Romantic Literature Research Articles

Motherlands in Europe. Economic Subalternity and Fantasies of Family in Contemporary Romanian Literature of Migration

ABSTRACT This paper sets out to analyze fictional and autobiographical Romanian narratives, published between 2010 and 2014, that engage with westward economic migration within Europe, focusing on the context of EU-15. My main argument is that these narratives, which convey an experience of economic subalternity, cast light on the problematic nature of the EU as a neocolonial enterprise, even though they fail to articulate a full-blown progressive politics of mobility. I further examine how their particular narrative features – defined by monoglossia, sentimentalism, and enclosure – suggest the failure of the constructivist idea of Europeanness that hailed the advent of post-nationality and the promise of mobility as social progress. The texts I analyze uncover and respond to this failure by forging conservative worldviews that are primarily invested in romanticizing family bonds and affective communities. Based on these findings, I open a theoretical debate and try to explain that fiction of contemporary economic migration partakes, alongside the emergent corpus of refugee literature, in a world-literary shift, from the polyphonic, cosmopolitan paradigm of postcolonial fiction, to less sophisticated narrative forms that reassert the value of authenticity and national homogeneity and retaliate against multiculturalism and hybridity.

The Aesthetic Function of the Grotesque in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s „The Sandman”

This article explores the aesthetic intricacies of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s „The Sandman,” through the lenses of Kantian and Burkean philosophy, examining the profound implications of the grotesque within the narrative. Drawing from Kant’s notion of the sublime and Burke’s concepts of terror and delight, the article analyzes how Hoffmann masterfully intertwines elements of the grotesque to evoke a sense of astonishment and transcendence in the reader. Through an analysis of the protagonist Nathaniel’s tumultuous journey and his fraught relationship with the grotesque figure of Coppelius, we aim to elucidate how Hoffmann addresses themes of trauma, obsession, and existential dread. Furthermore, the article delves into the broader implications of the grotesque within Romantic literature, highlighting its role as a means of approaching complex psychological and societal phenomena. Ultimately, by unravelling the enigmatic connection between the narrator and Nathaniel, the article underscores how „The Sandman” emerges as a haunting enquiry into human frailty and the elusive nature of reality.

Stereotipuri legate de rromi în literatura și în societatea română

This article investigates the presence, evolution and influence of stereotypes and prejudices in Romanian literature. Starting from their historical and cultural roots, the study analyses how these concepts are reflected and challenged in literary works. It explores their impact on literary genres, characters and societal evolution, with a focus on the political and social context. The paper reveals how stereotypes and prejudices have shaped the critical and public reception of works and examines how contemporary literature addresses and redefines these concepts. This study makes a significant contribution to understanding the interaction between literature, society and cultural identity in the Romanian context.

Obłęd (‘madness’) as seen by the four great Polish bards. The lexemes obłęd and obłąkanie, and their derivatives in texts by Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Zygmunt Krasiński, and Cyprian Norwid

In the history of the Polish language, the words obłęd (‘madness’) and obłąkanie (‘insanity’) are etymologically associated with wandering. In the 19th century, these meanings were still alive; at the same time, meanings related to the mental sphere were also forming. In the literature of Romanticism, one can see elements that correspond to the content of the word obłęd used as a term in modern psychiatry. These include, first of all, the structure of delusions that accompany a compact, integrated personality. This is how we can interpret, for instance, the usage of the word in Mickiewicz’s translation of The Dream (the same is true, of course, also for Byron’s original), as well as in Czarne kwiaty by Norwid. Among the noteworthy linguistic facts associated with the studied words in the 19th century is their cognitive ambivalence: on the one hand, madness was associated with special cognitive abilities, on the other, stigmatization of the mentally ill was apparent. Finally, the progressive (also in the Modernist period) increase in the number of uses of these words can be observed, which is likely due to the growing interest in the human psyche in art and its study in medicine.

Workplace romance – ready or not? Complex antecedent conditions supporting (discouraging) concupiscence

PurposeThis study applies complexity theory to propose and empirically examine asymmetric case conditions of antecedents and outcome models of high (low) willingness-to-engage in workplace romance (WEWR). This study focuses on constructing complex antecedent conditions that accurately indicate which employees, and under what conditions, employees are high in WEWR.Design/methodology/approachUsing an experimental design, 162 employees were assigned one of nine hypothetical vignettes describing different workplace romance contexts including three discrete policies regarding workplace romances (i.e. strictly forbidden, moderate, vs no policy), two motivations for the workplace romance (i.e. job vs love), and two organizational positions of the romance (i.e. hierarchical vs lateral). Participants then reported WEWR responses. Participants also provided demographic, behavioral, and psychological work-related information. This study assesses and supports recipes (i.e. algorithms) of case and organizational structure conditions to identify cases high (low) in WEWR accurately and consistently.FindingsThe results provide clarity of which and when employees are willing vs unwilling to engage in workplace romances – and the contextualized impacts of organizational bans on WEWR. The study’s results are useful for estimating for whom specific workplace policies are effective or not by specific workplace contexts.Practical implicationsIn highlighting the role of varying antecedent conditions in predicting WEWR, this research will assist organizations and practitioners in understanding the context in which workplace romances are more likely to occur, providing insight as to when employees are likely to comply with workplace romance policies.Originality/valueThis paper is the first in the workplace romance literature to examine unique combinations of antecedent conditions on WEWR, adding nuance to the current understanding of the behavior.

Re-learning hope: On alienation, theory and the ‘death’ of universities

Informed by Irving Horowitz’s view of the Festschrift, this article adopts both a retrospective and a prospective approach to the work of the sociologist Bridget Fowler. On the one hand, it assesses some of the key characteristics and contributions of her three single-authored books: The Alienated Reader: Women and Popular Romantic Literature in the Twentieth Century (1991), Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory (1997) and The Obituary as Collective Memory (2007). On the other, it takes cues from these books to develop a more forward-looking type of reflection that connects some recent sociological and anthropological research on ‘the neoliberal university’ to writing about hope and utopia. The article emphasises that Fowler is attentive not only to processes of social reproduction but also to what John Holloway terms ‘cracks in the texture of domination’, that is, to examples of freedom, resistance and the imagination of alternatives in popular culture and elsewhere. At the same time, it shows how thinking about utopia and hope can contribute to debates about ‘the alienated academic’ and the ‘death’ of universities. The article concludes that Fowler’s sociology is, alongside its many other qualities, a valuable contribution to ‘re-learning hope’, arguably one of the most important challenges facing us today.

Из истории антиковедения в Императорском Казанском университете: кафедра римской словесности в 80–90-е гг. XIX в.

The article deals with the history of classical studies in the Imperial Kazan' University in 1880-1890s, which was connected with the activities of two professors at the Chair of the Roman Literature, Darius Naguevskiy (1845-1918) and Stanislaw Opatskiy (1847-?, after 1900). According to the students of the history of classical research at the Kazan' University in the late 19th century, studies in the Roman history and literature were represented there in this period at a considerably lower scale than those of the Ancient Greek history, language and literature. One should ask why the Kazan' University failed to shape the specific tradition of studying the Roman antiquity, in spite of its employing throughout the 19th century prominent Romanists (N.M. Blagoveshchenskiy, V.I. Modestov). Besides the Ministry of Public Enlightenment was obviously interested in promoting the courses of the Chair of the Roman Literature, as it appointed for it with a brief interval two Classical philologists specialized in Latin poetry and prose, Dr. Lit. D. Naguevskiy in 1883 and M. Lit. S. Opatskiy in 1885. The article attempts to answer this question taking into account both essential and personal factors of the problem, the latter being the individual features of the two professors and their conflicts.

Pandemic Biopolitics in Romanian Literature

Pandemic Biopolitics in Romanian Literature. The biopolitics of the COVID pandemic years has had a powerful impact on all areas of activity, including literature and the arts. Contagion and isolation quickly became the governing terms of social interaction, and writers promptly echoed their impact in works that tried to capture the spirit of the time as it was unfolding. Romanian writers were particularly prompt in responding to the challenges of this unprecedented crisis in modern decades, therefore the first pandemic writings were published in the later months of 2020. Florina Ilis’ Pandemia veselă și tristă (The Happy and Sad Pandemic, Polirom, 2020), Teodor Hossu-Longin’s Măștile din spatele măștii (The Masks behind the Mask, Hyperliteratura, 2022) and collective volumes such as Izolare (Isolation, Nemira 2020) and Jurnal din vremea pandemiei. Proză de grup (Journal from the Times of the Pandemic, Brumar, 2021), edited by Marius Cosmeanu, are just the most visible examples that could be explored in this context. Drawing from theories concerning posthumanism, medical humanities, ethics and contagion, this paper aims to explore the manner in which the pandemic segment of Romanian literature could be integrated into a global literary framework that highlights a diversity of genres and a plurality of voices galvanizing the relationship between the massive effects of the pandemic and narrative art. My paper aims at mapping an emerging literary dialect that gives shape, voice and coherence to a collective experience that has left an indelible imprint on the present and will significantly shape the cultural climate of the near future. Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, isolation, collective trauma, posthumanism, contagion, medical humanities, peripheral literatures.

The Post-Communist Novel of Transition as Realism of Transition. Thematic Precedents in Romanian and East-Central European Literature

The Post-Communist Novel of Transition as Realism of Transition. Thematic Precedents in Romanian and East-Central European Literature. The present study aims to analyze how certain narrative formulas circulate within the world literary system – one but unequal (Moretti 2004, WReC 2015) – starting from the case of the novel of post-communist transition, specific to many Eastern European literatures. The Romanian literature abounds in such novels, which take various forms according to the different literary paradigms from which they have emerged. Thus, we consider that post-communist Romanian literature, or at least its social-political regime of relevance, is a symptomatic case of what the authors of Combined and uneven development: Towards a new theory of world-literature (WReC) call “(semi-)peripheral irrealism”. According to this study, the literature produced in peripheries and semi-peripheries is often formally dominated by a series of practices identified as specific to modernism, which arise, determined by the condition of the semi-periphery, in the unique and uneven system of world-literature, in which fiction becomes the narration that mediates lived experience in the “palimpsestic, combinatory and contradictory ‘order’ of peripheral experience.” (WReC). Nevertheless, a new direction of contemporary prose is being traced recently in order to rethink/ reproblematize the past and the way it can be reflected in literature. A series of recent novels such as Bogdan Coșa’s How Close the Cold Rains Are (2020) and Mihai Duțescu’s Beech Sponges (2021), as well as others, give rise to a new aesthetic formula of the post-communist novel of transition through the ways in which they operate with realism. We therefore propose to investigate the recent history of the phenomenon of fictional representation of the Romanian transition in relation to similar phenomena in East-Central Europe, while also analyzing the specifics of “the realism of transition” (as we will call this new literary category, in the footsteps of Mihnea Bâlici). Keywords: the novel of transition, (semi-)peripheral literature, peripheral realism, post-communism, the realism of transition

Romanian and Hungarian Otherness. A World-System Perspective on the Event Novel

Romanian and Hungarian Otherness. A World-System Perspective on the Event Novel. The article aims to investigate how the combined and unequal world-system is reflected in two peripheral novels in the modern literary system that focus on the Romanian-Hungarian 1919 military conflict, as part of the First World War. The Death of a Red Republic [Moartea unei Republici Roșii] by Felix Aderca and Anna Édes by Dezső Kosztolányi are comparatively discussed in order to see how regional and (semi-)peripheral literatures articulate the dynamics of world-systems and geographies of uneven development. The event novel, both recipient and generator of tensions and socio-economic, political, and cultural change, is representative of the articulation of imaginary patterns regarding otherness. In this sense, the article investigates how “frontier Orientalism” is activated in the narrative of the war and how this imaginary reflects the inequalities within the world system. Keywords: world-system theories, frontier Orientalism, imaginary, subgenre, Romanian literature, Hungarian literature

Virility, fascism and regeneration in post‐Civil War Spain: On interpretations of literary Romanticism under the Franco regime

AbstractIn the years immediately following the Spanish Civil War, the political culture of Falangism developed a deeply gendered regenerationist discourse, which proposed that regeneration would only be possible if the nation recovered its virile attributes. This article focuses on a case study that allows us to better understand this gendered conception of the nation in terms of virility: the discourse developed around the Spanish Romantic writers of the 1830s, a literary movement difficult to incorporate within conceptions of the virile nation. This gained prominence particularly because several centenaries associated with these writers occurred during the war and post‐war period.

The Last Bastion of European Romanticism: A Quantitative Analysis of Poetry in the Romanian Literary Magazine <em>Convorbiri literare</em> (1867–1916)

The article presents a quantitative analysis of poetry published in the most popular literary periodical of modern Romania, Convorbiri literare (CL), from its founding in 1867 to 1916, when Romania entered World War I. Often seen as the last major magazine of European Romanticism, CL appeared at a time when poetry was a privileged genre in Romanian literature, and it hosted in its pages both the national poet Mihai Eminescu and nineteenth-century’s most prominent Romanian literary critic Titu Maiorescu. Arguing that the publication and theorization of poetry was an integral part of one of the last nation-building processes in Europe, the article indexes and quantitatively analyzes all forms of poetry and of what can be viewed as poetic networks in CL. By using ARCANUM’s digital archive of more than 66,000 pages of CL, three strata of poetry-related metadata are extracted and examined: the local production of poetry (who published in CL and when, and how much did they publish); poetry imports (whose poetry was translated into Romanian in CL and when, and what were the authors’ origins); and networks of influence (which foreigners were most often mentioned in relation to the two most talked-about Romanian Romantic poets of the century, Eminescu and Vasile Alecsandri). Thus, the article aims to chart the national regime of relevance that applies to Romanian modern poetry by uncovering the international network of authors who were at the center of literary debates in CL.

WSU’s Palmer C. Holt Poe Source Collection: Findings and Research Potential

Abstract This article was first delivered as a paper at the PSA’s Fifth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference in April 2022 in Boston. It recognizes the work of Palmer C. Holt, a little-known independent scholar who devoted over forty years to studying Poe’s career-long displays of erudition and learning. Holt’s research papers and the core of his collection of Poe sources, an archive preserved at Washington State University, constitute a largely untapped resource for tracing Poe’s practice of lifting content from secondary sources as if he were quoting original texts. As have later scholars, Holt argued that Poe was seeking to create the persona of a deeply learned, classically educated gentleman. The article concludes with Holt’s views on whether the author’s borrowing practices constitute plagiarism; on how the always-impoverished Poe managed access to the literary works, ancient to contemporary in multiple languages, woven into his writing; and on why he pretended to possess a deep knowledge of Greek and Roman literature.

Expressions of authenticity in Interwar Romanian Literature

Expressions of authenticity in Interwar Romanian Literature

Poetry’s “shimmering robes”

Despite the many essays that provide instructive tracing of Carl Jung’s archetypes in Romantic literature (and elsewhere), critics have declined to examine the important implications and consequences of parallels between Jung’s theory of artistic awareness and Romantic aesthetic ideology. This ideology finds expression in the language of Blake, Percy Shelley, Emerson, Coleridge, Wordsworth and others regarding artistic creativity, specifically its origins and aims, but especially the creative process itself. In this essay, I examine the way Jung samples Romantic ideas and imagery in his characterization of art and in his conception of the religious experience of the artist in the act of creation. In doing so, I suggest that attachment to popular (not always accurate) Jungian ideas about art has reinforced the continued acceptance of compelling Romantic myths about unconscious creativity. I argue that, in his essay “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry” and other essays, as part of an effort to liberate modern conceptions of art from reliance on mechanistic views of the human mind, Jung impeaches the merits of the Freudian model tied to medical forensics and installs in its place a Romantic theory of art rooted in the idea of intuitive creativity.

Empress Theodora of Byzantium Through the Lens of Ancient Female Archetypes

This paper evaluates the historical reception of Byzantine Empress Theodora through the lens of her contemporaries and societal expectations. As Theodora was empress of the Eastern Roman empire during the spread of Christianity, she must be seen through the lens of biblical themes as well as through Roman literature. A prevalent Roman example for ideal femininity is found in Lucretia: a noblewoman who toppled the Etruscan kings with her honor. After she was violated, Lucretia chose to expose the perpetrator and end her life rather than live sullied. With such mythos surrounding a woman who chose her honor over her life, it is no wonder Theodora was received with shock. Theodora spent her early years as an actress, meaning she earned much of her living through sex work. Another strong Roman literary comparison comes in the form of Medea. Medea represented the antithesis to feminine ideals because she had murdered her kin. More than anything, familial duties rested upon a wife or mother in a Roman household, and a woman like Theodora who was, inaccurately, rumored to have orchestrated the death of an illegitimate child. Although the rumor is false, it represented a fracture between Theodora and the expectations her society had for her. Finally, in her Christian contemporary, Mary Magdalene, Theodora was viewed as redeemed. Just as Mary did in the Gospel of Luke, Theodora went from "sinful woman" to queen and a dedicated wife. She embodied the story of redemption that is so often told in Christianity.

By Torches, Bones, and Temples

Oath-taking during Roman Antiquity constitutes a telling example of how words and material matter interplay and relate to one another. Ancient Latin literature provides a myriad of representations of oaths sworn, both fictive and supposedly historical, which allude to contemporary notions of materiality. In this study, a selection of personal oaths (oaths sworn between individuals, as opposed to large-scale official ones) from Roman literature are explored in terms of materiality and agency. The chosen oath examples are all phrased using a ‘material language’ and their oath formulae include what is here termed as objectifying wordings, that is the reference to abstract things through material matter. The present article aims to demonstrate that Roman authors sometimes chose to (have their characters) swear by material matter – instead of something abstract and intangible – in order to better express what is actually sworn by or what is actually put up as deposit in the portrayed oath: in other words, how they could utilize contemporary notions of materiality as literary tools for the formulation of personal oaths.

An overview on the 20th-century Central-European novel

Over the past century, the history of Romanian literature has been dominated by nationalist approaches, necessary for the consolidation of a stable cultural identity. However, the concept of cultural identity involves changing and migratory components as well, many related to its links with other cultural identities, each of them with its own literature. This book review provides insights into the scholarly significance of Dicționarul romanului central-european din secolul XX [The Dictionary of Central European Novel in the 20th Century] coordinated by Adriana Babeți and edited by Oana Fotache, understood as a project that maps a transnational literary phenomenon. The study is examined for its uniqueness, specific linguistic diversity and multicultural scope: 250 entries about works initially published in one of the fourteen languages spoken in the region, including French and English as international languages, either part of the canon or more marginal and less known. Other reasons include its adequate combination of analysis and synthesis; the extensive team research carried out over three decades; and its socio-political relevance nowadays. The review highlights the historical, cultural, and academic contexts in which the dictionary was published, the avatars of the concept of Central Europe, several characteristics of the Central-European novel, and details about its structure, sections and features. The presentation mentions a few limitations about the availability of the titles in the languages of the region and the admitted gender imbalance and indicates several research audiences possibly interested in alternative ways of approaching novels in the context of globalization.

Study of the Language Features of I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

In this paper, the author makes a comprehensive analysis of the language features of I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, a masterwork written by William Wordsworth from the perspective of nature images, rhythm and meter as well as rhetorical devices. In terms of nature imagery, the images of ‘flowers’ and ‘clouds’ are employed to highlight the poet’s feelings of loneliness and solitude. In terms of rhythm and meter, the poem follows the rhythm of iambic tetrameter and the rhyme scheme: ababcc, efefgg, hihikk, lmlmnn. In terms of rhetorical devices, the poem mainly employs smile, personification, enjambment and symbolism. Through the exploration of the natural imagery, metrical properties and rhetorical devices, the study has elucidated the artistic allure of the poem and its significant place within the canon of English Romantic literature.

Adolf de Herz și comedia de bulevard

Considered one of the first authors of boulevard comedies in Romania, A. de Herz is almost absent from the pages of the of Romanian literature history. Nevertheless, the theater history gives him an important place, through his light comedies, with great appeal to the interwar audience. If the plays of historical inspiration remained without an echo when they were published, the comedies "Păianjenul" (“The Spider”), "Bunicul" (“The Grandfather”), "Sorana", "Mărgeluş" (“Tiny Bead”) and "Încurcă-lume" (“The Fumbler”) have been performed on numerous stages in the country, including the National Theater of Bucharest and the National Theater of Craiova. An important chapter in his theatrical activity is the collaboration with C. Tănase and the “Cărăbuș” Theatre. In several plays he performed secondary roles, very well received by the public. With extensive journalistic activity at "Dimineața", "Adevărul", "Adevărul literar și artistic", "Rampa", "Convorbiri critice" etc., Herz was for a good period of time one of the well-known theatre columnists of that epoch. Often, in order to create a relaxed atmosphere for the audience, the author chose to explore current topics, but without great pretensions, full of mundane conversations and expressions with claims of aphorisms. Director of the National Theater of Craiova (1930-1935), A. de Herz prematurely ended his existence, leaving only a few pale traces of his entire creation over time.