legitimizing male power.
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The paper explores the use and impact of conceptual metaphors in the graphic novel City of Glass published by Paul Auster as a free-standing story in 1985. Two years later Auster turned it into the first part of The New York Trilogy, which has since become one of the most iconic works of postmodern fiction. Artists Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli have adapted Auster’s novella into a graphic novel and their version figures on the list of the best comic books in the 20th century. The aim of this paper is to examine how the two artists’ use of conceptual metaphors has elicited the visual dimension of Auster’s novel, conveyed its philosophical ideas and enriched its emotional effect.
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