This paper investigates comparatively the ways in which the flower list functions as a descriptive device in several modern literary works across different cultures, genres, and styles. These include Stéphane Mallarmé’s Les fleurs (The Flowers), Henry Van Dyke’s poem Flood-Tide of Flowers, the novel La Faute de L'Abbé Mouret (Abbé Mouret’s Transgression) by Emile Zola, and Mircea Cărtărescu’s novella REM. Each of these literary works creates a remarkably unitary topos, that of a locus amoenus evoking a long and prestigious tradition of representation in myth, literature, and painting.
Keywords: comparative literature, description, archetypal criticism, Garden of Paradise
The aim of this paper is to investigate occurrences of the meteorological term VREME (“WEATHER”) in Foletul novel, a series of calendars translated from Italian into Romanian during the reign of Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688-1714). Being included in an ongoing descriptive-linguistic research dedicated to the language of meteorology, the paper adopts a diachronic perspective of study. This perspective has been recently used in both foreign and Romanian researches, with interesting results in various terminologies (linguistics, mathematics, politics etc.). Consequently, early weather forecasts which end predictions in the aforementioned calendars are examined in the present paper, with further attention given to VREME, a fundamental terminological unit in meteorology. The close analysis identifies four main types of determiners which accompany the term under scrutiny. These determiners range from adjectives inherently related to the meteorological domain (e.g. noroasă “cloudy”, ploioasă “rainy”, senină “clear”) to adjectives with metaphorical meaning (e.g. melancolică “melancholic”, veselă “joyful”), as well as to qualifying adjectives or prepositional phrases. Moreover, different means of expressing the syntagm VREME INSTABILĂ (“UNSTEADY WEATHER”) are brought into discussion, while weather forecasts addressed to certain socio-professional categories are not omitted either.
Keywords: descriptive-linguistic terminology, diachronic perspective, meteorological terminology, early weather forecasts, the term VREME (“WEATHER”), determiners.
Le but de cette étude est d’apporter une nouvelle perspective critique et analytique dans un domaine interdisciplinaire, où s’entrecroisent la littérature comparée, l’histoire des mentalités, l’anthropologie et la psychologie sociale. En utilisant les concepts les instruments d’analyse de la pragmatique, rhétorique et théorie d’argumentation, nous nous proposons de relever les principales stratégies et procédés discursifs à l’aide desquels l’image du grec est reflétée dans la culture roumaine du XVIIIe siècle, à partir d’un texte classique, la chronique de Ion Neculce. Nous considérons qu’une telle analyse discursive intégrée peut ajouter une dimension nouvelle et profitable aux études d’imagologie historique et littéraire.
Mots-clés: discours, image, mentalité collective, idéologie, stéréotype, cliché, ethos, polyphonie, présuppositions.
This paper analyses the etymology of the Romanian verbs with the meaning ‘to speak’: a cuvânta, a grăi and a vorbi. We discuss the origin of a cuvânta, a Balkan Romance word derived from cuvânt ‘word’, with parallels in other Balkan languages, especially in Albanian, Macedonian and Serbian, and of the Slavic borrowing a grăi, which changed its meaning from ‘croaking’ to ‘speaking’. However, we focus on the origin of the verb a vorbi, which has not been satisfactorily and fully explained until now. We reject the older hypothesis that sustains it was formed on the basis of the noun vorbă, a variant of the Slavonic borrowing dvorbă. We try to demonstrate that it should be regarded as a phonetic variant of the older form a vorovi, which meant intially ‘to make noise’, but is attested with the meaning ‘to speak’ since the 16th century. Most probably, the verb a vorovi represents a contamination between two verbs that reproduce the Balkan Slavic verbs govoriti and vreviti, both of them meaning ‘to make noise’.
Keywords: verba dicendi, a vorbi, Romanian, etymology, Slavic
The present study proposes an analysis of the poem Dealuri (1977) by Ana Blandiana, carried out under the comparatistics perspective. A complete and coherent interpretation of Dealuri ‒ and, in particular, of the «dead» character ‒ can be realized through the mythocritical methodology, by employing the Vegetation God archetype. The first part reflects on the poem’s landscape: two specular dimensions ‒ air and earth ‒ are crossed by «spherical» hills, which benefically bestow prosperity on them and which are thus classifiable as a hypostasis of the Earth Mother Goddess. The second part, after having ascribed Dealuri to Lucian Blaga’s «mioritic space», proposes a comparatistic study of the Romanian Folk Ballad Mioriţa (Dealuri’s hypotext): in particular, the passive-feminine traits of the shepherd ‒ its main character ‒, the lamentation which his demise causes, but above all his fictitious marriage with an arcane female figure, permit to identify him with the Vegetation God archetype. The last part illustrates how this self-same archetype can be recognized in the «dead» character of Dealuri, lying underground but mindful of his past «lives» while listening «eternities» flowing. The Vegetation God Myth, preserved intact in an archaic text such as Mioriţa, is thus projected in a Twentieth-Century poem through a creative act of Ana Blandiana.
Keywords: Mythocriticism, Comparatistics, Romanian Poetry, Romanian Folklore, Vegetation God, Death, Cycle
Cet article offre une courte analyse étymologique, phonologique et géolinguistique des termes qui représent la notion AȚÂȚ2 (focul) ‘j’atisse le feu’ à partir de la liste de référence présentée dans le IIème volume de l’ALLR Sinteză (ALLR. Synthèse). Les données comprises dans la liste de référence ont montré une grande variété des formes lexicales qui envisage la notion discutée. La diversité des termes est donnée par: a) l’influence des langues slaves voisines ou proche (le russe, l’ukrainien, en Moldavie, et le bulgare, au sud) et de l’allemand dans les régions de l’ouest sur la langue roumaine; la coexistance des éléments latins (ațâț, aprínd, súflu) avec ceux d’origine étrangère est le résultat du contact linguistique établi entre les populations roumaines et les parleurs de langues slaves ou d᾿ allemand; b) un transfer du sens (la métonymie); différent mots se présentent d᾿une manière métonymique pour désigner la notion AȚÂȚ (FOCUL) ‘J’ATISSE LE FEU’.
Mots-clés:: contact linguistique, distribution géographique, perspective géolinguistique, influence slave, métonymie
L’article propose une brève et sélective synthèse de quelques paradigmes de recherche
théorique des affects qui portent sur les dimensions prototypiques de l’affectivité: (a) l’aspect
anthropologique-cultural; (b) l’aspect social/sociétal; (c) l’aspect historique; (d) l’aspect
linguistique (lexico-sémantique). Quelques concepts-clés de l’étude anthropologique et
historique-culturel des affects seront délimités et présentés: le model cognitif des émotions
(cognitive model for emotions); émotionologie (emotionology); communautés émotionnelles (emotional
communities); la sémantique historique des émotions (historical semantics of emotions).
En soutenant la relevance d’une approche interdisciplinaire de l’affectivité et la nécessité d’une
perspective historique/diachronique, le but de cet article est de délimiter et de décrire certains
instruments méthodologiques qui puissent être utilisés dans l’analyse des formes de manifestation
linguistique de l’affectivité et, spécialement, dans l’analyse lexico-sémantique du lexique des émotions.
Mots-clés : model cognitif des émotions; émotionologie; communautés émotionnelles; la sémantique historique des émotions; lexique des émotions
Our essay brings to light the effect that certain poems by Benjamin Fondane, in particular those contained in the collection Ulysse, have had on the work of Yvan Goll. An attraction for the same themes (errance, exile, the emigrant, the voyage, water, and death) and for the same scriptural matrices (song and elegy) unites the two poets who met in Paris. These affinities reach their highest point in L’Élégie de Lackawanna. Written in French while Goll was in America, more precisely in the years 1943 to 1944, this set of poems echoes Fondane’s voice as we would like to show from examples taken from eight sections of the L’Élégie de Lackawanna by Ivan Goll: Amérique;Le Fleuve; Les Passagers, Les Ports; New York, New York; Les Docks, les Bateaux; Les Ponts; Les Vagues; Les Statues, la Mort. Through this intertextuality, we argue that the texts and the themes travel — in a generalized nomadism — each poet taking them up in order to transform them in a completely personal vision, in a ritual of regeneration.
Keywords: Poetry, Intertextuality, Elegy, Exile, Voyage, Death, Emigrant