Roman Culture Research Articles

Scrisori din exil, by Matei Călinescu and Ion Vianu - Exercises of Sincerity

This article is a detailed presentation of the volume „Scrisori din exil. Corespondență inedită”, edited by Humanitas in 2019, whose authors are Matei Călinescu and Ion Vianu. Among other important aspects, the article deals with the premises and consequences of the Romanian exile, in general, and of the exile lived by two great personalities of Romanian culture: Ion Vianu and Matei Călinescu in particular. It also discusses the problem of the search for identity, the alienation that arose as a result of the division of identity into a true and a false one, but which was especially present in social relations during the communist era and the ways of protecting true identity from the terror of history.

Hawa Nafsu Tidak Wajar Laki Laki dan Perempuan

The Apostle Paul's writings in Romans 1:26-27 explain unnatural sexual relations between men and women. This text is generally translated as the practice of same-sex (homosexual) relations. But long before the writings of the Apostle Paul there was a letter from the famous Stoic, Seneca, which discussed the background to the practice of same-sex relationships among the Romans. The text in Seneca's letter does not directly refer to Homosexual practices as traditionally understood in Paul's writings in Romans 1:26-27. This research aims to compare Seneca's letter 95 with Paul's writing in Romans 1:26-27. It aims to provide a different perspective on homosexuals and can provide historical background in Roman culture to Paul's writings in Romans 1:26-27. The research method in this research is hermeneutics and literature review. According to Romans 1:26-27, homosexual practices are a sin that incurs God's wrath. Meanwhile, for Seneca in letter 95, engaging in same-sex relations in Roman culture was motivated by a loss of wisdom, lack of self-control and the destruction of the morals of men and women, thus creating unnatural relationships.

150 Years Since Avram Iancu’s Passing into Eternity: A Publishing Retrospective of the Year 2022

The present article provides a brief historiographical analysis of the editorial year ‘Avram Iancu 150,’ which saw the publication of seven volumes of history, literature, poetry, critical literature, and drama dedicated to the hero of the Romanian Revolution of 1848–1849 in Transylvania. Four books were published by the Școala Ardeleană publishing house of Cluj-Napoca, the only publishing house in Romania to have undertaken a large-scale publishing project dedicated to restoring the life and memory of Avram Iancu for the 21st-century reader, two volumes were published by the Techno Media publishing house of Sibiu, and another volume by the Theosis publishing house of Oradea. Two of the six volumes are critical re-editions of works written in the first half of the 20th century by two distinguished personalities of Romanian culture: philosopher, writer and playwright Lucian Blaga and historian Silviu Dragomir. The other volumes were authored by writer Mircea Tomuș, critic and literary historian Mircea Popa, historian Lucian Giura, librarian Maria Grancea, and Father Ion Alexandru Mizgan of the Orthodox Church.

Historiographic imaginary and hypotheses of heredity in the configuration of Romanian cultural identity

This paper analyses the ways in which Romanian culture struggles to forge, at the level of historical and cultural discourse, an identity, a “personality”, and a specificity. It observes, within the process of forging its identity through a series of avatars, the discursive strategies through which specificity is revealed as an essential form of national uniqueness as well as the compensatory trends of identity fabrication. The paper also attempts to highlight the forms of historical and literary mystification through which, over time, Romanian culture responded to complexes related to its age, identity, belatedness, heredity, legitimacy, etc. Thus, the analysis reveals that, in essence, all the efforts, complexes and myths through which an identity was negotiated at the level of the histories of literature and Romanian historiographical texts betray, in fact, the same spectrum of the Identity-Otherness dialectic. Romanian culture, like other emerging cultures, was forced, first to survive and, later, in order to have a potential for prosperity, to define itself as a distinct entity by relating to the surrounding cultural reality, its growth and evolution taking place either under the sign of antagonism (i.e. a refusal of allogeneic import), or under that of synchronism (as permeabilization with regard to foreign influence), but, necessarily, as a reference to the Other. Moreover, the paper highlights, at the discursive level, the two main poles that have obsessively polarized the questions of descent and heredity within Romanian culture: its Roman and Dacian ancestries. The nuanced intentions underpinning the cultural need for international recognition by means of belonging as well as differentiation are discussed in the process.

Pragmatic strategies in teaching the Romanian language to international students

The following paper examines effective language-teaching strategies for international students learning Romanian amidst the increasing globalization. Addressing challenges faced by diverse learners, the study employs a methodology encompassing literature review, classroom observations, and interviews with experienced instructors. Emphasizing the importance of pragmatic elements in language instruction, the research explores the integration of technology, cultural immersion, and real-world applications to enhance pragmatic competence. Grounded in sociolinguistic theories, the article underscores the role of pragmatic competence in effective communication. Beyond linguistic structures, language instructors are urged to incorporate nuanced elements reflecting Romanian culture. Pedagogical strategies tailored to international students include task-based activities, role-playing, and language immersion. Assessment involves qualitative analysis of student performance, feedback, and proficiency assessments. The article also delves into the role of technology, discussing the integration of virtual reality, online platforms, and multimedia resources for immersive learning. The study concludes with implications for educators, curriculum developers, and policymakers, advocating for culturally sensitive language curricula. Overall, it contributes to the discourse on language education by emphasizing the interconnectedness of language and culture, promoting pedagogical approaches that foster cross-cultural communication.

Considerations of Age and Demography for Early Christ Groups

Age is an integral part of social interaction and identity but has been largely neglected in studies of early Christ groups. An understanding of the demography (the study of population patterns) of first century Roman cultures in the ancient Mediterranean is critical if one is to avoid, as much as possible, anachronistic and ethnocentric understandings of age in early Christ groups. Although average life expectancy at birth was low (mid-20s to early 30s), people did not expect to die young. This paper reviews ancient demographic evidence used to estimate life expectancy in the ancient Mediterranean (census data in papyri, funerary inscriptions, material culture and model life tables) and assesses Richard P. Saller’s simulation of the kin universe (1994). Clarifying the implications of demography is critical for studying the rhetoric and realities of age in early Christ groups in their ancient Mediterranean settings.

Cosmology, Place, and History in Varros's De lingua latina 5

This article interprets Varro’s etymological discussion of locus in book 5 of Delingua Latina (1-56) as representative of a Varronian “place-based” history. It argues thatVarro’s reconstruction of Rome’s loci as cosmically essential and structuring elementsof both the city and Roman culture in his present day depended upon the author’s peculiarunderstanding of the past and of historical truth – namely, that fundamental principlesof truth manifest both on different levels of reality, and at different points in time.Places – temples, hills, groves, or otherwise – therefore were particularly significant inproviding access to the essential meaning of Rome’s institutions, religion, and people.Varro’s consideration of the Septimontium is then analyzed within this framework. Theargument demonstrates how Rome’s natural environment, construed as part of an originalcosmos, could explain the social and political facts of the present in Varro’s reconstructionof word-history. In particular, the religious importance of the Capitoline hill,and the separation of the Aventine from the rest of the city in the first century BCE, areboth given etymological explanations that depend upon the long-lost natural topographyof the city.

POLITICAL MENTALIZATION OF THE FRENCH RULING ELITES: A POLITICAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL ESSAY

The study focuses on the main stages of the historical past of French civilization, in the depths of which the political mentality of the ruling elites was formed. The authors explore the mental and civilizational results of the five-hundred-year Romanization of Gaul. The role of Christian proselytism in the formation of a monotheistic mentality and the political role of the Church of Gaul are revealed. The thesis about the mental heritage of the Roman Empire in the formation of the foundations of the new Christian nation is revealed. As a result of the convergence of Roman culture and barbaric cults, an original mental space was formed, where Catholicism became the state religion of the Frankish Empire. The conclusion is made about the historical and mental-political significance of chivalry not only for France, but also for Europe. Next, the authors turned to the topic of the influence of the Renaissance on the elites, who, having assimilated the mental models of the Italian Renaissance, built their national identity on their basis. In the Renaissance epoch, the centuries-old theologo-political nature of French political power was transformed into a subject-pragmatic system of absolutism. For the first time in the history of Europe, politics was separated from religion. Christian dogmas as the basic mental attitudes of the elites have given way to the sense-generating primacy of secular principles of real politics. During this period, anti-absolutist and anticlerical mental and political attitudes emerged in the elite environment on the soil cultivated by the Renaissance, which determined the course and nature of the revolutionary events of the 18th-19th centuries. During the period of the Consulate and the First Empire, Napoleon I and then his followers pursued a policy of mental reconstruction of the elites. The final two sections talk about the philosophical, theological and scientific heritage of the great intellectuals of France, the power activities of its outstanding rulers, who had a significant impact on the evolution and development of the political mentality of modern French elites.

Oggetti filologici immaginari: le lettere scritte dai soldati-contadini romeni transilvani durante la prima guerra mondiale

Within the framework of an ample project dedicated to the study of WW I memory literature in Romanian culture, the present study aims at reflecting upon particular philological objects, most of them – imaginary, while the few real ones take unexpected forms. Philologists have frequently remarked upon the lack of an extensive corpus of letters written by Transylvanian Romanian peasants (drafted into the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and tend to put it down to the extremely precarious literacy standards of the category in question. Nevertheless, the “letter” as an instrument of correspondence between two worlds, an object both magical and redeeming, is a recurrent literary motif in the Transylvanian Romanian folklore inspired by the historical event in question. This topos is the object of our analysis. Between the modern written culture and the archaic oral one, imagining the letter in texts and folkloric artefacts belies the mentality conflicts triggered off by the war, as well as the means by which the rural (conservative) populace attempts to come to terms with the violence brought about by the new history ushered by the world conflict.

Horia Lovinescu, Between the “Terror of History” and Psychoanalytical Dreams

This paper focuses on Horia Lovinescu (1917-1983), a member of one of the most important dynasties of modern Romanian culture. Six of Horia Lovinescu’s dramas are interpreted in a close reading system, by psychoanalytical tools and by focusing on the family constellations the author imagines. These plays are related to the historical context (“the terror of history”), in order to understand how works of art are the reverberation of biographical-creative data of the greatest importance and how they echo in a paradoxical way social-political transformations. This double reading, psychological and historical, is justified by the playwright himself, through the construction of his plays and through his many allusions to psychoanalysis in his writings. Keywords: Horia Lovinescu, psychoanalysis, historical reading, communism, dramas, artistic creation, myth.

Emplacing Eminescu: The Memorial Spatialization of Romania’s National Poet in Urban Street Nomenclature

Besides being canonized as Romania’s “national poet,” Mihai Eminescu was hailed as the “complete man of Romanian culture” and the “absolute Romanian,” among a profusion of encomiastic praises. Eminescu was immortalized in myriads of ways, from the most solemn and official (e.g. state-run rituals) to the most prosaic and banal (e.g. banknotes). In this article, I investigate the spatial dimension of Eminescu’s memory by charting the commemorative landscape defined by toponymy and public monuments honoring the national poet in Romania. Particular attention is given to Eminescu’s presence in urban street nomenclature and its regional distribution across the country. Drawing on several datasets of spatial information, I use statistical modeling techniques to examine the factors underpinning Eminescu’s memorial namescape. Employing logistic regression analyses, the article highlights an uneven geography of Eminescu’s memory and points out the variables structuring its particular spatial patterning. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

Receptarea lui Martin Heidegger în publicistica românească interbelică

This article tries to demonstrate that Heidegger’s philosophy is known and debated in the Romanian culture long before the translation into Romanian of his main texts, wright in the years between the World Wars, when Heidegger was the most prestigious philosopher in Europe, through the work and enthusiasm of the exceptional cultural and intellectual generation of the 30’s and 40’s, until the communist dictatorship. Heidegger texts, mainly Sein und Zeit, were read in German by a generation of intellectuals of which most representatives studied in German or Austrian universities; they themselves disseminated his philosophy in articles published in Romanian cultural magazines in the 30’s and 40’s. Some of these authors were in fact Heidegger’s students in Freiburg.

PROVERBS AND SAYINGS AS A BASIC CONCEPT OF PAREMIOLOGY

This article discusses issues such as paremiology and proverbs and aphorisms, which are its main units, the history of their creation, and their differences. As you know, paremiology studies ready-made, fixed phraseological units in the language. The history of the development of the science dates back to ancient history -the period of the development of Greek and Roman culture, we can find the definition of the first paremiological units in the works of Aristotle. In fact, the words of philosophers such as Socrates, Aristotle, Demosthenes, which have come down to us, appeared in those times and are recognized as the first aphorisms. Russian linguists who created after Aristotle consider proverbs as a phraseological unit. For this reason, proverbs can be studied from two different angles, we approached proverbs as a paremiological tool.

Sensory Experiences in the Roman North: Emerging Themes and Future Directions

The senses were functionally significant to all aspects of Roman life and played a central role in private and public events, from religious ceremonies to gladiatorial fights. However, to date, these studies primarily focus on archaeological sites from Italy. The scope of this Special Issue, however, was on the sensory implications of archaeological material from a region so far neglected by sensory studies: the ‘Roman North’ (including modern France, western Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain and immediately adjacent areas), from the earliest interactions with Roman civilization to Late Antiquity. The contributing authors to this Special Issue come from several different sectors but they all have something in common: they use Roman material from the north to tell stories about Roman lived experience.This editorial is a piece underscoring the present ‘state of the discipline’. At this stage, however, it would be very generous to designate the research theme as a ‘discipline’. We hope that this editorial and the excellent papers in this Special Issue contribute to addressing this disparity and will encourage others to explore these themes in their own work.

The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture by Jason König (review)

The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture by Jason König (review)

Romanità and Race in Italy (and Beyond)

summary: A century ago, in Fascist Italy, archaeological evidence was used to demonstrate the racial superiority of ancient Roman civilization. This article analyzes a particular moment in the construction of the Fascist empire, namely its colonial, exploitative relationships with the ancient Roman past both in Italy and in Libya and with the people living there. The article will focus on the link between racism and Roman antiquity and how it was reinforced by disciplines such as archaeology, museology, and anthropology.

National identity through culture in the Însemnări ieșene [notes from Jassy] magazine. A case study

Since its first issue, of January 1, 1936, the „Însemnări ieșene” [„Notes from Jassy”] Magazine (1936-1940) has emphasized the orientation of „a group of intellectuals” that aimed to continue the tradition of the literary, cultural and scientific circles from Moldavia, with a focus on a series of ideas related to „national specificity”, „popular language”, „cultural unification”. For almost five years, the magazine polarized intellectuals from all over Moldavia and had an intense program of dissemination of the Romanian culture through the organization of itinerant conferences in the cities of Jassy, Tighina, Kishinev, Soroca and Balti. The September 1, 1940 issue of the magazine was dedicated to Bessarabia and Bukovina and was remarkable for its spiritual Romanian essence. The present paper dwells on the importance of this special issue of the magazine, which deals with a number of representative topics announced by the article titles such as: „Basarabia până la 1812” [„Bessarabia until 1812”], „Viața românească în Basarabia (1812-1918”) [„Romanian Life in Bessarabia (1812-1918)”], „Mărturii moldovenești la Nistru” [„Moldavian Testimonies on the Dniester River”], „Basarabia – provincie istorică rusească?” [„Bessarabia– Russian Historical Province?”], „Universitatea din Cernăuți” [„The University of Chernivtsi”], „A doua pierdere a Bucovinei și Basarabiei” [„The Second Loss of Bukovina and Bessarabia”], „Iar vremuri de bejanie”, [„New Times of Turmoil”], „Și totuși, nu deznădăjduim!” [„And Yet, We Do Not Despair!”] and many more. This unique issue was illustrated with numerous images from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, as well as with portraits of cultural personalities born in the Romanian land between the Prut and Dniester rivers, all meant to discuss and emphasize the national identity of Romanians through culture.

Lycia and the Lycians in the <em>Aeneid:</em> Virgil’s Herodotus

Close reading of Virgil’s references to Lycia and the Lycians in his Aeneid reveal the influence of Herodotus’ account of the early history of the people, notably the Lycian migration from Crete to Asia Minor. Virgil’s employment of Lycian lore and Herodotean allusions serves to highlight certain developments in the Roman civil wars, not least the Lycian help afforded to Octavian at Philippi.

PROMOTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY AND ROMANIAN TRADITIONAL AESTHETICS THROUGH THE USE OF CONTEMPORARY ADORNMENTS

This study accentuates the importance of the contemporary jewelry in the promotion of the national Bessarabanian identity. Romanian jewelry and adornments can include traditional elements, materials and techniques for the purpose of creating a unique masterpiece, which reflect Romanian culture. The ways through which contemporary jewerly can help promote Romanian national and traditional identity include inspiring traditional motifs, exploring cultural symbols, education and awareness, collaborating with local designers, and promoting sustainability. This study highlights the vital role of contemporary jewelry in preserving and transmitting Romanian Cultural Values in Bessarabia to future generations and in creating deep connections between artists, designers and the local community. It also highlights the importance of national identity in the development of contemporary jewelry, which can contribute to the promotion of Romanian traditions and crafts in the contemporary global context.

Some Reflections on the Translatability of Christmas Carols and Christmas Poems

The aim of the following paper is to identify and analyze some of the challenges we face when translating Christmas carols and poems from Romanian into Spanish and vice versa. Translating poetry and especially Christmas carols is not an easy task because, in addition to a good knowledge of the source and target languages, it requires a vast knowledge of both Spanish and Romanian cultures. Even though they are Romance languages and Christianity (with its two variants, Orthodox and Catholic) is the official religion of Romania and Spain, lexical and cultural particularities can be identified in the texts, since it uses a specific language. This is not to say that there are no cultural similarities regarding the interpretation of the birth of Christ. There are several similarities in terms of action and biblical characters, which are reflected in both Romanian and Spanish versions. Our aim is to see how far we can go with the translation of Christmas carols and poems, whether the translated text maintains the original message or not and to try to see if it is possible to preserve, in some cases the rhyme, or at least partially. The corpus we will use in our research comprises 24 Romanian Christmas carols and 13 Romanian poems translated into Spanish and 21 Spanish Christmas carols, as well as 13 Spanish poems translated into Romanian. These texts were translated by the students of Applied Modern Languages during a practical translation course, the final variant including our suggestions and revisions.