Az óangol költészet magyar fordításainak története és elemzése

Author(s): Andrea Nagy / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 4/2017

Old English poetry is very little known in Hungary. Most of the corpus remains untranslated to the present day, although many of the translations that do exist were made by renowned Hungarian poets and literary translators, such as Sándor Weöres. Beowulf is the best represented among the translations, as it has a complete verse translation published in 1994, and several excerpts have also been translated by various authors. Further translations include some of the elegies and riddles, as well as The Battle of Brunanburh, The Dream of the Rood and Caedmon’s Hymn, but very little of Old English religious poetry in general. The aim of the present article is to present a brief overview of the history of translating Old English poems into Hungarian, and to provide a comprehensive list of all published verse translations.

Old Possum’s Poetics

Author(s): Alice Bailey Cheylan / Language(s): English Issue: XVIII/2017

T.S. Eliot’s collection of poems entitled Old Possum’s Book of Cats has been described as whimsical, delightful, light and playful. First published in 1939, the poems where originally written for Eliot’s godchildren and never intended to be considered as serious work. Yet fifty years after Eliot’s death, his Book of Cats has been transformed into a hit musical appreciated by all ages and all nationalities, while his more erudite work such as The Waste Land and Four Quartets is esteemed and comprehended by a much smaller group.This short paper proposes to study the evolution of the importance of The Book of Cats.Eliot’s personifications of cats are not only fanciful and charming; they are also far-sightedand very representative of his own poetics.

Forever Eating the Past in the Present? Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Tom Forsythe’s Food Chain Barbie

Author(s): Estella Ciobanu / Language(s): English Issue: XVIII/2017

This paper compares the images of women created in Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse (1927) and Tom Forsythe’s photography series Food Chain Barbie (1997). Both artworks illustrate the western construction of women, past and present, as insignificant members of patriarchal society apart from the sustenance level. Sustenance itself is engendered(Teresa de Lauretis) in society, i.e. constructed along gender lines, through the muting (Edwin Ardener) of some of its members with respect to legitimate self representation. Drawing upon contributions by Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, Michèle le Doeuff, Gayatri Spivak and Edwin Ardener to the twentieth-century understanding of power relations between individual and society through representation, I suggest western philosophy’s and art’s complicitous critique of patriarchy.

Hamlet: Can One Death Justify Several Others?

Author(s): Mihai Cosoveanu / Language(s): English Issue: XVIII/2017

Considered a “revenge tragedy” since it observes all its conventions, “Hamlet”is, by far, the most complex play within the Elizabethan period. Even if the main goal is to punish the murderer and, if possible, all its accomplices, there are also characters who die for nothing, such as Ophelia. Considering the number of deaths, can we talk about a purification of the kingdom?

The Impossibility of Doing Away with the Plot: Narrative Identity in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway

Author(s): Cristina-Alexandra DRĂGOI / Language(s): English Issue: XVIII/2017

In some of her essays, Virginia Woolf argues for the dissolution of the plot when capturing life within a literary work and promotes narrative techniques such as the interior monologue which disintegrate the coherent plot through a constant evocation of the past. But it can be argued that life itself can be appropriated by an individual only in terms of an ontological narrative. Therefore, trying to do away with the plot to capture life in a genuine manner seems a rather unattainable goal. And, irrespective of the beliefs displayed in her essays, Woolf’s novels never cease to tell a plot.

Hamlet and Protestantism or What Martin Luther Had To Do With It

Author(s): Naum Panovski / Language(s): English Issue: XVIII/2017

Many people may ask, what can you say today that is new about Hamlet? And most often they are right. There are tons of valuable volumes written on Hamlet. However, that does not stop us to take on an exciting and challenging task to talk about Hamlet time and time again.However, this time our argument is from a slightly different point of view.That is, we will try to discuss here Martin Luther’s views on justice and righteousness and his influence on Shakespeare and his renowned Hamlet.I believe Martin Luther’s philosophy and his view of the world are hidden between the lines of this unmatched play.

Jane Eyre as a Byronic Hero(ine)

Author(s): Adisa Ahmetspahić,Rumejsa Ribo / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

This paper aims to offer a new understanding of the Byronic hero through the character of Jane Eyre. By definition, the Byronic hero presents a potent individual who defiantly breaks the social norms of his time as they oppose his own moral philosophy. Ever since the archetype of the Byronic hero was created, prevalently male characters in literature have been characterized as such, from Byron’s Childe Harold, Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff, to Dumas’ Dantes. Even though she was a female, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë’s title character, displayed behavior resembling that of the previously mentioned male characters. This indicates that Jane Eyre did not only break the social norms of her time but also the mold of the Byronic hero. On her journey from childhood to adulthood, many tried to suppress her wayward behavior. However, she always managed to rise above such plights and continued going off the beaten track, just like other Byronic heroes. Relying on the close-reading method, this paper follows Jane Eyre through different stages of her life in which she reveals her Byronic nature

A Portrait of the Mehmandar: Accompanying Hajji Baba, of Ispahan, to England

Author(s): Alina Pelea / Language(s): English Issue: 32/2019

There are few professions and professionals to be constantly perceived as ambivalent. But for interpreting and interpreters, this seems to be the norm, rather than the exception. On the one hand, there has always been a sense of fascination for these extraordinary people who speak so many languages and have such a wide knowledge of the world. On the other, they have inspired reluctance, distrust or even fear. While literary works sometimes reflect one or the other perception, James Justinian Morier’s The Adventures of Hajji Baba, of Ispahan, in England (1828) reflects both and provides us with an insight into the nature and circumstances of the situation. By following the attitude towards the mehmandar throughout the novel, the present paper considers a set of memes that seem to be still valid today. The reasons this is so relate to features inherent in the profession, the privilege of understanding both sides ‘of the coin’, the power tamper with information, the risk of misunderstanding, etc

Reading Samuel Beckett’s Endgame as a Tale of War

Author(s): Camelia Anghel / Language(s): English Issue: 1 (29)/2019

The paper focuses on the “tale of war” substratum of Samuel Beckett’s 1957 play entitled Endgame. Containing hypothetical allusions to World War I or II, the drama requires a particularization of the critical perspective in the context of a Beckettian exegesis tempted to prevalently deal with generally human issues or theatre aesthetics. Our (subjective) close reading – doubled by a (more objective) stylistic awareness – reveals that the “war” discourse parallels (and sustains) the complementary discourse concerned with the failure of interpersonal skills, the collapse of “plot” and “character” or the limitations of the linguistic code.

Feasting to Death: Life as Dream and Desire in James Joyce’s The Dead

Author(s): Dana Radler / Language(s): English Issue: 1 (29)/2019

Published in 1914, “The Dead” is the longest piece in The Dubliners, closing the collection as the last piece. The current paper aims to explore how personal experience and elements extracted from the Irish imagery lead towards a new interpretation supported by psychoanalytical criticism, starting with the Freudian concepts of Eros and Thanatos or life as a dream in fiction. Desire, actions and reactions are read alongside the Jungian concepts, the Kleinian approach on frustration and the power of metaphor (Ricoeur, 1978). Alternating between social functions, deep interior anxiety and intense erotic drive, Gabriel Conroy falls from the gaiety of an ordinary reunion into the abyss of despair and contemplation of death. Is the party described in the story, looked at from this perspective, a genuine communal gathering, or is it rather meant to foresee mental isolation and annihilation, placing key protagonists at huge distance from each other, despite their apparent love? And is snow, the final symbolic element covering the city, working as a hint to purification or only one suggesting a world reduced to silence by its own death? At the end, Gabriel and his wife, Gretta, become isolated entities when compared to their arrival at the venue of the banquet, when Gretta’s seductive profile evokes the peacefulness of a mysterious figurine. The narrative contrasts the extrovert expression of desire experienced by the male character with the outburst of feelings, memories, and exhaustion perceived by Gretta. She plunges into deep sleep, being watched by her husband, which links the manifestations of the couple to the Freudian stages of sexual instincts. The finale shows the solitarily-portrayed hero undergoing a profound transformation, surpassing his erotic dissatisfaction while becoming immersed in an encounter with entities from the otherworld. Transcending his earthy impulses, the protagonist detaches from the shallowness of his own self, and gains a deeper meaning, which allows him to reframe his own life journey further on.

“CHOSE LOVE NOT IN THE SHALLOWS BUT THE DEEP”: LYRICS OF CHRISTINA ROSSETTI AND THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

Author(s): Yevheniya Chernokova / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

The Victorian age and the Oxford Movement reveal the close connection between aesthetics and theology that is tightly related to the Romanticism of Scott, Coleridge and Wordsworth. Like the Pre-Raphaelites, the Tractarians asserted that the natural and supernatural formed a dialectic unity. Poetry and religion, which were two cornerstones of Christina Rossetti’s life, met both in her poetry and in Tractarian “aesthetic religion”. In Rossetti’s late verse, Pre-Raphaelite and Tractarian poetics are seen not as alternative components, but as complimentary ones fulfilling John Henry Newman’s idea that lyrics is a poetry of “contemplation”, not “communication”. The idea of showing “real things unseen” (Keble, Newman) is not only one of the most important “techniques” in Rossetti’s poetics and in the implementation of the Tractarian principles of Reserve and Analogy, but also a vivid example of mutual penetration of Pre-Raphaelite naturalism and Tractarian incarnationalism.It is precisely in the treatment of nature in Rossetti’s verse where the correlation of Pre-Raphaelitism and Tractarianism becomes most evident – from narrative poems to lyrics, and from fantasy to devotional poems. The poem clearly shows the result of the interpenetration of Pre-Raphaelite and Tractarian discourses within the boundaries of one text. The “eyes of body” from Rossetti’s early poems (“Goblin Market”) give way to “eyes of soul” (“An Old World Thicket”, “Later Life”). It also determines the nature of mysticism in her poetry, with a transformation of seen, definite, materialistic sensuality via Analogy and Reserve into the spiritual and mystical. In this way, the evolution of the lyrical persona of her poetry from the aesthetic to the teleological, from the Pre-Raphaelite pictorial paradigm to Tractarian mysticism, and from the phenomenal to the noumenal can be seen.

Mother Figures in Oscar Wilde’s Comedies

Author(s): Nicoleta-Mariana Iftimie / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2019

Three of Wilde’s comedies – Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance and The Importance of Being Earnest present mother figures that explore and exploit gender and melodramatic convention stereotypes. Apparently, the feminine characters seem to conform to conventional stereotypes: thus, Mrs Erlynne (Lady Windermere’s Fan) seems the perfect embodiment of the ‘woman with a past’ and of the unmotherly mother; Mrs. Arbuthnot (A Woman with No Importance) on the other hand, appears to be the prototype of the sacrificial mother; Lady Bracknell (The Importance of Being Earnest) can be seen as the symbol of the guardian parent, with roots in Roman comedies. A more attentive reading of the plays, however, will reveal meanings that tend to undermine the labels we are tempted to attach too fast, thus offering Wilde’s plays and his dramatis personae multiple, sometimes contradictory interpretations.

Možnosti interpretace literatury pro děti a mládež aneb odpovědi na nevyřčené dětské otázky trochu jinak

Author(s): Kateřina Váňová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2017

The paper interprets J. M. Barrie’s prose Peter Pan, a work that reflects rich children’s fantasy and the depth of children’s dreaming. We would like to point out a large net of metaphors portraying psychical evolution of a dependent child into an independent adult, into a unique personality. Besides that the paper puts an emphasison a specific function of imagination and dreams in the literature for children and youth.

Мотиви батьківства і синівства в романах «Улісс» Дж. Джойса, «Мьорфі» С. Беккета і «Про водоплавних» Ф. О’Брайєна

Author(s): Yelyzaveta Vasyliuk / Language(s): Ukrainian Issue: 08/2019

The article studies the characters of ”sons”, their spiritual fathers (patrons) and their parents. In ”Murphy”, and “At Swim-Two-Birds” the perception of ”Ulysses’s” characters of the “son” and the “father” has been revealed. The specificity and nature of the relationship between the “father” and the “son”, the complex, ambivalent feelings of both are studied. The search for a spiritual father, as well as the search for a spiritual son, were interpreted parodically in ”Murphy” and “At Swim-Two-Birds”. The feelings of the “father” to the “son” and vice versa are complex and contradictory, the ”father” has hidden motivations for the “son”. The issue of sonship makes the ”parents” feel a complicated complex and spectrum of feelings; there are also reasons that keep the ”sons” from reuniting with their spiritual father, their conflicting feelings about the substitute ”fathers”, the vested interest of the ”father” to be a successful heir. The motive for finding sonship, one of the key motives of the Joyce’s novel, is carnivalized in “Murphy” and “At Swim-Two-Birds”. The choice of an uncle for the role of father’s substitute in “Murphy” and ”At Swim-Two-Birds” can also refer to the characters of Hamlet and his uncle, which also creates an allusion to Stephen with his theory of Hamlet. The main character of “Murphy” dreams of the fate of Dante’s Belakva, the protagonist of ”At Swim-Two-Birds” receives reproaches in laziness from his uncle. S. Beckett and F. O’Brien conduct a counter- ”Ulysses’s” experiment: they leave in the vacuum the family relationships of the protagonist and his uncle, creating conditions for their rapprochement, but no reunion takes place. In the finale of ”Ulysses”, the “father” and the ”son” abandon the idea of reunion. “Murphy” ends up with the death of Murphy’, who overcomes the death of Christ, and in the pseudo-happy ending of the novel ”At Swim-Two-Birds” the relationship between the “father” and the ”son” becomes warm and close.

‘A VERY PRETTY BREW IN TAP AT THE PURE DROP’: SOCIETAL PARAMETERS IN TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES

Author(s): Juan de Dios Torralbo Caballero / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

This paper studies Victorian society through references included in Tess of the d’Urbervilles that provide the novel with a sense of vividness and realism, to the extent that it merits consideration as a documentation of the social context within which the narrative is developed. It will examine the topography presented by Hardy, the exactitude of which lends a remarkable degree of verisimilitude to the story. It will also analyse the references to taverns and drinking houses, considering these to reflect a distinct aspect of the English society of the 19th century. Additional elements to be considered are Hardy’s portrayal of the traditional May Day dances, the allusions to schools and education, the superstitious beliefs held among the inhabitants of Marlott, and the moral laxity exhibited by the residents of Trantridge. The awareness of class divisions and the social ambitions of certain characters also merit attention, along with aspects of legislative and regulatory practice that are reflected in the work.

Романтичарска имагинација у реалистичком поступку: трагови Вордсворда и Колриџа у Дикенсовом стваралаштву

Author(s): Višnja Pečenčić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 168/2019

“Open the Window Again Wide”: Inner and Outer Spaces in Wuthering Heights

Author(s): Nicoleta-Mariana Iftimie / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2020

The novel Wuthering Heights, regarded as a masterpiece of English literature was published in 1847. The literary reviewers of the time had an ambivalent attitude toward this novel that departed from contemporary standards and baffled criticism through its enigmatic structure and its display of primal passion, violence, cruelty and unorthodox view on life. The same novel still continues to baffle even today attempts to decipher its true meaning, simply because it is an open, multi-faceted text, which cannot be placed in the straightjacket of a single valid interpretation. This article explores the inner and outer spaces in the novel Wuthering Heights, with a view to showing how they relate to different characters in the novel. The first sections will focus on the more or less enclosed spaced delimited by the neighbouring manors of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, as well as on the vastness of the moors, while the last part will deal with the elements that act as meeting points or interfaces between various inner and outer spaces.

Siberia is a feeling to me

Author(s): Sophy Roberts,JP O’ Malley / Language(s): English Issue: 04 (42)/2020

A conversation with Sophy Roberts, a writer, journalist and author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia. Interviewer: JP O’ Malley

Politics and the Novel in a Post-Brexit World: Ali Smith’s Autumn

Author(s): Lejla Mulalić / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

Hailed as the first great Brexit novel (Lyall, 2017), Ali Smith’s Autumn (2016) has been warmly welcomed by critics as a subtle analysis of the fractured national and personal identities in contemporary Britain. By repeatedly acknowledging the wounds inflicted on the British body politic by the divisive 2016 referendum,the novel yields readily to the new subgenre. As politics in the novel inevitably provokes criticism from the other side of the political spectrum, it comes as no surprise that Autumn is read as an overtly intellectual middle class response to Brexit crisis, from those interested in the mindsets of Leavers and of the less visible Remainer segments of British society. Starting with the slipperiness of the terms“political novel” and “Brexit novel”, this paper discusses the ways in which Autumn addresses the complex inscrutable present alongside ghosts from the past. It examines the novel’s representation of Brexit’s divisive effect, and relates it to the inherent subversiveness of the novel as a genre. Finally, the paper identifies Smith’s ultimate political statement in her celebration of the transforming power of language.

Challenging Anthropological Thinking at the Intersection of Posthumanist Dream Writing and Animal Studies

Author(s): Monika Koșa / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020