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Hatırlanmayı Bekleyen Bir Kitap ve İstanbul Köpekleri Üzerinden Düşündürdükleri

Author(s): Özlem Kutkan / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 2/2022

This research, on the one hand, aims to draw attention to a travelogue which has found little space for itself in its penned geography, on the other hand, it aims to think through its observations on the dogs of Istanbul. It seems that the book’s title is given as Washed By Four Seas, which it is understood the author thought and reflect his the literary talent on it, apparently this led to overshadow the understanding the geographical content of the book. However, the distinctive feature of the work is one of the remarkable travelogues especially of the Balkans. Therefore this article, gives a brief introduction of the book, which highlighted to region's issues of potential like culture, economy, military history, transportation. Then, it will be passed on to the author's observations on the dogs of Istanbul which he gave the separate chapter in his book. And, in the discussion section, some questions will be asked about the stray dogs of history in the Ottoman province through authour's narratives and beyond. Lastly, it will be emphasized the importance of reading the issue from the silent countryside by the contribution of the social and human science features of history.

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Unwelcome consequences: Christina Dalcher’s Vox and John Lanchester’s The Wall

Author(s): ADELHEID RUNDHOLZ / Language(s): English Issue: 02 (37)/2022

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistsʼ Doomsday Clock, first introduced in 1947, recently moved the fictional clock forward; it now rests at 100 seconds to midnight, or 100 seconds from destroying ourselves. The numerous threats posed by nuclear weapons, pandemics, weaponized technology, and catastrophic climate change create an ʻenvironment of miseryʼ in which all action—and all inaction—is fraught with risk. Two recent novels employ dystopian visions of the United States and Britain, respectively, and explore the consequences of social engineering that takes place to minimize (perceived) risks and increase safety. Dalcherʼs Vox (2018) and Lanchesterʼs The Wall (2019) are two novels that are a commentary on a world in which risk is pervasive and in which (in)action can exacerbate dire circumstances. At the same time, the novels highlight that local (national) action is doomed to fail if it does not also consider the global interconnectedness of challenges and risks.

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Promethean struggle. Shelley, Keats, and Norwid in search of rescue in the risky world

Author(s): ALEKSANDRA NIEMIRYCZ / Language(s): English Issue: 02 (37)/2022

The myth of Prometheus sacrificing his freedom to give men authority over a powerful element of nature despite the will of the gods has, in modern times, inspired authors of different languages who kept transforming it according to their views. Both Western and Polish poets of Romanticism favoured the Promethean idea. In their Promethean – or Messianic – visions Mickiewicz and Słowacki emphasized the importance of armed or spiritual struggle for Polandʼs independence against Tsarist Russia, while English language poets praised the individualʼs rebellion in the face of the oppressive society. Cyprian Norwidʼs interpretation of the myth combined the individual and the collective. He saw Prometheus as a craftsman whose gift, fire – ʻteacher of all artsʼ – is a tool for ultimate salvation through Beauty incorporated in masterpieces. Norwidʼs philosophy is profoundly rooted in Christian soteriology. According to the poet, the revival of both his nation and of the individual is possible only through arduous work, through creative effort understood as cooperation with Christ the saviour in the attainment of salvation leading to both individual and national resurrection.

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Cooking “Imaginary Meals” The Aesthetics of Food in the Modernist Narratives of Two Rivalling Friends: Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield

Author(s): Dana Bădulescu / Language(s): English Issue: 2 (36)/2022

The theory underpinning this approach to the narratives of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield is provided by the reletively new field of Food Studies. My aim is to show that food and beverage descriptions and the crucial significance of dinner table scenes in the private and public writings of these two rivalling friends developed and refined their modernist style. In spite of the enmity between them, especially on Woolf’s part, Woolf and Mansfield had a lot in common. Supporting my statements on passages from Mansfield’s letters, Woolf’s diary and from their fiction, I contend that in fact Woolf and Mansfield contributed to the larger literary and cultural context of modernism by almost echoing each other’s food imagery and its symbolism. The essence of my argument is that these two modernist writers made up their ”imaginary meals” to compensate for the ugliness and discord of reality, and for the transitoriness of life.

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REFORMATIVE EXTREMES OF BROWNING’S MASKS

Author(s): Denis Kuzmanović / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

Robert Browning, a major Victorian poet, is primarily known for his sophisticated use of dramatic monologues and unreliable speakers. He is also noted for featuringidiosyncratic characters from interesting settings, like the Medieval or Renaissance times. There is a lot of subtext, hidden meanings, ideas, allusions and criticisms to be found between the lines of his poems. Readers are often perplexed by these seemingly too eccentric and exotic characters, and this “remoteness” which Browning cultivates can be interpreted as an indirect societal critique of the Victorian era, primarily of gender roles and marital expectations, class mixing, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, delusion, narcissism, the dichotomy of public and private persona and the conflict of idealistic and realistic representations of life. These themes are explored in his best-known poems such as the twins of Porphyria’s Lover and Johannes Agricola in Meditation, then another poetic pair of Count Gismond: Aix in Provence and My Last Duchess, finally concluding with Fra Lippo Lippi, and each specific issue is dealt in their respective poems. If seen through this perspective, this distancing through colourful and alluring, if also strange, bizarre and off putting characters may entice Browning’s readers to contemplate these themes without being repelled or bored if those were put into their modern setting, which would likely make them tediously didactic and mundane. Thus, these poems can succeed in entertaining but also morally elevating us.

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SHAKESPEAREOV HAMLET IZMEĐU KLASIKE I MANIRIZMA

Author(s): Fahrudin Kujundžić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 1/2022

Continuing the previous research on mannerism in the history of European art, primarily the book Dnevnik melankolije [The Diary of Melancholy] by Dževad Karahasan, this paper tries to understand the specific internal contradictions of William Shakespeare’s play in the tension between the classical and mannerist experience of the world. On the foundations laid by Gustav Rene Hocke in his books on mannerism, Karahasan examined the relationship between classical and mannerist dramatic techniques throughout the history of European drama. In accordance with Hocke’s approach, Karahasan recognizes periods of domination of the mannerist type of drama. Shakespeare is cited as one of the mannerist playwrights, but, among other authors, no detailed analysis is devoted to him. This paper, therefore, tries to further develop Karahasan’s basic theses on the example of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which we want to recognize the intertwining of classical and mannerist dramatic techniques. Following Karahasan’s methodology, the focus will be on the analysis of the character, plot, action and dramatic situation, and then from these specific problems of dramatic technique, the classical and mannerist image of the world in dramatic literature will be discussed. Thus, within the framework offered by Karahasan, this paper seeks to further problematize Shakespeare’s position in the context of the history of mannerist drama. Therefore, this paper is aimed beyond just confirming Karahasan’s basic theses - we perceived Shakespeare as even more important than it was the case in Karahasan’s conception.

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The Academic Conference in Fiction

Author(s): Merritt Moseley / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

One of the central features of the traditional professorial career, the academic conference, can provoke dramatically different responses; for academics of a certain age and established status, the conference is a source of nostalgia. And a number of academic novels, particularly David Lodge’s Small World, celebrate the conference in nostalgic terms. At the same time the conference can be challenged on many fronts, including its cost but, even more, its role in catering to, and perpetuating, privilege in the academy, or what one observer calls “the continued feudalization of academia.” Lodge’s original title, We Can’t Go On Meeting Like This, may have been prophetic, as the challenges to continuing to meet “like this,” particularly the resentment of angry academic outsiders, may overcome the nostalgic enjoyment of the traditional conference.

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Olaudah Equiano’s Biography: Fact or/and Fiction

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Olaudah Equiano’s Biography: Fact or/and Fiction

Author(s): Ovidiu Matiu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

This article analyzes the documentation available in an attempt to settle the controversy over the “true” date and place of birth of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavo Vassa, the African. Several original documents are analyzed, and the data is compared to the information provided by the author himself in his The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself, first published in London, in 1789. According to these documents (a baptismal record and a muster book), he was not born in Africa, in Igboland (in today’s Nigeria) as he argued in his autobiography, but in South Carolina, as he declared before those who recorded the information in the official documents. The issue of authenticity is more relevant for historical research than for literary criticism; in the case of the latter, the accuracy of the data does not significantly impact upon the literary value of his work. In conclusion, the dispute is pertinent only in the liminal space where the two contexts (historical research and literary analysis) overlap, and it currently operates with information whose relevance and usefulness depend on the framework against which it is judged.

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Narrative Innovations in Thomas Hardy’s Novels

Author(s): Cătălin Nicolau / Language(s): English Issue: 1-4/2022

This survey is an attempt at invalidating, at least partially, the idea that Thomas Hardy is a writer subject to the tradition of the 18th-century novel. While there are reasons to support this idea, it is also true that the Victorian novelist’s narrative strategies anticipate, to a certain degree, the modernist authors’ concerns and stylistic devices. It is these narrative techniques that this article will be focused on. The first part of the survey will provide readers with a theoretical and historical introduction which will include the definitions of showing and telling and a historical account of the segments of reality that various generations of writers were interested in. This is meant as a theoretical and historical background that is needed for the proper understanding of Hardy’s narrative specificity. The second part contains a few analyses of certain excerpts from three of Thomas Hardy’s novels based on which I try to support the novelist’s pre-modernist dimension.

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“Exile from Ireland Left Him a Stranger Everywhere“: Representation of Dublin in Selected Louis Macneice’s Poetry and Some of the Stories from James Joyce’s Dubliners”

Author(s): GABRIELA CZERNECKA / Language(s): English Issue: 5/2020

This paper discusses the representation of Dublin in the selected poetry of Louis MacNeice and some of the stories from James Joyce’s collection Dubliners. A close investigation of the city as a representative of urban space is interlinked with an examination of its role from the perspective of psychogeography. Both techniques are applied to show why and how two Irish authors portray the multi-dimensional decay of life in the city. In order to paint a whole picture of the relation between ‘space’ and ‘human’, I will also review the biographies of MacNeice and Joyce. For MacNeice, who was tormented by the experiences of domestic Belfast, going to the South was a promising escape. Yet, the change of urban setting did not bring him the expected result. MacNeice quickly became aware of the dirty, paralysed face of Dublin. Similarly, the childhood and day-to-day reality of the lower-middle-class profoundly shaped Joyce’s perspective of Dublin and, eventually, prompted him to go into deliberate exile in Europe. In his writings, however, Dublin constitutes the focal point of the structure, becoming an active participant in the events. Therefore, Dublin for MacNeice and Joyce is a place characterized by blandness, powerlessness in the face of foreign influences, and suffering caused by inertia.

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The Dates of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi

Author(s): Andrew Charles Breeze / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2018

In a previous issue of this journal, Natasha Sumner of Harvard claimed of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi that the “exact date of composition for the text is not known”; she yet quoted Professor Catherine McKenna, also of Harvard, for the tales as certainly predating the Fall of Gwynedd in 1282. A response to Professor Sumner’s comment thus has three functions. It cites publications on the question from 1897 to 2018; reveals the scholarly disagreement therein; but concludes with evidence to put the tales in the 1120s or early 1130s.

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Aesthetic Virginity, Ethical Liberty and the Autonomy of Beauty: Possessions and the Poetics of Postcolonialism in the Aspern Papers

Author(s): Bushra Naz / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

I argue that The Aspern Papers takes up the question of aesthetic chastity in terms of the unnamed narrator’s pretended courtship of Tina when he was a lodger in her home, through which she finally achieves aesthetic-ethical freedom as a single woman. Like Isabel in The Portrait of a Lady, Tina at first does not appreciate her suitor’s self-interestedness, but then manages to establish her aesthetic-ethical autonomy by rendering her virginal spirit proof against its objectification and exploitation by the lodger, in a Kantian parable of freedom. Juliana’s jealous possession of Jeffrey Aspern’s papers and her imperious guardianship of Tina prompt a sustained exploration of Kantian and Saidian notions of interest and disinterest, in which Juliana’s machinations are generally comparable to Madame Merle’s. Kant’s idea of interest refers to bias in the formulation of aesthetic judgement, lacking the disinterest of a truly dispassionate judgement of beauty. Edward Said’s notion of interest represents imperial prejudice. From these two complementary perspectives, Tina’s struggle to transform her presumed feminine interest in masculine sponsorship allows her finally to attain complete disinterestedness in relation to the sexual, familial, historical, and political forces that press on her. On the other hand, the lodger’s ardent pursuit of Aspern’s private papers, tokens of the poet’s aesthetic achievement, involves an imperial agenda to wrest control of them for his own interest as a man of letters and connoisseur of poetry.

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What’s in a Title? Some Remarks on the Semantic Features of Kenning-Like Titles in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire Series

Author(s): Łukasz Neubauer / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

Working on the hugely successful series of novels known collectively as A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin is known to have drawn much of his inspiration from real-life events, landmarks in the history of the Middle Ages, such as the Hundred Years’ War, the Wars of the Roses, and the Crusades. It is not known, however, to what degree he actually relies in his work on sources of genuinely medieval provenance, since he himself frequently admits that amongst those that made the biggest impact on his writing are modern works of fiction, such as Maurice Druon’s heptalogy Les Rois maudits (2019 [1955–1977]). It is not impossible, though, that at least some features of Martin’s series have more or less direct parallels in medieval literature. One such element may be so-called kennings, the highly-stylised circumlocutions found in plenty in the poetic works of early Germanic literature and whose diction appears to shine through some of the series’ titles.

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MACBETH – A PARADOXICAL ADAPTATION OF SHAKESPEARE, BY ORSON WELLES

Author(s): Elena Paliţă / Language(s): English Issue: 01 Supp/2022

THE ADAPTATION OF WELLES HAS A PARADOXICAL NATURE: IT HAS THE CHARACTERISTIC OF BEING IN SOME WAYS VERY CLOSE TO A PLAY AND YET ITS SUCCESS SEEMS TO BE MAINLY DUE TO THE TALENT AND CINEMATIC INSPIRATION OF ITS DIRECTOR. THE ADAPTATION OF A PLAY FOR THE CINEMA REQUIRES THE DIRECTOR TO ACCEPT FROM THE BEGINNING THE CHARACTERS, THE DIALOGUE AND THE SUCCESSION OF SCENES. MACBETH IS THE FIRST AND FOREMOST TRAGEDY OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS: IT EXPLORES THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL, VIRTUE AND CRIME, AND SHOWS HOW THEY ARE BLURRED. THE FILM ADAPTATION OF ORSON WELLES IS A COMPLETE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ORIGINAL THEATRICAL PLAY, INSISTING ON THE EMPHASIS OF THE SYMBOLIC DIMENSION, USING CINEMATIC TECHNIQUES.

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THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH IN THE ADAPTATION OF ROMAN POLANSKI

Author(s): Elena Paliţă / Language(s): English Issue: 01 Supp/2022

ONE OF THE ELEMENTS NECESSARY TO MAKE A WORK OF LITERATURE TRAGIC IS THAT THE AUDIENCE HAS SOME FELLOW SYMPATHY, SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL COMPREHENSION OF THE DILEMMAS AND SUFFERING OF THE PROTAGONISTS. MACBETH FAILS AS A TRAGEDY IF THE AUDIENCE SEES THE THANE AND HIS LADY AS UNREDEEMED VILLAINS, DEEMS THEIR SUFFERING AS DESERVED AND NECESSARY PUNISHMENT, AND TAKES PLEASURE IN THEIR AGONIES. BUT THIS IS NOT THE RESPONSE OF MOST READERS OR SPECTATORS. THE SPECTACLE OF THE NOBLE MACBETH, DRIVEN BY AMBITION AND THE WILL TO POWER TO THE MOST HEINOUS OF ACTS, SUFFERING THE MOST INTENSE PANGS OF GUILT AND REMORSE, AROUSES, PERHAPS AGAINST THEIR WILL, THE PITY OF THE READERS OR SPECTATORS. THERE IS ALSO IN THE AUDIENCE A SENSE OF FEAR THAT THE EVIL THAT CONTAMINATED MACBETH AND LADY MACBETH CAN POISON ANYONE. ROMAN POLANSKI’S ADAPTATION IS A REALISTIC APPROACH OF THE SHAKESPEAREAN TEXT. IT CREATES PROFOUND CHARACTERS, ESTABLISHING A HIGH DEGREE OF ORIGINALITY OF THE ADAPTATION.

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RUDYARD KIPLING’S THE JUNGLE BOOK AND SOLDIERS THREE IN FRANCOIST SPAIN AND COMMUNIST ROMANIA

Author(s): Cristina Zimbroianu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The famous British writer Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) reached readers throughout Europe with his novels, poems and short stories aimed at children. Kipling lived in India, England, and the United States. There, New Yorker associate editor Charles McGrath noted that Kipling had been variously labelled “a colonialist, a jingoist, a racist, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, and a right-wing imperialist warmonger” (cited in Poetry Foundation, 2022, n. pag.) Despite this labelling, his works were successful mainly in Europe, more specifically in Spain and Romania. Censorship prevailed in these countries for several years when the Francoist (1938-1975) and Communist (1947-1989) regimes were in power. Nevertheless, most of Kipling's works, especially in Spain, were published in a translated version during and after the Franco era. In Romania during communism, The Jungle Book and Soldiers Three were published in French and German versions, which were censored in the 1950s. This paper therefore uses reception theories such as the pragmatic text theory introduced by Martyn Thompson (2009) to examine the reception of Rudyard Kipling’s works, such as The Jungle Book and Soldiers Three, in Spain and Romania focusing on the censorship files of Kipling’s works, which show that his works were viewed positively, especially by the Spanish censors.

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biblioteca babel - Poeme de Anne Stewart

Author(s): Anne Stewart / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1-2/2023

Poems by Anne Stewart.

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Reading Othello Through the Prism of Conceptual Metaphor Theory: Animals as Source Domains

Author(s): Mirka Cirovic / Language(s): English Issue: 15/2022

This paper aims at reading Shakespeare’s play Othello through the prism of cognitive linguistics, more specifically, through the lens of conceptual metaphor theory. Metaphorical linguistic expressions that have animals in the source domain are extracted from the play so that matters of race and gender could be discussed from below the level of words, where cognition and conceptualization occur. As the analysis of metaphorical linguistic expressions progresses, the representation of evil will appear to be intertwined with the perception of gender and race, becoming yet another cognitive interest of the literary text. While African American studies, critical race theory, post-colonial studies, Marxist and feminist readings have immensely benefitted the comprehension of the play, conceptual metaphor theory promises to explore and explain how a derogatory perception of “Other” emerges in Othello, along with the offensive language that embodies it. Additional relevant concepts that account for the disturbing pace of the plot towards the catastrophe and tragic end are indoctrination and manipulation. These are specifically related to Iago’s perceptual playing around with unstable and highly sensitive notions such as race, gender, fallen virtue, degraded and demonic human nature, which he presents through disquieting mental images conveyed by powerful metaphorical language.

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INTIMATE TRAGEDIES: BODY POLITICS AND NARRATIVE INTERRUPTIONS IN CONTEMPORARY REWRITINGS OF SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD III

Author(s): Dana Monah / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

When they set Shakespeare’s Richard III into one night and eliminate most of the male characters, Italian actor and playwright Carmelo Bene’s Richard III or the Terrible Night of a Man of War (1977) and Flemish dramatist Peter Verhelst’s Richard III (2004) turn Richard’s story into an intimate, private tragedy. This article argues that, influenced by ideas and concepts developed by the theorists of the historical avant-gardes, both practitioners condense, fragment, atomise the story they borrow from Shakespeare, shifting the focus from the events themselves to the characters’ perception of the events, and foregrounding the image of the suffering or disabled body.

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Artistic Conceptualization of Power in William Wordsworth’s Poetry

Author(s): Nataliia Romanyshyn / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2022

This article discusses the specificity of poetic conceptualization of power in the poetry of William Wordsworth. The focus is on the diversity of textual images of a human being in general, such as an individual or collective subject, and on the philosophical concepts of human life and destiny positioned by the authors in the centre of artistic reflection synthesizing the appropriate social pragmatics. The research is based on the cognitive-discursive approach and proceeds from the scientific ideas about the dynamics of correlation between the cultural-historical paradigm and artistic thinking, the cognitive power of artistic image and artistic text as a linguistic sign of national culture. It involves the integration of research tools of linguistic and cognitive stylistics, cultural and literary studies, which builds a vector of analysis from the concept of power as a social phenomenon to its embodiment, explicit and implicit, at different levels of textual matter.

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