Romantic Discourse Research Articles

Music as an Element of Contemporary Courtship in Burma/Myanmar

Abstract: Music plays an important, and heretofore unrecognized, role in contemporary Burmese courtship. This article lays out the pattern of courtship adhered to by middle-class city dwellers in Burma/Myanmar. It also provides an analysis of the music that is implicated in courtship. Burmese men sing pop songs to women, songs that men and women generally refer to as “love songs.” I argue that these courtship songs are rightly understood as love songs because the words of the songs reflect the attributes of romantic love identified by scholars of romance who have done research in other parts of the world. The article therefore contributes to the literature on Burmese popular music, on music and courtship in Southeast Asia, and on romantic discourse around the world.

The specter of authenticity: Social science after the deconstruction of Romanticism.

In a long-forgotten essay, Alvin Gouldner defended the distinctive contributions of Romantic social science. Today, half a century later, very few would risk making a similar plea. Owing to its deconstruction, the discourse of Romanticism has increasingly fallen out of favor in the social sciences, meaning social scientists have progressively come to see Romanticism as less a resource for critique than a bourgeois ideology warranting critical scrutiny. Yet the truth is quite a bit more complicated. For despite its disapproval at the level of social science's explicit culture, Romanticism continues to serve, at the level of implicit culture, as a potent resource for social analysis. We start with a clarification of what we mean by Romanticism. While Romanticism may be an amorphous and multifaceted structure of thought and feeling, like Gouldner, we do not think it lacks coherence. Thus, we outline what we take to be the core dimensions of the 'Romantic syndrome', and then survey some of its key figures in Western social thought. Next, we move to a discussion of three select studies about the infiltration of Romanticism into the capitalist heartland-the sphere of work. We demonstrate how, consistent with our argument that Romanticism has become increasingly symbolically polluted within social science, each of these studies critiques the Romantic turn at work, while nevertheless anchoring their critiques in Romanticism, albeit in increasingly implicit fashion. We conclude by offering some reflections on why Romanticism continues to haunt contemporary social science-and why this matters.

The holy city of holidays: Seven theses on the touristification of Spain

This paper analyses the notion of the ‘city of holidays’ in Spain by means of seven theses. Analysed as a transhistorical construction, valid to narrate the cultural history of modern tourism, the ‘city of vacations’ represents the symbiosis of a constructive model, a nationalist and religious imaginary, and an urban device of patrimonial origin. This construction defines the Spanish tourist paradigm, seen in the long-term, as it constitutes a recurrent- and mutant- fantasy that accompanies the economic and social Modernity associated with tourist development. Although the triumph of the Francoist Spanish vacation model is celebrated in the sixties, it has a much earlier genealogy, which takes us back to the foundational imaginaries of national-Catholicism and its ceremonial places. Born from the romantic discourses of the Restoration, linked to the neo-Catholic sanctuaries, the ‘city of vacations’ reemerges after the Civil War as a central part of the patrimonial discourse of the new Regime. There, the accumulation of capital at the base of the so-called ‘tourist miracle’ comes directly from the violence of Franco’s repression, including slave labour. At the same time, this model responds to the new economic logics of the Cold War framework, where the ecological and environmental cost of this urban model of development, based on itinerancy and mass-circulation, is dissolved. The celebration of the contemporary identity of today’s Spain as a global tourist power is carried out at the expense of this violent genealogy, even though such an identity is probably unsustainable in the eco-energetic and social horizon to which we are collectively heading.

Romance as a medium-Lin Huiyin’s relationships in transmedia intertextual discourse

ABSTRACT Lin Huiyin (1904–1955) was the first woman architect in modern China. Her romantic love stories have shaped a discourse that, for optimal engagement, both provides and requires transmedia and intertextual media theories. This research examines Lin’s romantic stories that entangled with her career and life, from the perspective of media ecology, narrative, and gender studies. I argue that although the Chinese media environment is censored, constrained, and scrutinized, given enough time and movement among multiple platforms, a medium can shape its own ecology and develop “organic” discussions on a subject that is commonly perceived as less political and more humanistic, particularly romantic love. These discussions provide a more spontaneous discourse for media users to share their opinions and expose more genuine views on gender, nation, and morality. These topics require continuing conversations rather than didactic education to change. Although change usually does not occur quickly, the airing of genuine yet problematic opinions helps the public and stakeholders observe, identify, and interact with them and create the possibility to reshape public opinions on gender roles, particularly women’s roles in romantic discourse, which always interacts with women’s individual realization as well as professional, familial, and social relationships.

Futuristic Flight: Science beside the Emotive in the Early Writing of Charlotte Brontë

As a solitary mention within her juvenilia tale ‘Tales of the Islanders’ (1829), Charlotte Brontë’s fictitious reference to air balloon flight suggests a wider social and literary context for its author’s understanding of this new scientific phenomenon. This article examines the wider textual presence of this awe-inspiring invention and how her seemingly simple reference to balloons ultimately aligns her from an early age to a wider, Romantic female discourse, particularly to the writing of Mary Shelley. The prevalent references to balloon flight in newspapers, magazines and books available to Brontë at the time, imply a familiarity with these dialogues, which is ultimately suggestive of the material she read and was subsequently inspired by to include in her own writing. Brontë’s reference to balloons associates her work with a Romantic discourse contemporary to her, specifically a female one, which situates her as a young writer alert to the literary dialogue of the time, hinting at a style she would later use in her novels, one which juxtaposed scientific invention in the Industrial Age beside an emotive poetic voice.

Анна и Захар, или Герой нашего времени

The article analyzes the proposed by the famous literary critic Anna Zhuchkova’s creative evolution research methodology of the artistic style of Zakhar Prilepin. The presented assessment of the writer’s literary work, based on a thorough knowledge of the texts, has an objective chronological form, which allows us to determine the role and significance of Z. Prilepin’s prose more accurately in the literary process of the early 21st century. It is clarified that the analysis of Z. Prilepin’s prose is based on the methodology of biographical research proposed by I.N. Rozanov, Russian formalists (G.O. Vinokur) and rethought in the works of Yu.M. Lotman. A. Zhuchkova updated the genre of “biography of the writer”, the concept of “writer’s reputation” in the dynamics of the historical and literary process of the first decades of the XXI century in Russia. Relevant for postmodern discourse is the analysis of the genesis and dynamics of the concept of “sincerity” in the Russian historical and literary process from Apollon Grigoriev to the theorists of the Commonwealth “The Pass” and Vladimir Pomerantsev’s textbook article “On the sincerity of literature” (1953), the emergence and evolution of “New Sincerity” in Russian literature from D.A. Prigov to D. Vodennikov, problems of restoration of classical romantic discourse, remythologization of the ideals of the “romantics of the revolution”, transformation of the “trench truth” genre in the texts of “new realism” by Z. Prilepin, A. Karasev, D. Gutsko, O. Ermakov, etc.

Land of peaceful separatists – the Szeklerland in Romanian media

In Romanian media, Szeklerland — a region in Central Romania with an ethnic Hungarian majority – is often evoked as a troublesome part of the country, where Romanians are discriminated against and Hungarian separatism undermines the authority of the state. This representation has endured since the fall of Communism in 1989, even though — unlike in other regions of Europe — the local Hungarian autonomist movement has always relied on peaceful means. The mainstream Romanian discourse, with its focus on the political efforts of Hungarian parties, the symbolic rivalry between Hungarian and Romanian elites, and the fight for economic resources has largely been unchanged. This conflict-oriented perspective makes for a skewed and ethnicized representation of Szeklerland, portrayed as an ‘intolerant region’. While the region witnessed only a minor Hungarian–Romanian conflict in March 1990, the topics of instability and constant tension pervaded the media discourse regarding Szeklerland during the 1990s. Even though the dominant nationalist discourse has become less virulent, this pattern has persisted with the advent of digital and new media formats. Many contemporary representations of Szeklerland on commercial television and social media platforms keep reproducing the stereotypes inherited from the 1990s. This article is based on a historical approach, and, through the analysis of several recent Romanian short documentary films about the Szekler area, highlights the reproduction of the region’s imagery and the most common strategies that feed this polarizing representation.

Love, Countryside, and the Fellah: Tawfiq Canaan’s Romantic Translation

Abstract: Early-twentieth-century Palestinian ethnographer, Tawfiq Canaan, reflects in his posthumously published autobiography that a “love of the countryside and the fellah [peasantry]” was instilled in him from a young age. As an adult, Canaan negotiated the parameters of Orientalist Romantic discourse immanent to the ethnographic field in which he produced his work through this “love” of the “fellah.” Interrogating Canaan’s Romanticism exposes how he countered Palestinian erasure by mobilizing the discourse familiar to his target Western audience, and through this translation process, how a genre of Palestinian Romanticism emerged.

The British in Arabia: the Genealogy of a Romantic Discourse and the Colonial (De)construction of Palestine

Abstract: The Romanticization of Arabia and of the noble Arab in the British imagination has long been apparent, exemplified by figures such as Richard Burton and T. E. Lawrence. However, the Romantic origins of British discourses on Arabia have never been fully explored. Tracing the evolution of the Romantic symbols of the ‘Arab’ and ‘Arabia’ in Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley and their entanglement in racial discourses of the later nineteenth century, this paper describes the mechanics of the discursive construction of the region, arguing that the morphology of the British colonization of the Arabian Peninsula is grounded in Romantic symbolism.

The Love Trap. Romanticization practices of the Italian generations of the 90s

Drawing from material collected during two ethnographic investigations conducted in Rome and Lazio, I will focus on the experience of love triggered by relationships with human beings and archaeological remains. I aim to show how these activities give rise to a romantic experience in a context that paradoxically regards love as a fictional and unreliable reality. Utilizing Ernesto De Martino’s conceptual framework, I describe that for the transitional generation born around 1990, caught between precariousness and the triumphant narratives of their predecessors, romantic discourse serves as a shield against existential annihilation by the uncontrollable forces of the universe. It also serves as a means to attain a distinctive identity validated by Italian tradition and heritage. However, while love offers a stable and trustworthy refuge, it can also render individuals powerless to change their life situation and cope with a lack of future prospects.

Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education

Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education

Речежанровая структура флирта у советской интеллигенции: композитные жанры и субжанры (на материале драматургических текстов Л. Зорина и В. Азерникова)

The article studies speech behavior of the class of Soviet intelligentsia in communicative situations of flirting. The research is based on Soviet comedy plays of the 1960s–1970s: “Dobryaki”, “Entsiklopedisty”, “Tranzit”, “Pokrovskie vorota”, “Teatral’naya fantaziya” by Leonid Zorin and “Vozmozhny varianty” by Valentin Azernikov. The relevance of the topic is related to the increased interest ofmodern linguistics in the verbal means typical of romantic discourse in general and of the genre of flirting in particular. Authors of dramatic texts create a speech portrait of the characters and place them in different communicative situations using speech genres and their verbal means of actualization, appropriated for the social group to which the character belongs. The semantic content of the lexeme “flirt” includes the following main features: ambiguity, elements of comic genres and play. The article presents the subgenres of the speech genre of flirting: compliment, gratitude, hint, joke. The author describes the revealed verbal means which actualize the speech genre of flirting in the speech of the class of Soviet intelligentsia. They are complicated and ambiguous constructions, polysemous words, lexical repetitions, use of plural “you”, vocabulary with positive semantics in assessing moral qualities, precedent statements. Stage directions describing characters’ intonation, gestures and movements are treated as supporting means of modeling of the non-verbal behavior in flirting.

CHILDREN’S CONCEPTUALIZATION OF CHILDHOOD IN RELATION TO PLAY ACTIVITIES

Children’s play articulates the social ideologies and discourses of childhood and play. This study combined espousals from childhood studies, and play theories to analyze children’s conceptualization of childhood play, and trace social influences of their conceptions. The research consisting of 112 fifth-grade students who live in an urban environment indicated that their conceptualization of childhood referred to many types of play. In contrast to the discourse of the competent child, they almost exclusively appropriated the romantic discourse of the innocent child who plays outdoors with other children or alone, unsupervised by adults, far from institutionalized learning, intellectual games, urban activities, and new technology toys. Their conceptualizations reflected gender stereotypes of play and the influence of a competitive social structure.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0476/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

“An eye that saw more lofty things than mortal eye is now struck blind” (Hölderlin): German politics and aesthetics in Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s Der Tod des Empedokles (1986) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro (1991)

ABSTRACT The sudden flourishing of reflections on light, nature and poetry that occurred from the mid-80s onwards in the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, could not fail to surprise. Between their reputation as Brechtian, materialist filmmakers and these seemingly apolitical reflections, developed in conjunction with their appeal to Hölderlin’s “idealist” poetry, there seems to be an insurmountable rift. By situating their aesthetics in the broader framework known as “aesthetic modernity”, i.e. art and philosophy of art since the end of the 18th century (cf. J.M. Schaeffer, J. Rancière), I demonstrate how films such as Der Tod des Empedokles (1986) and Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro (1991), not so much exhibit a shift to conservatism with this “sudden” interest in nature and poetry, but, rather, the manifestation of a Romantic contradiction characteristic of modern aesthetics. In a period of disillusionment, these “Brechtian” filmmakers increasingly turned to a German literary and philosophical tradition that praised the “revelationist” potential of poetry, while they, simultaneously and still with revolutionary fervour, reflected on Germany’s troubled political past and present. I will argue that we can understand this alignment of revolution and revelationism from the perspective of their indebtedness to an antimodern worldview that perceives of the modern age as being in decline, to which these filmmakers oppose a utopian striving towards a “new world”, captured in a Romantic discourse of light and vision.

Romantika Sistem Bernegara dalam Wacana Keislaman

Islam is par excellence in its position as a resource of reference for every field of life. Islam provides regulatory guidelines starting from the smallest social level to the broadest scale, namely the state. The state as the largest social community has a great responsibility because it deals with the affairs of a large society. The Islamic state system had become a public discourse in the late twentieth and early twentieth centuries. The bearers of the ideology of the Islamic state display their ideas by including figures as legitimacy, including Sayyid Qutb and al-Mawdudi. His arguments are accompanied by the interpretation of the Qur'anic version of the characters' interpretations. In state theory, there are two forms of state, republic and monarchy. While the state system there are four kinds, namely nomocracy, democracy, aristocracy and theocracy. For the bearers of the ideology of the Islamic state, it is said that the Islamic state system has its own characteristics and is independent which is not the same as the theory of the state in general. The Islamic state aspires to form a supranational state that binds all state barriers so that there is no longer a state in the form of a national state. This discourse has become an endless debate. Some figures say that the supranational system is a utopian concept. With this debate, the Islamic state system becomes an unfinished romantic discourse.

IDENTITY NEGOTIATIONS: AMERICAN WAR CORRESPONDENT LEIGH WHITE AND THE PARTITION OF TRANSYLVANIA (1939–1940)

The present study applies the concept of identity negotiations, used in the field of psychology to describe the processes of self-representations and social interactions, in the sphere of cultural and historical studies, applied in the research of the American war correspondent Leigh White’s reports about Romania between 1939–1940, more exactly about the partition of North-West Transylvania. The attention will be focused on the negotiations between the identity representations of this correspondent about Romanians and minorities in this space and how social interactions satisfy or contradict self-representations and the objective goals of these interactions. The historical contexts in which these identity negotiations take place between the self and the other (the others, in the multi-ethnic and multicultural space of Transylvania) will be those with an extreme identity charge, proving how negotiations and communication can be suppressed in conditions of war. The study focuses on the dramatic event represented by the cession of North-West Transylvania in favor of Hungary as a result of the Vienna Award in August 1940, with references to the Bucharest Pogrom of January 21–23, 1941, with the crimes and atrocities committed against the Jews, a subject that will be treated in a separate study. Journalists such as Leigh White and his colleagues Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Robert Parker, Robert St. John, Leland Stowe, Countess Rosa Goldschmidt Waldeck, or Ray Brock will try to understand the identity traits of the others, knowing their historical and cultural context and, at the same time, trying to negotiate with their own baggage of stereotypes, or with the propagandistic directions of the official American or Romanian discourses, or, in extreme cases, with local censorship. American war correspondents proved to be not only over-qualified and over-professional, but also cosmopolitan, tolerant, experienced professionals or young novices, full of energy and enthusiasm, struggling to get at any valuable information, regardless of distance and dangers in war zones. They were sharp observers, checking the news and comparing it with other sources before sending their reports to American publications. In this way, Romanian-American identity and cultural negotiations took place above local human interactions.

FASHION, CINEMA, AND GERMAN-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA IN 1930s BUCHAREST

This paper explores how Bucharest’s cinema-going public perceived the Nazi influence on Hollywood in the 1930s. The aim is to identify how Nazi propaganda was disseminated and consumed in interwar Bucharest and its similarities to the idea of glamour, relevant both to fashion and cinema. Considering the links between Goebbels’ propaganda machine and certain entities or individuals in Hollywood, US cinematography becomes a more complex medium of dissemination beyond a mere promoter of modernity’s technological and consumerist ideas. Romania’s situation in the 1930s, especially the increasing leaning towards the extreme right then inform movie star image, particularly through a gendered lens, as perfect tools for propagandists. The interwar cinema-centered Romanian discourse involves a triple filtration, through Hollywood, Berlin, and Bucharest, as a complex depiction of the Romanian public’s ideals and views. To illustrate these points, I will analyze relevant written and visual texts from the interwar era, including fiction, memoirs, essays, nationally and locally spread cinema-centered and general periodicals, postcards, or photographs. The interdisciplinary research will include cultural studies (fashion, media, cinema, gender), history, and discourse analysis. This innovative perspective on fashion and cinema in an interwar Romanian context adds to the existing knowledge by opening new research topics and subjects in the fields of fashion studies and Romanian studies.

ПРОБЛЕМНО-ТЕМАТИЧНІ КОМПЛЕКСИ В РОМАНІ «УРОКИ» (2022) І. МАК’ЮЕНА: ТОПІКА «ШЛЯХУ ГЕРОЯ»

In the paper, the author explores the problem-thematic landscape explicated in Ian McEwan’s post-postmodern novel “Lessons” (2022). Philosophical aspects of the literary work by the British writer have been studied, in particular, the representation of environmental issues that shape the worldview of the protagonist (Roland). The genre specification of the novel has been clarified, and the genre forms exploited in the novel Lessons have been outlined. Emphasis is placed on the reinforcement of the topics of romantic discourse (with a focus on the metaphysical/transcendental phenomenon represented through music), which is a general typological feature of the British post-postmodern novel. The scope of problem-thematic complexes that define the existential and epistemological landscape of the novel has been determined: the interaction of erotic and thanatological aspects in the life of the protagonist, problems of sexuality, the motif of Roland’s coming of age, awareness of the planetary threat to humanity, the fragility of human life in the second half – end of the 20th century. The specific events in Roland’s life are compared with historical, social and political events, particularly in terms of how the specific and general interact in the space of the novel. Emphasis is placed on the forms of explication of the road motif in McEwan’s Lessons, which involves the sub-motif of self-discovery, rethinking mistakes and self-improvement, etc. In this way, the thematic aspects of the novel reveal the meta-genre pattern of mystery, which opposes the carnivalization of reality in postmodern novels. The protagonist understands the crisis of political institutions and the danger of an ideology that seeks to conquer the individual at all costs. The policy of the USSR indirectly affects the formation of the worldview of the young British man, Roland, giving him the opportunity to accept for the first time his own finitude through the understanding of a hypothetically possible nuclear explosion. The second global problem discussed in the novel as a consequence of the Soviet ideology, is the Chernobyl disaster. The novel reveals the stages of formation of existentially significant categories and values in the life of the protagonist. The detective plot, which revolves around the key intrigue in the novel, intersects with social criticism of power, political discourse in general, environmental policy, etc., combining skepticism and irony with Roland’s attempt to find out the essence of human beings: both physical and metaphysical.

Measured Life: Making Live, the “Modern System of Science,” and the Animated Bodies of Frankenstein

Abstract This article considers Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein through what Sara Guyer calls “biopoetics,” hybridizing biopolitical and romantic reading strategies, and positing that romantic writing arises in temporal, theoretical, and political parallel with the movement of power from the reign of the sovereign to the realm of biopower. I focus on how Frankenstein imagines the flesh of Victor as animated and directed forward through biopower, by way of the novel’s juxtaposed medico-scientific and romantic discourse of life. Through close readings of the creation scene and Victor’s final breaths aboard Walton’s exploratory Arctic ship, I conclude that Frankenstein at last offers itself both as artifact and archaeology of modern power—or what Guyer calls “literature as a form of biopower.”

“Chizhiki tak i mrut”

My article will investigate the ways in which metaphors for birds, especially birds of song, in the correspondence between the protagonists of Dostoevsky's novel “Poor Folk” (Бедные люди, 1846) — Makar Devushkin and Varen'ka Dobroselova — refer back to Goethe's scandalously popular epistolary novel “The Sufferings of Young Werther” (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 1774). I propose that Dostoevsky involves a metaphoric net as an oblique subtext of references to recent popular European literature to convey the idea of Romantic death (bearing in mind the extent to which “Werther”, though written in the late eighteenth century, retained its cultural relevance for Russian readers in Dostoevsky's time). As I am investigating the larger picture of Dostoevsky's treatment of death and suicide in his shorter fiction as well as his dialogue with Goethe on this subject, I also argue that in “Poor Folk” the parody and stylization of Romantic discourse in Rataziaev's texts (and elsewhere) reveals thematic parallels between the Russian and the German narratives, and demonstrates Dostoevsky's viewpoint on death, Romanticism and Realism. For the methodological basis of my study, I will apply Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas on parody and stylization from his seminal “Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics” (especially from the chapter “Dostoevsky's Discourse”.