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.
The aim of this study is to provide a new critical and analytical perspective in an interdisciplinary field that intersects comparative literature, history of mentalities, anthropology and social psychology. Using the concepts and the analytical tools of pragmatics, rhetoric and argumentation theory, we propose to identify the main discursive strategies by which the image of the Greek is reflected in Romanian culture in the eighteenth century, in a classic text, namely the chronicle of Ion Neculce. We consider that such an integrated discursive analysis can add a new and valuable dimension to the studies of literary and historical imagology
Keywords: discourse, image, collective mentality, ideology, stereotype, cliché, ethos, polyphony, presuppositions
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
This article provides a brief etymological, phonological and geolinguistical analysis of the terms which designate the word AȚÂȚ2 (focul) ‘j’atisse le feu’ from the reference word list of the 2nd volume of ALLR Sinteză (ALLR. Synthèse). The linguistic data resulted from the reference list show a variety of lexical forms that point out the word AȚÂȚ. This variety can be explained by:
Keywords: language contact, geographical distribution, geolinguistical perspective, metonymy, Slavic influence
The paper puts forward a brief and selective overview of some theoretical paradigms delineated for the study of emotions, which take into account the prototypic dimensions of affectivity: (a) the cultural-anthropologic aspect; (b) the social/societal aspect; (c) the historical aspect; (d) the linguistic (lexical-semantic) aspect. We shall demarcate and describe some key-concepts of the anthropological and cultural-historical research on emotions: cognitive model for emotions; emotionology; emotional communities; historical semantics of emotions. Underlying the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach in the study of emotions and, particularly, the need for an historical/diachronic perspective, the aim of this paper is the delimitation of some methodological tools that can be used: (a) broadly, in the analysis of various forms of manifestation of affectivity in language, and (b) especially, in the lexical-semantic analysis of the affective lexicon.
Keywords: cognitive model of emotions; emotionology; emotional communities; historical semantics of emotion; lexicon of emotions
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