Case Study
Carmen DĂRĂBUȘ (Techn. University Cluj-Napoca – CUNBM) [Bio]
Résumé: Dans mon article j’analyse l’évolution des approches dans la littérature comparée en contexte roumain et universel, comment le syntagme « la littérature du monde » devient sujet d’étude ayant comme point de départ la théorie de la littérature en qualité d’instrument général d’analyse en diagramme synchronique et diachronique dans l’histoire de la littérature; au même temps ; le concept monde avait changé le sens dans l’époque de la globalisation. Comme étude de cas j’ai choisi la revue de littérature et études culturelles « Acta Iassyensia Comparationis » fondée en 2003 à l’Université «Alexandru Ioan Cuza » de Jassy. Le sujet de l’observation en chaque issue analysé c’est le rapport entre les articles ayant comme instrumentaire la théorie de la littérature et les autres, dans le cadre des études culturelles comparée, le transfert des méthodologies d’un domaine de recherche en autre, les thèmes proposés étant abordé, de plus en plus, de manière interdisciplinaire.
Mots-clef: interdisciplinarité, littérature comparée, revue, littérature du monde.
The first contact between the world’s literatures could only be attained spontaneously, by word of mouth, due to migrations, journeys, wars – hence the circulation of some myths, some popular beliefs found in many corners of the world. Coherently, until modern times, three big waves of cosmopolitanism have been identified in Europe: the one that was intermediated by Latin in the Middle Ages, the second wave was given by the Humanist ideology of the Renaissance, and the latest one was facilitated by Romanticism through the circulation of some common literary themes and motifs, prepared by „the German Pre-Romanticism, by Goethe, who speaks for the first time about Universal literature (Weltliteratur), a notion that led to the widening even of the concept of human being. It was the age of the first comparatist writings, from the European folklore, but also from the cultured poetry, traceable to Herder and the Schlegel brothers.” (Darabus, Literatura universală şi cunoaşterea de sine 7). Starting with the 18th and 19th centuries the first theories appeared in Germany and France, preoccupations that will radiate to the rest of the European countries, depending on their different evolution.
At its modern beginnings, the Romanian approaches adopted in the comparative literature were situated at the junction between positivism, promoted by the French Comparatist school with the Scientism promoted by the American Comparativism. Universal literature, as an object of study, was introduced at the University of Bucharest by Tudor Vianu in 1948. In Studii de literatură universală şi comparată (Studies of Universal and Comparative Literature) he brings forth the term “transversal section”, through which the universal literature operates, that, in Tudor Vianu’s case, it becomes implicitly a comparatist phenomenon by establishing some invariables of some literary constant elements that permit the comparison between works belonging to different cultural-linguistical areas, and that of “vertical section”- through which national literatures operate, taken individually. Using these methods that widen the style and the field of investigation, the Romanian researcher overcomes the comparativism of the factological type, specific for the first half of the 20th century. In parallel, the Universitarian School from Cluj, represented by Liviu Rusu, establishes for the first time the object of study named comparative literature, and offers the phrase “depth perspective”, referring to the different levels of cultural influence in the structure of depth of the text, that has to state if it’s about a profound assimilation of the experience, grafted in the deep strata and melted with the original emotion or if it is an influence stopped at the surface and become a mere ornament.
Overcoming the traditional comparativism, he reproaches the stagnation in a horizontal state that eludes the verticality of the soul that provides depth; in conclusion, not the monogenesis but the multiple genesis of a literary work allows comparison. The polymorphic works, multiple geneses – it is the place that marks the passing from Romanian comparativism to modernity and it favours postmodernity. The person who succeeded in melting the two important orientations: the keeping the comparative literature in the domain of literary science, but in a certain cultural area is the researcher from Cluj, Mircea Muthu, stating invariables of thematical and formal nature, through which one can synthesize the image of an artistic period. His volume Orientări critice is the beginning of a new era in the Romanian comparativism, establishing a coherent methodology, without denying the previous experiences, assimilated positively. One by one, he widens the interdisciplinary space of the philosophical sciences, humanistic in general, with the domain of Art through the connections that he makes between the linguistic sign and an icon. The Romanian school shows an higher interest in theoretical delimitations so it is only natural to lead to the publication of a Dictionary of Comparative Literature, necessary for any attempt at a comparative demeanour that overcomes the phase of empirism and contains the key concept of comparativism from analogy to intertextuality and from a literary canon to typology, passing through literary current and literary genre, through myth and motif, referring, of course, to the theory of translation to that of reception, as well as to the concepts of comparative literature and universal literature. (Carasevici, ”Un dicţionar al conceptelor-cheie în comparatism”, 387).
Being rightfully seen as part of cultural anthropology, comparative literature is also implicitly marked by cultural epistemological relativism: “there is no valid universal standard through which traditional beliefs can be analysed or the practices of other cultures; these can be evaluated only in the context in which they appear and they manifest themselves” (Constantinescu, ”Relativismul cultural în studiile literare comparate. Deschiderea spre Celălalt şi spre Periferie”, 69), hence the relativisation of methodologies by a permissivity that, in my opinion, does not threaten its identity, but widens it. Beyond all these practices of the interpretation of a text, the approach of comparative literature is possible 9the relation between social and literary text is always noticeable) mostly owing to the existence of two constant elements to which fiction can always report, not minding the cultural space and the time of the writing: mimesis- because every form of Art is a form of relating to reality, even the negation of this in the context of “Art for Art’s Sake” and the existence of a common mythological underlayer. Besides the aesthetic demands in creating a character, Aristotle widens the area of placing from the Antiquity, by notions like mythos, ethos, dianoia, pathos, overcoming the Platonic area of mimesis (a copy of reality) towards an expressive transcription of the circumstantial reality.
An analysis of the annual journal “Acta Iassyensia Comparationis” (http://literaturacomparata.ro/acta_site/acta.html) founded by Ioan Constantinescu and continued by Viorica Constantinescu, Mihaela Cernăuţi-Gorodeţchi, Ana-Maria Constantinovici Ştefan, Adrian Crupa, Nicoleta Cinpoeş, Martin A. Hainz, Neil B. Bishop probes the existence of the two fundamental substrata (the mythological one and mimesis) on which the published materials are built here. The journal is edited by the Comparative Literature Department of the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University from Iasi, Romania, the first issue appeared in 2003 and it was multilingual (Romanian, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian). To the Editing Department and the Scientific College belong researchers from Romania, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria, France, Poland, Germany, Belgium and Brazil, thus gathering points of view from different cultural areas with their implicit scientific orientations, the authors of the articles from all continents do not belong only to the domain of philology but also to the fields of sociology, cultural studies and the history of mentalities, history, psycho-pedagogy. Each issue has a different theme, thus the theme suggested by the editors is approached by an interdisciplinary method from the philosophical and humanistic sciences. The themes of the issues, in chronological order, until 2012, are: Occident/Orient – 2003, Identitate/Alteritate (Identity/Alterity) – 2004, Imagologia exodului (The Imagology of Exodus) – 2005, Puterea (Power) – 2006, Centru şi Periferie (Center and Periphery) – 2007, Raţional/Iraţional (Rational/Irrational) – 2008, Râsul şi Surâsul (Smile and Laughter) – 2009, Alte lumi (Other Worlds) – 2010, Măşti (Masks) – 2011, Rituri de trecere (Rites of Passage) – 2012, and the theme proposed for 2013 is Mâncăruri şi băuturi: perspective culturale (Food and Drink: cultural ways). Besides the specialized theme, each issue has a section dedicated to translations and one dedicated to the presentation of books.
The theme suggested for the first issue supposes a drawing of a cultural image of the two areas perceived as dichotomic – Orient/Occident. The first article written by Viorica S. Constantinescu, “Despre bine şi frumos în Biblie” -, appeals to other notions than those specified in the literary analysis, from the literary theory perspective and has the significance of a founding (in this case of a cosmopolitan publication); “Despre un secret metafizic al gazelului persan” by Gheorghe Iorga and “L’uomo interiore – itinerario mistico” by Christian Tamas, “Laocoon. Un ekphrasis vergilian” by Niculina Toderaşcu bring methods that combine the literary theory, the philosophical analysis and the Arts, because the literary text is often, the idea exposed esthetically; other materials imply a hermeneutics of cultural-literary identity (most often through typologies which become universal cultural nodes) manifested in their place of origin and adopted by another cultural space: “Albert Memmi: A Discourse on Jewish Identity in ‘La Statue de sel’” by Susan Fox, “Ludwig Tiecks schwarze Utopie: die postrevolutionäre verkehrte Welt” by Ioan Constantinescu, “Hikaru Genji – ein japanischer Don Juan?” by Eleni Serseludis-Kamata, “Un italiano sull’epoca di Constantin Brâncoveanu” by Gheorghe Macarie, “Denken macht glücklich: Positionen der französischen Aufklärung” by Henning Krauß, “Ne perds pas le Nord? Orient, Occident et ailleurs chez Robert Lalonde” by Neil Bishop, “Reading the ‘Eye’ in Baz Luhrmann’s William Skakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet” by Nicoleta Cinpoeş; “El voyeurismo como principio organizador de la imagen y el concepto de teatro improvisado en ‘El Quijote’ de Miguel de Cervantes dirigido por Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón” by Andreea Olaru Cervatiuc and “Escribir – terapia para Cioran y Sábato” by Doina Gheorghiu shift the accent on the idea of perspective, capable to melt or to render homogenous, to see mostly the resemblances, or mostly the differences in the relation I/the Other.
The issue 2/2004, as its title states, suggested Identity/Alterity, and supposes an identity search in an imagological context in the same report between I and the other, because literature creates an imaginary social “that can’t be only the imaginary of alterity. This is revealed as many times as a separating line is drawn, maybe a barrier, between two cultures. Each time man manages, by discovering the Other, a dialogue, he actually manages a dialogue with himself”. (Pageaux, “Littérature générale et comparée et imaginaire 95)”. Most of the articles have cultural anthropology as their starting point (ethnical and religious identities), which generate specific artistic products: “Littératures européennes, littérature européenne?” by Yves Chevrel, “Identitate şi pluralism cultural din perspectivă antropologică” by Alina Maria Asavei, “Creación de la identidad cultural: el destino de la cultura latinoamericana” by Ilinca Ilian, “L’identité maghrébine à travers trois auteurs d’expression française: Mouloud Mammeri, Driss Chraïbi, et Albert Memmi” by Elena-Brânduşa Steiciuc, “Images of the Other in a Historical Play: ‘Răzvan şi Vidra’ by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu” by Ana-Maria Ştefan, “Pratiques communicationnelles médiatisées et identité en Europe de l’Est: les implications identitaires en jeu dans un certain usage du ‘Chat’ par les étudiants roumains” by Dany Bourdet, “Începuturile presei italiene şi româneşti şi corelarea cu spaţiul cultural European” by Iulian-Cătălin Dănilă, “Contributions à une métaphysique chrétienne de l’amour” by Şerban Fotea, “L’Orient de Victor Hugo: un voyage imaginaire” de Efstratia Oktapoda-Lu, “Les habits noirs de Mordekhaï. La mauvaise conscience dans ‘La Statue de sel’”byGuy Dugas, “Europa ezoterică până la Johannes Meister Eckart” by Gheorghe Iorga, “Rituri funerare comune la rromi” by Dana Iuliana Geangalău; some of the texts focus on the Romanian identity in relation to tradition: “’Pe cînd umbla Dumnezeu pe pămînt’ sau Dumnezeu în tradiţia poporului roman” by Liliana Vernică, “Proiecţii spaţiale ale identităţii/alterităţii în gîndirea tradiţională românească” by Adrian Crupa, “Romanian Studies in Korea” by Jeong-O Park, “Romanian Confronted with the Pronunciation of English” by Călina Gogălniceanu; identity in the sense of meta-identity at literary text level, through relationing to a certain literary genre, a literary type, to intertextuality, namely to codes of literary theory are discussed in an almost equal number of articles: “Fénelon şi amurgul clasicilor” by Viorica S. Constantinescu, “Temps et fonctionnement textuel chez Rachid Mimouni” by Najib Redouane, “Jocurile alterităţii în definirea identităţii eminesciene” by Iulian Costache, “Construcţia identităţii în ‘Ilustra rîndăşiţă’ a lui Miguel de Cervantes” by Cătălin Constantinescu, “‘Shrek’(!) sau oroarea de alteritate” by Mihaela Cernăuţi-Gorodeţchi, “’El timbre luminoso del Estad’ – Echos von Pablo de Olavides ‘cruzada de las luces’ in der deutschen Literatur der Spätaufklärung” by Thomas Freller, “Authors, Prints and Paintings in the Georgian Period” by Manuela Macarie, “Habent sua fata libelli” by Gheorghe Macarie, “Voyage romanesque par le biais des photographies” by Emine Bogenç Demirel, “De la tragedia epocii clasice la idila perioadei alexandrine” by Leonida Maniu, “Camoufler le fantastique dans le quotidien…” de Petruţa Spânu, “Velimir Hlebnikov şi Pavel Filonov” by Livia Cotorcea, “Du désir et de la douleur dans ‘Patio–Opéra intime’”de Sapho by Yvette Bénayoun-Szmidt, “Parodia literară în căutarea identităţii generice” by Livia Iacob, “A Translational Challenge: Wordplay in the ‘Sampson and Gregory’ Scene” by Anca Toderaşcu-Adumitroaie, “Convergenţe intertextuale” by Adrian Voica.
The issue 3/2005 – The Imagology of Exodus – supposes an explicit approach to the domain of imagology, thus with a strong impact on cultural comparative studies and diversifies the theme referring to identity and alterity; the exodus is seen in the state of a founding myth: “the true history of Exodus does not really exist, the Biblical history, a mythical one, is fascinating and credible. It’s more credible than if it were engraved in fragments and books. that is the reason why it passes through the Bible and contributes along with other elements to the unifying of the macrotext that contains the Old and the New Testament.” (Constantinescu, „Exodul biblic, mit şi istorie” 4) and in exile on individual level, as a drama or/and salvation, this time from an existential literary philosophical perspective. From the first category, of a mythic-historical perspective: “Exodul biblic, mit şi istorie” by Viorica S. Constantinescu, “Tu étais juif, Ulysse” by Olivier Sécardin (in collaboration with Sylvain Détoc), “Scrivere l’esodo tra i secoli” by Armando Gnsci, “Voyages, migrations, expatriations et déportations: approche contrastive des résurgences et autres formes transhistoriques et littéraires de l’exode dans la littérature française d’âge modern” by François Bruno Traore, “Pélagie-la-Charette: dimension réaliste et dimension symbolique de l’exode acadien vers la terre natale” by Elena-Brânduşa Steiciuc, “Alle Wege führen nach” by Raymond Delambre, “Exod şi exil în legendarium-ul lui Tolkien” by Mihaela Cernăuţi-Gorodeţchi, “Popoarele mării şi imagologia căutării” by Györfi-Deak György, “Aromânii: sub semnul risipirii?” by Nikola Vangeli, “La problématique de l’émigration dans le film Occident de Cristian Mungiu” by Alexandru Jinga, “L’Exil à l’image de Tristan” by Brânduşa Grigoriu ; from the second category: “‘L’Exode’ de Benjamin Fondane et l’attestation existentielle” by Olivier Salazar-Ferrer, “L’Image de l’exode dans ‘Le Premier Homme’ d’Albert Camus” by Monica Garoiu, “Exode exiliaire: Le Printemps de Catherine d’Anne Hébert” by Neil B. Bishop, “El desierto” by Teodoro Pablo Lecman ; in the mirror of sociology : “Media Imaging Literary Canada: Migrancy as a Visible Sign of Globality” by Pascal Gin, “Clichés identitaires dans les discours des immigrants. Étude de cas sur les Roumains de Montréal, Québec” by Fabiola Stoi; the jocular experience of the journey of the picaresque character: “Eighteenth Century Pícaras Heading the ‘Promised Land’” by Ana-Maria Ştefan.
The issue 4/2006 – Power has an heterogenous aspect, in the domains as well as in the instruments used, but two important types of relationing can be seen that involve competition, associated with the idea of abuse or that of greatness: power on a microsocial level (friendship, family, love) and on macrosocial level; the nature of the aspects that are discussed is of a sociological sort (moral, ethical), political even: “Médias du pouvoir et pouvoir des médias chez quelques écrivains africains” by Louis Bertin Amougou, “Imaginarul puterii în romanul generaţiei ’60” by Alina Crihană, “Pouvoir de la guerre et (contre)pouvoir poétique: botte de cuir versus soulier de satin” by Raymond Delambre, “Puterea cunoaşterii” by Simone Györfi, “Pouvoir de l’argent et puissance romanesque chez Balzac, Dostoievski et Fitzgerald” by Natalia Leclerc, “Le pouvoir et ses fictions dans les ‘Fables’ de La Fontaine” by Olivier Leplatre, “La dramatisation du pouvoir politico-économique dans ‘Voyage au bout de la nuit’: le réalisme socialiste de L.F. Céline” by Pascal Mindié, “L’accès au pouvoir en France sous la Troisième République (1871-1940). Népotisme, réseaux de sociabilité et élus de la Marne” by Alexandre Niess, “Culture de masse et culture de crime : le truand comme gardien de la paix sociale ?” by Vincent Platini, “Quelques réflexions sur le concept de pouvoir chez Mikhaïl Boulgakov” by Tatiana Sokolnikova, “’Voi nu căutaţi decît plăceri şi victime’: puterea libertinului” by Petruţa Spânu, “Autorité et Tradition, deux formes pernicieuses du pouvoir dans la littérature française modern” by François Bruno Traore; mythological(which contains the new mythologies of a consumer society), and/or ethnological: “La nature et ses pouvoirs dans ‘La fortune des Rougon’ d’Emile Zola” by Bernard Urbani, “Sensul puterii în ‘Povestea lui Harap Alb’ de Ion Creangă” by Liliana Vernică, “Tăranul român între forţele naturii şi puterile divine” by Georgiana-Livia Cârlan-Antoci; “Puterea lui Saul” by Viorica S. Constantinescu, “Reprezentări ale puterii în ‘Harry Potter’” by Eva-Claudia Damian, “Triumful neputinciosului” by Györfi-Deák György, “Le pouvoir des humbles, à travers l’oeuvre de David Scheinert” by Nicole Rocton; theory of literature, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic: “The Metafictions of Power in I.L. Caragiale’s Theatre” by Marina Cap-Bun, “La Querelle des femmes en paroles et en actes dans le ‘Livre du Courtisan’ de Baldassar Castiglione” by Claire Bottineau, “Collocations Hinting at Power” by Călina Gogălniceanu, “Notas sobre el poder o algunas observaciones sobre la idea de poder” by Teodoro Pablo Lecman, “L’espace de la parole commune, à partir d’une oeuvre de Jean-Paul Thibeau” by Corinne Mélin, “La puissance de la métaphore” by George Popa; psychological: “Un autre regard sur le pouvoir primordial : rapports pères-enfants dans ‘Une Vie de boy’ de Ferdinand Oyono” by Augustine H. Asaah, “La perversion du pouvoir chez Saint-Réal” by Chantal Carasco, “Der fruchtbare Augenblick. Eine medientheoretische Untersuchung” by Romaniţa Constantinescu, “Les armes du mégalomane : petite méthode pour devenir un poète de race” by Catherine Dupuis-Morency; philosophical: “’Iubirea aproapelui’ din perspectiva ‘voinţei de putere’ la Friedrich Nietzsche şi Fiodor Mihailovici Dostoievski” by Lucia Cifor, “La liberté, un principe primordial de la conception du pouvoir de Montesquieu” by Kis Zsuzsa Eszter, “’Toamna patriarhului’ – metafora autorităţii” by Petrică Rusu – all of these contained in the craftsmanship of the text; an article with a special theme, namely the sense of power in the art of dancing: “Les représentations d’un pouvoir invisible dans la danse contemporaine” by Mattia Scarpulla, emphasizing the orientation towards multi-disciplinarity of the journal.
The issue 5/2007, Center and Periphery, is yet another facet of discussion on social imaginary by two antonymical concepts, whose reality influences the manifestation of diverse branches of art, in a world situated in a process of globalization and which is on the brink of modifying the pillars of what welt meant in the correspondence between Goethe and Ekermann. The acceptance by a symbolic centre, the absorption by this centre of the peripheral values, that have the possibility, thus, to occupy a central place functions in all social group structures, but mostly in the artistic and political one, the opposition against the imposing of values from the center towards the periphery seen as a step forward in the history of human civilization (these last two aspects being valid mostly in the history of empires and in colonial relations) – the analysis of these complex aspects that are created by the resorts of power bring along methodologies as complex as those in which predominate the codes of the sociological and psychological analysis more and more frequent in the structure of literary texts and their analysis. From the writings from the Bible, the world is seen as a place of alternatives between the smaller and bigger social groups: “’Barocus alexandrinus’ în Cărţile Macabeilor” by Viorica S. Constantinescu, “Centru? Rabinii şi exegeza biblică” by Madalina Vârtejanu-Joubert.
The article with which this particular issue opens, “Olvidar… un gesto?” by Marta Inés Arabia, is an interdisciplinary one that follows the way in which the specialists in literary theory can operate with the elements of clinical psycho-analysis in the metaphorical sphere; intertextuality is another form of fusion of the margins with the center: “Aggressive Margins Shaking the Spear of the Canon” by Marina Cap-Bun; the relationship of power between adult/child in the fantastic literature of story-telling origins: “Un gen literar marginal (?)” by Mihaela Cernăuţi-Gorodeţchior the discussion of the marginal character of the detective literary genre (paraliterature): “Centre et périphérie chez Georges Simenon” by Petruţa Spânu; as in the previous issue the picaresque hero is a mediator between spaces and cultures, that can overcomr the peripheral condition through the quality of initiation: “O dialectică centru-periferie sui generis: itinerariile picareşti şi romanul de campus al lui David Lodge” by Ana-Maria Ştefan; the initiation in the sphere of power that transcends, through exceptional qualities, a common hierarchy: “Towards the Centre of the Self by Getting Inside the Belly of the Dragon: Levels of Initiation in Tolkien’s Works” by Robert Lazu; the confrontation of the notions of literary theory with historical tradition imposed by the dominant cultural centres: French, German, Anglo-American and Italian: “Die literarische Hermeneutik im Kontext der rumänischen Kultur” by Lucia Cifor; the relation center/periphery implies a cultural and psychologically dynamic imaginary, of opposition or of conditioned acceptance, gtransposed in writing.
The articles are grouped in fields of analysis dominant sociologically (and socio-linguistically) sometimes with religious and ethnological implications in the history of mentalities: “Geneva lui Calvin şi tragedia cu subiect religios a Renaşterii franceze” by Carmen Raluca Astelian, “Paradigms in the Study of Nationalism: Self-Other and Centre-Periphery Relations” by Radu Cinpoeş; the power seen in relation to identity/alterity: “Relativismul cultural în studiile literare comparate. Deschiderea spre Celălalt şi spre Periferie” by Cătălin Constantinescu; the role of dialogue in mediating the relation colonizer/colonist, dominant/dominated: “The ‘Power’ of Dialogism and of ‘Troping’. Case Studies: W. B. Yeats’ Easter 1916 and J. Joyce’s The Dead” by Ligia Doina Constantinescu; the ethnical arts, possible components meant to renew the artistical expression of the center through an infusion of originality of the periphery: “La dialectique du centre et de la périphérie au prisme de la cinématographie chinoise” by Raymond Delambre; the infusion from the centre towards the periphery (more frequent than vice-versa): “Modele parnasiene în lirica belgiană” by Maria Lungu-Clivinschi; the centre as a place of irradiation of value in knowledge of the world: “Eroul – mereu dinspre centru către o margine a lumii sale” by Constantin Dram; the diversity of the types of communication that make hierarchies in society by verbal and non verbal signals: “Reducerea la centru” by Györfi-Deak György; the role of types of modern communication from mass-media the usage of the new scientific discoveries in the relations from the colonial spaces: “The Dynamics of Centre and Periphery in the British Society of the Twentieth Century” by Manuela Macarie; mostly psychological (psycho-linguistic) approaches in social networks: the language as an element of rupture or of mediation of the center with the periphery “Ecrire avec le centre : l’écriture en langue française de L’Amour, la fantasia d’Assia Djebar” by Monica Garoiu, the perception of the self concerning the social-cultural identity of the space of belonging – “Romanţa centralizării. Lungul drum al percepţiei de sine – de la periferia conştiinţei către centrul ei” by Simone Györfi; the metamorphoses of cultural Geography through reciprocal inceptions in the relation center/periphery: “Un emblema: centro y periferia” by Teodoro Pablo Lecman; the role of the anthropology of communication in the non-verbal Arts: “Teatrul contemporan în căutarea unui nou centru al semnificării” by Vera Pântea.
The next generic theme suggested for the issue 6/2008 al revistei, is another antonymic pair (the antinomy suggesting intrinsically a comparatist procedure): Rational/Irrational. The concepts suggested are important instruments in the knowledge of the world, in relationing to it, the history of civilization alternating in the Oriental philosophies between rationality (materialism, coherence) and irrationality (fantasy, incoherence). The philosophy and the psychology became, starting with the Preromanticism, part of the substance of the literary text and towards the end of the 19th century the instruments in its hermeneutics, to which we add methods and concepts from the literary theory in the analysis of magical thinking type. A series of articles in this issue discuss literary fantasy, fairy tales and science fiction, considered partly as the detective genre, paraliterature: in “Logiques du magique, ou le rationnel dans une fiction de l’irrationnel : ‘Les maisons de cristal’ d’Annick Perrot-Bishop” by Neil B. Bishop the method is based on the lexical fields with the polysemantic values that the pair rational/irrational has, using the dramatic language while discussing the artwork of he literary creation; “Spectrologie carrolliană. Cîteva însemnări” by Mihaela Cernăuţi-Gorodeţchi bases its demonstration on the Derrida’s concept of ”hauntology” transferred to the field of literary analysis; “El descenso a los infiernos, en los arrabales de la irracionalidad. Apuntes para una lectura paralela: Veracruz desde la cueva de Montesinos” by Dana Diaconu – the narratology stressing the role of irrationality in fiction; “Estetizarea conceptelor raţional şi iraţional în romanul Geniu pustiu de Mihai Eminescu” by Ludmila Branişte is a demonstration of the fusion of philosophical concepts with the literary ones within the field of aesthetics, during late Romanticism; “Das Traummotiv zwischen der romantik und der modernen Tiefenpsychologie. Studienfall: Ludwig Tiecks ‘Die Freunde’” by Dragoş Carasevici uses the Freudian language of psychoanalysis from the beginning of the 19th century to analyse a Romantic work of the previous century, whose atmosphere takes place on the border between dream and reality; “Frau Königin, Ihr seid die schönste hier, aber Sneewittchen ist tausendmal schöner als Ihr. Zum Motiv der Kindesaussetzung in den Märchen der Brüder Grimm” by Adina-Lucia Nistor operates a socio-psychological analysis of the literary motif of children abandonment in the fairy-tales of the Brothers Grimm; “Harry Potter : le retour vers un émerveillement rationnel” by Valérie Doussaud positions her analysis in the context of the cultural anthropology through a discussion about the need of giving back to the contemporary pragmatic world the sense of; “Urban Gothic and the Invisible Men” by Ana-Maria Ştefan brings, in this issue also, the picaresque character with a sociological role, this time in the urban areas, the inception of myths, of legends and of types transformed into cultural codes in and through literary texts, their re-evaluation from a contemporary multidisciplinary and transdiciplinarity perspective proves that human nature has always hesitated between rational and irrational, that only the material context in which the human being evolves has changed, its interior co-ordinates remained unchanged (love, hatred, revenge, friendship, need for absolute, etc.) a greater lust for the sensational is being sometimes noticed, as an aggressive form, moulded on the dynamic of the modern society, a re-mythisation of the world: “(Ir)rationalité des vampires ? A propos du ‘Traité sur les apparitions…’ de dom Augustin Calmet” by Gilles Banderier, “Raţional şi iraţional în reprezentarea tradiţională a realităţii” by Adrian Crupa, “Spaţiul arhaic şi condiţia iraţionalului” by Carmen Dărăbuş, “L’escamotage alfieriano nel giustificare i delitti degli Atridi” by Gabriela E. Dima, “Eroul cervantesc între realitate şi sminteală” by Constantin Dram, “Rationnel – irrationnel dans les drames mythiques de Jean Giraudoux et Jean-Paul Sartre” by Roxana Haidberg, “Paradoxes of Disbelief: Metamorphosis and Metadrama in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’” by Cornelia Macsiniuc, “Les ‘choses que l’entendement n’arrive pas à expliquer ni à comprendre’: quelques considérations sur ‘Amours sorcières’ de Tahar Ben Jelloun by Elena-Brânduşa Steiciuc, “Apocalyptic Imagery in Michel Tournier’s ‘Le Roi des Aulnes’” by Constantin Grigoruţ; an analysis with the instruments of the philosophical language: “Tacit şi iraţionalul” by Mihaela Paraschiv, “Entre rationalité et imaginaire : le statut de la pluralité des mondes” by Brian Munoz, “De la ‘Discursul asupra metodei’ la ‘Recursul la metodă’” by Bogdan Romaniuc, “Controversata componentă raţională a lumilor utopice” by Iuliana Savu; the surrealism of the beginning of the 20th century, with its roots in the Romanticism of the previous century, poses, for the first time in a conceptualized way the relationship between the mediating subconscious between the rational and the irrational, with expansions in expressionism and its rapports with the absolute, then in the literature of the absurd, as a forerunner of existentialism: “La (pseudo-)rationalité du fantastique romantique” by Alexandra Jeleva, “Le poème en prose. A la frontière du visible et de l’invisible” by Liliana Foşalău, “La notion de couleur comme un élément rationnel mortuaire dans ‘La jeune Parque’ de Paul Valéry” by Tina Mamatsachvili, “Notes sur les possibles cohérences d’un poème de Tzara” by Radu I. Petrescu, “Metaforă şi negaţie în ‘Metamorfoza’ lui F. Kafka” by Cătălin Constantinescu, “L’autoréflexion critique de Robert Pinget et de ses personnages-écrivains : d’un projet inconscient à une écriture consciente” by Csesaw Grzes£iak; the representations of reality, the passions that animate the social universe, the threats, the turbulences of history are regarded and analysed in a language and with methods specific to the Humanities: “Raţional – iraţional în spaţiul iubirii fatale. Anna Karenina” by Lucia Cifor, “Periferia victoriană: Edward Lear şi nonsensul” by Daniela Doboş, “L’irrationnel de l’histoire chez Milan Kundera et Philip Roth” by Velichkva Ivanova, “’Raţionalizarea’ antisemitismului românesc modern. Imagini animaliere ofensatoare şi ‘justificarea’ lor în presa românească din anii 1900-1916” by Alina-Viorela Căileanu, “La prise de risque, rationnelle ou irrationnelle ? Le cas du joueur” by Natalia Leclerc “Figuras de la razón: ¿la pasión?” by Teodoro Pablo Lecman, “Les raisons de l’histoire et la culture de la confidentialité: les archives du Service Secret Communiste Roumain” by Andi Mihalache; the so called paraliterature isn’t excluded from this issue either: “(I)Raţionalitate şi simţire: doi eroi paradoxali – detectivul particular Philip Marlowe şi geniul Bartimaeus” by Györfi-Deak György.
The issue 7/2009 has as its general theme Smile and Laughter, and the facets of the analysis targets various domains – literature (biblical, philosophical, metatext, theater), plastic arts, cinematography, the common denominator being the translation of an attitude towards life, thus a fundamental element of human behavior, manifested differently, according to the significations of a certain cultural space; the critical apparatus refers to Ben Jonson, Nietzsche, Freud, R. Barthes, Auerbach, Cioran, U. Eco around the idea of constructive attitude ( most often as a corrective form through satire and as a salvation, resistence, defence form), or deconstructive or neuter, sometimes dicotomically linked to silence.As forms of non-verbal communication, as icons, laughter and smile are a link of the weltliterature, as a translation of human nature; the obvious antinomic pairs in the theme of this issue are: sacralisation/desacralisation/demonization, hope/despair. In the literature of religious content of at least of religious semiotics from a given period, the type of analysis is mainly philosophical: “Surâsul simpatetic şi cultura creştină clasică” by Claudiu T. Arieşan, “Râs şi tăcere în teatrul religios medieval şi renascentist” by Carmen Raluca, Aştelian, “Non-râsul ca boală în spaţiul fabulosului” by Mihaela Cernăuţi-Gorodeţchi, “Câteva note asupra su-râsului sadovenian” by Constantin Dram, “De la surâsul lui Buddha la ‘Surâsul Hiroshimei’” by Simone Györfi, “Dialectică surâzătoare” by Györfi-Deak György, “Risus paschalis – oder: Keep ‘em laughing as you go. Lachen und Blasphemie” by Martin A. Hainz, “Râsul şi moartea: un caz de ‘mezalianţă’ tematică în romanele ‘Return to Laughter’ al Laurei Bohannan şi ‘Ways of Dying’ al lui Zakes Mda” by Ana-Maria Ştefan, “¿Por qué no se ríen Cioran y Sábato?” by Doina Gheorghiu; to the ironical satiric function in a social context one juxtaposes a kind of hermeneutics belonging to social philosophy: “Surse ale umorului în ‘Broaştele’ lui Aristofan” by Mihai Baltag, “Le rire salvateur dans ‘L’Histoire exécrable d’un héros brabançon’ de Jean Muno” by Renata Bizek-Tatara, “Sous le rire de Louise Erdrich : entre désacralisation et survie” by Najla Boulifa-Shili, “Le dire par l’humour (à travers une lecture de Muriel Robin)” by Fatima Zohra Chiali-Lalaoui, “Le (sou)rire dans ‘L’Homme qui rit’ de Victor Hugo” by Czeslaw Grzesiak, “Râsul şi universul copilăriei” by Elena Mândrilă, “La satire mussetienne comme préfiguration de la désespérance” by Anne-Céline Michel, “Tales from the House of Smiles: Teresa de la ‘Parra’s Mama Blanca’s Memoirs’” by Roseanna Mueller, “1830 sous le rire méphistophélique de Julien Sorel” by Ana Oancea, “O doctrină a râsului în antichitatea greco-latină” by Mihaela Paraschiv, “Le Rire qui ne fait pas rire dans ‘La Curée’ d’Émile Zola” by Virginie Prioux, “Humor und Hoffnung im Dritten Reich. Der Witz als regimekritische Ausdrucksform in den Tagebüchern Victor Klemperers” by Arvi Sepp, “De la comicidad de la risa al humor de la sonrisa: ‘Pantaleón y las visitadoras’ de Mario Vargas Llosa a la luz de la teoría de los humores de Ben Jonson” by Emmanuelle Sinardet, “Rîs şi rictus în povestirea ‘Candid sau Optimismul’ de Voltaire” by Petruţa Spânu; an interdisciplinary approach, which supposes the syncretism of a certain type of art: “’Weiter leben im Zug des Lebens’: (Galgen-) Humor im literarischen und filmischen Umgang mit dem Holocaust” by Delia Eşian, “L’énigmatique sourire fellinien” by Sylvie Sibra, “Una sonrisa sin cuerpo” by Teodoro Pablo Lecman, “Der Anfang des Theaterlebens in der Bukowina wiederspiegelt in der wiener satyrischen Zeitschrift der ‘Humorist’ und in der amtlichen ‘Czernowitzer Zeitung’” by Ion Lihaciu, “Contre ‘le fin sourire’ : la poétique du rire de Georges Fourest” by Laurent Robert, “Poetica (su)râsului în ‘Noi’ de Evgheni Zamiatin” by Iuliana Savu.
The issue 8/2010, Other Worlds, is situated on the thematic continuity of the other issues regarding identity and otherness, center and periphery, East and West, all aiming to a departure from inside outward with permanent reversions in order to acknowledge the self and the Other, in the context of a complex, articulated imaginary. The plunge into the fantastic and the utopian fantasy as in a universe for compensation or moralizing, the call for the classical and modern myths sometimes inserted into a postmodern key in order to understand a certain mentality, the way they relate to life and death: “La vision d’un monde possible dans ‘Le Concerto pour Anne Queur’ de Marcel Thiry” by Renata Bizek-Tatara, “Other Choices in Other Worlds: Pierre Bottero’s ‘Ewilan Cycle’” by Sarah K. Cantrell, “Între două lumi – Prinţul Întunericului, Woland” by Constantin Dram, “Literatura non-mimetică şi nevoia de alte lumi” by Mihaela Cernăuţi-Gorodeţchi, “Perspective modale în dezbaterea lumi posibile vs. lumi ficţionale” by Cătălin Constantinescu, “Más allá de los límites, en ‘el umbral mismo de ese mundo ulterior’”. Hacia una poética narrativa de Enrique Vila-Matas” by Dana Diaconu, ”’Wohin mir das Wort […] fiel’ – Gott und Gottlosigkeit in der Dichtung Paul Celans” by Delia Eşian, “Manières de créer d’autres mondes: quelques récits de Stanislas Lem” by Nicolas Geneix, “Entre Occident et hindouisme: ‘Queen of Dreams’ de Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni” by Laurence Gouaux, “’Graal Flibuste’ de Robert Pinget ou le voyage dans un monde à la fois imaginaire, mystérieux, merveilleux et fantastique” by Czseslaw Grzesiak, “’Constructorul Solness’ şi ‘Clopotul scufundat’: alte lumi de împlinire a idealului la Ibsen şi Hauptmann” by Crina Leon, “Privind către ‘dincolo’. Lecturi comparate ale realităţii la omul arhaic şi la cel tradiţional” by Adrian Crupa, “Cicero şi imaginarul lumii de dincolo: note pe marginea dialogului ‘Hortensius’” by Constantin Mihai, “Tous les Enfers ne sont pas pareils. Réécritures (post)modernes d’un mythe à l’ancienne” by Nicoleta Popa-Blănariu, “Rusia lui Vladimir Sorokin, un an mai târziu” by Iuliana Savu, “Insula vrăjită” by Petruţa Spânu; the voyage under all its forms is a central motif of the theme (emigration, deportation, knowledge, adventure, etc.), to which one can add the image of the stranger: “Teritorii ex-centrice între perspectiva livresc-europocentrică şi privirea călătorului străin – Celălalt şi lumea sa” by Simona Antofi, “Représentations de l’espace public ‘Jama’al-Fnâ’ dans le récit de voyage français au Maroc à l’aube du XXème siècle” by Bouchra Benbella, “Lumea care se destramă: M. Crnjanski, ‘Romanul Londrei’” by Carmen Dărăbuş, “Les espaces en conflit dans le discours romanesque de Leïla Sebbar” by Wafae Karzazi, “A. Soljeniţîn şi lumile recluziunii” by Cecilia Maticiuc, “Frantumi della campagna siciliana di Luigi Pirandello: favola, luce e violenza” by Gabriela E. Dima, “Foreign Home and Familiar Abroad in Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’” by Ecaterina Pătraşcu, “Lumea celuilalt ca ’lumea cealaltă’: de la imaginarul Europei pre-moderne la imaginarul secolului XXI” by Ana-Maria Ştefan;also a form of journey are translations, literary contaminations, the outline of a world from a given place and time present in the pages of newspapers and magazines: “Métaphore et traductologie – ou savoir déchiffrer la peinture des autres mondes” by Carmen Ecaterina Aştirbei, “’Toi, dès aujourd’hui: l’âge d’homme’ de Tayssir Sboul” by Isabelle Bernard, Waël Rabadi, “Czernowitzer Korrespondenten deutschsprachiger in- und ausländischer Zeitungen” by Dragoş Carasevici, Ion Lihaciu, “L’autre monde en tant que monde des livres: l’allégorie de la catabase et son enjeu intertextuel dans ‘La Divine Comédie’” by Alina Crihană, “Die literarische Zeitschrift ‘Im Buchwald’ (Czernowitz 1890-1891)” by Ion Lihaciu, “Jean Barbeau et ‘l’échologie’” by Dana Nica; the artistic language, as expression and as analysis, from the field of plastic arts, of cinematography, creator of worlds through specific artistic codes, worlds perceived at the interference of arts or in their syncretic manifestation, in a traditional key, or modern and postmodern: “Nuestros silencios” by Doina Gheorghiu, “La couleur-lumière comme moyen de déconstruction de l’espace homogène dans d’autres mondes. De Delacroix à Le Clézio” by Atinati Mamatsashvili-Kobakhidze, “L’énigmatique monde du chaos fellinien” by Sylvie Sibra; incursiune analitică cu metodele psihologiei: “Generaţia Xanax” by Călin Horea Bârleanu, “Crisis in Gender Identification: An Experience in the Fluidity of Being – Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’” by Daouda Coulibaly, “Non-teologia oglinzii. Simbol şi alteritate” by Florin Ţupu; arta ca mediator al spaţiilor culturale: “Littérature et interculturalité: le dialogue interculturel dans le roman africain de langue française” by Adama Samake, “Lumea poetică şi disoluţia realităţii: cazul Roland Giguère” by Livia Iacob.
So the types of hermeneutics proposed by the authors of articles have diversified over the eleven years from those which exploit especially the instruments of literary theory from the line opened by Northrop Frye and Ph. van Tieghem, to the latest numbers, where the literature is increasingly framed in the history of mentalities and cultural anthropology in the common frame of imagology as a foundation for cultural studies, built on two main pillars, finely nuanced: the localization of mythical elements common to humanity, relating to the development and man’s position in the universe, to life and death, birth, love and cultural symbolism that rituals involving specific cultural geography require – on the one hand, and on the other – the extremely diverse reference to reality ” as comparative literature restores the text in the cultural life of the country of origin and at the same time, the reader’s country […]. Imagology is the core of comparative literature, because images are constitutive elements of literary work, yet imaginary elements that are part of a group, a society, a group of societies ” (Duţu, “La littérature comparée et la découverte des constantes européennes’’ 64).
Contemporaneity allows for an extension of the classical space of comparative literature – which doesn’t strictly discuss the issue of literary value, even operating the dissociation of form from the content – through cultural studies, postcolonial studies, feminist studies, the normative criteria becoming extremely lax. The legitimacy within the discipline of literary science is relative, slipping more and more towards cultural studies and the history of mentalities, in a context in which the so-called crisis of discipline is, in fact, a point in its evolution. The areas covered in the journal Acta Iassyensia Comparationis go beyond the strict literary text, and include philosophy, philological sciences, educational sciences, sociology, film, fine arts, performing arts (dance, theater), paraliterature. It’s also easy to see that the same author in different numbers, addresses a proposed theme with different instruments, depending on the type of text chosen for analysis. Weltliteratur, a concept proposed by Goethe has become a literary imaginary minutey and carefully articulated in its social, mythical, psychological, philosophical details – an imago mundi.
Works Cited:
Aristotel. Poetica. Introduzione testo e commento di Augusto Rostagni, seconda edizione riveduta. Torino: Chiantore – Biblioteca di Filologia Classica, 1945.
Aubenque, Pierre. Le problème de l’être chez Aristote. Paris: PUF, 1962.
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis. Reprezentarea realităţii în literatura occidentală. Translated by I. Negoiţescu. Iaşi: Polirom, 2000.
Brunel, Pierre; Daniel Madelenat; Jean-Michel Gligsohn; Daniel Couty. Critica literară. Bucureşti: Ed. Cartea Românească, 2000.
Carasevici, Dragoş. ”Un dicţionar al conceptelor-cheie în comparatism”. Raţional/Iraţional Rationnel/Irrationnel. Acta Iassyensia comparationis. Iaşi: 2008, no. 6, 387.
Constantinescu, Viorica S. „Exodul biblic, mit şi istorie”. Imagologia exodului. Acta Iassyensia Comparationis, Iaşi: 2005, no. 3, 1-4.
Constantinescu, Cătălin: ”Relativismul cultural în studiile literare comparate. Deschiderea spre Celălalt şi spre Periferie”. Centru şi periferie – Center and periphery – Centre et périphérie. Acta Iassyensia Comparationis, Iaşi: 2007, no. 5, 69-74.
Constantinescu, Cătălin; Ioan Constantin Lihaciu, Ana-Maria Ştefan: Dicţionar de literatură comparată. Iaşi: Editura Universităţii „Al. I. Cuza”, 2007.
Darabus, Carmen. Literatura universală şi cunoaşterea de sine. Cluj-Napoca: Ed. Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă, 2001.
Darabus, Carmen. “Orientări româneşti contemporane în abordarea literaturii comparate”. Studia Romanica Bratislavensia. Teorii, modele noi şi aplicarea lor în lingvistica, literatura, translatologia şi didactica ultimilor 20 de ani. Eds. Jana Palenikova, Daniela Sitar – Tăut. Bratislava: Univerzita Komenskeho v Bratislave, 2012, 328-336.
Duţu, Alexandru. “La littérature comparée et la découverte des constantes européennes’’. Komparatistik und Europa-Forschung. Perspektiven vergleichender Literatur – und Kulturwissenschaft, Herausgegeben von Hugo Dy Serinck und Karl Ulrich Syndram: Bouvier Verlag Bonn-Berlin, 1992.
Marino, Adrian. Comparatisme et théorie de la littérature. Paris : Presse Universitaire de France, 1988. Translated by Mihai Ungurean as Comparatism şi teoria literaturii. Iaşi: Ed. Polirom, 1998.
Muthu, Mircea. Orientari critice. Cluj-Napoca : Ed. Dacia, 1972.
Pageaux, Daniel-Henri. La Littérature Générale et Comparée. Paris : Armand Collin, 1994. Translated by Lidia Bodea as Literatura generală şi comparată, Introduction by Paul Cornea, Iaşi: Ed. Polirom, 2000.
Pageaux, Daniel-Henri. “Littérature générale et comparée et imaginaire’’ Anuario de la Sociedad Española de Literatura General y Comparada. Madrid, 1995, 81-95.
Vianu, Tudor. Studii de literatură universală şi comparată. Ediţia a doua revăzută şi adăugită, Bucureşti: Ed. Academiei Republicii Populare Române, 1963.
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