Literary Stories: Cultural Memory

Author(s): Alexander Kratochvil / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2013

Historical and cultural memory is put into practice through narratives. As a narrative medium, literature plays an important role in the process of transformation of the past events in cultural memory. This transformation includes critical reflection or affirmation of various aspects of memory and its social context. Literary texts in this paper include short stories of Jan Drda, Josef Škvorecký and Zdeněk Rotrekl which deal with the final days of the World War Two.

Svět slov Věry Linhartové

Author(s): Michaela Křivancová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2011

This paper focuses on Věra Linhartová’s prose texts published between 1964 and 1968. Its aim is to present the main features of her poetics, above all the epistemological-philosophical and ontological-existential dimension of words. It also seeks to demonstrate how both aspects determine the intra-textual reflection of the construction of literary utterances and that the epistemological principle affects language and contextual transformations in the author’s artistic formulation of texts. Furthermore, it shows that in Linhartová’s poetics the manner of formulating literary utterances is not merely a self-contained reflection of the epistemological (and ontological) principle, but also has communicative aims.

Средновековният скален манастир „Алботин“

Author(s): Vanya Pekova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 02/2020

Językowe oraz pozawerbalne wyróżniki XIX-wiecznego savoir-vivre’u i rozmów salonowych w opowiadaniu Stefanii Ulanowskiej Babie lato

Author(s): Dorota Krystyna Rembiszewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 20/2020

The article discusses linguistic and non-verbal features of 19th-century savoir-ivre. Babie lato [Indian Summer] by Stefania Ulanowska (1839–?), the source text under scrutiny, is a 21-page short story, which has most probably never come out in print. There are four conversation situations in the text: 1) a symmetrical setup (the interlocutors have equal social status and comparable pragmatic rank), 2) a symmetrical setup with asymmetrical features, related to the conversation between a man and a woman, 3) a less distanced asymmetrical setup, where the participants of the conversation are the mother and children, 4) a full asymmetric setup, in which the mistress of the house addresses the maid. The short story moreover features non-verbal etiquette features, such as a man tipping over his hat when he sees a woman and a man kissing a woman’s hand. The characteristics of etiquette observed in Babie lato are a supplement to the deliberations on savoir-vivre in the 19th century and confirm the changes that took place at that time in terms of courtesy in comparison with the old Polish period. They are also a testimony to the old culture of the nobility, transferred to bourgeoisie houses.

Obserwator i jego pozycja w opowiadaniu Tadeusza Borowskiego „Odwiedziny”

Author(s): Łukasz Wnuk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 28/2019

The article is an analysis of Tadeusz Borowski’s short story Odwiedziny (‘The visit’). It focuses on linguistic and narrative devices through which the speaker influences the recipient’s perception, and so shapes the reading of his work. The first part is introductory, it presents the goals of the paper. The next part recalls the most important existing interpretations, both of Borowski’s literary output as a whole, and of the text at hand. They form the starting point to an analysis of the position of the character-narrator with regard to the events he is describing, and to the relation between the author, the narrator, and the main character of the story. These considerations constitute the third part of the present paper. It begins with a citation of the full text of the story, and is followed by the main argument announced in the title which refers to Ronald Langacker’s cognitive grammar and takes into special consideration such notions as scene, current discourse space, and vantage point. The closing part of the paper contains conclusions, contrasted with the theses put forward in the context of Borowski’s work, as well as suggestions of possible directions of further analysis of the story within the framework of cognitive linguistics.

Mój rok 1968

Author(s): Mariusz Klapper / Language(s): Polish Issue: 52/2018

Marzec i maj 1968 we Wrocławiu

Author(s): Michał Siciński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 52/2018

Wielojęzyczność w literaturze dokumentu osobistego: funkcje wykładników transkodowych

Author(s): Elżbieta Sękowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 32/2021

The article is dedicated to semantic functions of transcode markers in Polish émigré literature. Two diaries, written respectively by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński and Jan Lechoń, constitute the exemplification material. The diary genre, similarly to letters and memoirs, lends itself to introducing this kind of markers. Their presence reflects the multilingual competence of the author, as well as his mental, social, and psychological experience. The second language enables broadening the referential space of the first language and conveying emotions. The strategy of code switching depends on the motivation and goal of writing a given text. In Herling-Grudziński’s Journal Written by Night, foreign words from different languages abound. They fulfill several functions in the text, namely: metalinguistic, index and stylistic function. Their presence is justified by the content and by the role adopted by the author – the one of an interpreter of the political and social reality. The Diary by Lechoń is different in terms of types of predominant functions which can be distinguished in his text. Besides commenting on the émigré life, the author focuses on his emotions and experiences. Therefore, index and metalinguistic functions turn out to be the most important. Pointing out different strategies of introducing transcode markers in a text by its author is fundamental for the research on bilingualism in émigré writing.

Асацыятыўна-сэнсавае поле аповесцi Янкi Брыля “Муштук i папка”

Author(s): Tamara Tarasawa / Language(s): Belarusian Issue: 13/2021

The article deals with text associations on the example of the story “Mushtuk I Papka” by Y. Bryl. The study of the mechanism of associative links contributes to an in-depth understanding of ideological and thematic content of the story, its artistic imagery, the writer’s thesaurus, the peculiarities of the author’s style and worldview. The associative and semantic field of the story “Mushtuk I Papka” by Y. Bryl includes vocabulary, intertext, the author’s reminiscences, lyrical tone, plot-compositional structure of the text, and the author’s conceptual sphere. The fundamental role of associativity is to provide comprehensive perception and understanding of the story.

Мотив последнего срока в рассказе В. Распутина «Продается медвежья шкура»

Author(s): Valentina Ya. Ivanova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 3/2021

The article analyzes the origins of the last term motif in V. Rasputin’s prose. An early short story by V. Rasputin Bearskin for Sale (1967) examines this motif from the standpoint of Christian Orthodox axiology. The analysis uses the first two editions of the short story: 1966 and 1967. The motif of the last term determines the plot of the work and reveals biblical and evangelical reminiscences that connect the story with the traditional image of the world in Russian culture, where the leading ideas are human repentance and salvation of the soul. A. N. Uzhankov’s research, which reveals the patterns of development in ancient Russian literature, explains the presence of the idea of “last times” in the minds of the ancient Russian chroniclers. V. Raspustin’s prose restores the continuity of post-1917 Russian literature with the origins of Russian literature. The story of the hunter Vasily in Bearskin for Sale reveals the psychology of human renewal, the emergence of a new attitude towards time, life, oneself and the animate in nature. Cyclic, repeated and expected time, in which a person was previously included, is replaced for him by that which is discrete, interrupted, expressed in the feeling of every moment of life as the last. A person who is ripped by sin out of harmonious coexistence with the world becomes different through an inner admission of his guilt. The motif of the last term, characteristic of the main works of V. Rasputin, the stories Money for Maria, The Last Term, Live and Remember, Farewell to Matyora is revealed from the very beginning of his literary path.

The Bear and the Hero: Parallels in Korean and Latvian Epics

Author(s): Ojārs Lāms / Language(s): English Issue: Special/2022

Comparative research of Latvian and Korean literature is a new field. It would be quite logical to consider the epic paradigm at the very outset. The epic hero, the environment, the events, the poetics of the epics tell a great deal about a nation. To talk about the epic in a comparative aspect today is a relevant and appropriate occasion, because the Latvian reader has the first opportunity to look into the of Korean epics, since the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Latvian-Korean diplomatic relations has been marked by publishing of selected Korean fairy tales with the support of the Korean Embassy. This paper will examine the parallels of Latvian and Korean epic tradition in the context of bear mythologeme.

Parodie şi extaz în Viscolul” lui Puşkin în lectura lui Sollogub

Author(s): Anton Breiner / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2013

An authorial footnote in V.A. Sollogub’s story The snowstorm (1849) invites the reader to consider its intertextual connection to A.S. Pushkin’s story (1830) of the same title. This article analyzes the way in which Sollogub has read and understood Pushkin’s story, valorizing it according to his own esthetic agenda. In our discussion, we look at the way Pushkin uses parodic elements to undermine the sentimentalist project, and the way Sollogub responds to Pushkin’s central motif of thwarted love by reinterpreting the meaning of the snowstorm, which becomes the cornerstone of his romantic ideology.

Что скыто в «Чемодане»?

Author(s): Diana Tetean / Language(s): Russian Issue: 4/2012

Serghei Dovlatov’s shortstories were collected in a volume entitled “The Suitcase” and were written in the 80s in New York, when their author has already reached his period of artistic maturity. These original stories – ones that one finds “hiding in the creases of tatty clothes,” and which made the content of the one and only piece of luggage he had on him when he emigrated – tell of his life previous to his emigration. The article focuses upon the stylistic characteristics of Dovlatov’s narratives contained in this volume.

Comicul gogolian între mascare şi demascare

Author(s): Mihaela Herbil / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2012

Humor is equally important both for Gogol’s life and his literary creation. Nonetheless, the writer vehemently rejected that sort of humor which served only for fun and amusement. He wanted laughter to offer more than it usually did; he wanted it to unmask the general evil within society. Starting with Gogol, the role and mission of laughter would be assigned new meanings; they would serve the noble purpose of rendering dignity to man, by revealing his moral faults. Gogol was an expert in depicting man’s characteristic features, as well as in scrutinizing the inner universe of his heroes. His artistic vision was always directed towards what was actually hiding behind the comic layer. The result was that each of his stories, which abound in comic elements, is always hiding something else. The comic character is a type, while the object of the comedy resides in the presentation of characters, that is to say of general types. Humour and satire define the way in which characters are outlined; stylistically, the two elements emphasize narration, determining its specific tone and vividness of style.

Reprezentări ale realului în opera lui Viktor Pelevin

Author(s): Florentina Marin / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2012

The present article is an analysis of the mental representations of reality in Viktor Pelevin’s short story Nika and the novel Buddha's Little Finger. The writer demonstrates the purely subjective manner in which humans perceive and interpret the surrounding world and the events that happen in their lives. The subjectivity of their interpretations is due to some particular factors: on the one hand, the natural or innate factor present in each individual, which consists of the perceptive abilities and the human archetypes which exist in the collective unconsciousness. On the other hand, this subjectivity is closely related to the social background of the individual and consists of beliefs, traditions, mentality, social rules, ideology etc. As revealed from Pelevin’s writings, the mental representations of reality arise from the conjunction of these two factors. The individual is often surrounded by his false/incorrect interpretations which eventually become simulacra that change and reshape his “universe of representations”. The writer points at the heroes’ superficial and illusionary representations by ironically denying the existence of any reality, as shown in the novel Buddha's Little Finger. Once more we have to point out that the writer does not deny reality as an external condition of his characters, but the false conceptions and misinterpretations which govern people’s lives.

O casă într-un loc nemaivăzut. Resurse și rosturi în atelierul anului I

Author(s): Andrei Șerbescu,Ionuț Nedelcu,Ruth Adalgiza Iacob / Language(s): English,Romanian Issue: 1/2020

This article wants to be an observation and an interpretation of the working methods for the first year of the architectural design studio, an insight on the attempt to distinguish the things that matter and which can help to that opening which the beginning of any school must accomplish. We took into account the project carried out in our design studio from the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, during April-June, 2020. The subject for the whole year “Dwelling in the Forest”, approached differently by every design studio separately, suggested the students imagine a house either for a professor, or for a small number of students, or for an administrator, somewhere in the large area of The School of Bunesti, in one of the three meadows of its future extended campus.

Poetika traume ili prepričavanje nemogućeg. Književne strategije posttraumatskih narativa u romanima i kratkim pričama Bekima Sejranovića

Author(s): Agata Jawoszek-Goździk / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 19/2021

In this paper I analyze Bekim Serjanović’s novels From Nowhere to Nowhere (Nigdje, niotkuda), The Prettier End (Ljepši kraj) and A Nomad’s Diary (Dnevnik jednog nomada). I also mention two short stories: Miss Misery on Susak (Miss Misery na otoku Susku) and Sleepless for One Hundred and Thirty Hours (Sto trideset sati bez sna) as examples of the author’s strategy of retelling the trauma of non-belonging and the traumatic experience of immigration. Since the prose created by Sejranović is a combination of fictional and factual, but with a strong autobiographical dimension, in the analysis I start from Freud`s psychoanalytic theory of trauma interpreted by Cathy Caruth and the concept of cultural trauma caused by great social changes. Then I proceed to argue which literary and narrative strategies Sejranović used to express his traumatic experiences.

Discursive Intertextuality, Parody, and Mise en Abyme in A.S. Byatt's Short Stories

Author(s): Francesca Pierini / Language(s): English Issue: 12/2022

This essay analyses three short stories from A.S. Byatt's collection Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice (1998) in light of several self-reflexive strategies. The short narratives Crocodile Tears and Baglady will be discussed from the perspective of “discursive intertextuality,” a literary practice that foregrounds a discursive element established and detectable across genres. Christ in the House of Martha and Mary will be examined from the standpoint of intertextuality and mise en abyme. Once again, the study of this narrative will hinge on the discursive aspects of mise en abyme as a meta-generic approach put in place not to indefinitely reiterate “the same” concept, but to show the potentially endless possibilities of interpretation a text may offer its readers. Across these short stories, the opposition between fire and ice gets reworked in corresponding dichotomous sets: North vs. South, West vs. Orient, contemplative vs. active life. The specific goal this article sets itself to achieve is to show the contrasting trajectories at play in these short stories. Dense with contrasting and intersecting meta-generic paths, such narratives perform and make visible a double register of devotion/affection and questioning/deconstruction of genre norms in relation to established Anglophone discursive tropes.

LE « DON DU COEUR » ET SES MÉTAMORPHOSES. DU PARADIGME COURTOIS À L’ICONOGRAPHIE MÉDIÉVALE

Author(s): Luminiţa Diaconu / Language(s): French Issue: 32/2022

Story in verses of Picardy origin, preserved in two manuscripts from the 14th century, Le Roman du Castelain de Couci et de la Dame de Fayel is part of a larger corpus of texts centered around an adulterous relationship that a jealous husband cruelly chastises by a cardiophage meal. However, if the Franco-Provençal corpus consists of several brief narratives dating from the 13th century, prior to the novel (The Lai of Ignaure, the vidas and the razós of the troubadour Guillem de Cabestany), only the novel, which also proposes the courteous version of this story, presents the love tokens exchange between the lovers. Our analysis will focus initially on these gifts and their symbolical functions: the letters exchanged by the lovers, literary objects valued in courteous literature in the 12th-13th centuries, as well as a sleeve and braids that the lady offers to the knight before his departure in106crusade; finally, a coffer sent by the latter to his lady, which contains a letter and the lover’s heart, extracted just after his death by the valet. In the second part of our study, we have emphasized the influence of this literary motif on medieval sensitivities, given the success that it enjoyed in medieval iconography until the 15th century. Indeed, in the area of diffusion of this novel - namely the North and East of the Kingdom of France, Flanders, as well as the Parisian region and the Rhine Valley - the gift of the heart was represented in particular on objects such as mirrors in ivory or the caskets, objects clearly connected to the feminine universe, but also on the tapestry.

Breece D’J Pancake, Peripheral Modernist

Author(s): Sven Cvek / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

In this essay I discuss the short stories of the Appalachian and West Virginian writer Breece D’J Pancake (1952-1979) in order to reflect on the ways in which the experience of peripherality comes to be registered in literature. Taking a cue from recent articulations of world literature as the literature of the capitalist world system, I argue that Pancake is a peripheral modernist: the formal oscillation between a realism traditionally associated with regionalist writing and “irrealist” elements stands as a mark of his peripherality. Both the class focus of Pancake’s stories and their broad environmental theme may be regarded as symptoms of the region’s structural position within the processes of capital accumulation. I maintain that there is a utopian impulse permeating Pancake’s fiction. It can be located in Pancake’s descriptions of the environment and the temporal disjunctions present in his stories.