Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies最新文献

{"title":"Representations of Indian ascetics: from Johann Martin Honigberger’s memoir to early twentieth century Romanian newspapers and journals","authors":"Ayusman Chakraborty, Dana Radler","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23881","url":null,"abstract":"In recent times, Indian ascetics have become pop icons due to the influence of visual entertainment media. Outside their country of origin, they are often negatively stereotyped to foster derogatory understandings of the Others and their cultures. In this paper, we will focus on representations of Indian ascetics. Starting with their early depictions in the memoir of the Transylvanian physician Dr Honigberger, we will examine their representations in Romanian newspapers and journals. In order to account for Romanian interest in ascetics from a faraway land, this paper will take into consideration the historical developments that led to the growth of European interest in them. Through a comparison between nineteenth century British (Osborne 1840) and East-European (Honigberger 1851, 1852) writings on Indian ascetics, we will try to understand whether conceptualization of Indian ascetics in Romanian-speaking territories differed in any way from that of the British colonizers in India. The paper will then move on to examine how the Romanian press conceptualized these ascetics. Evidences point to the fact that the Romanian press became interested in Indian ascetics, erroneously generalized as fakirs, from ca. 1900 to 1940. Analysing Romanian journal and magazine articles on Indian fakirs, which till now remain untranslated into English, this article will try to show how the Romanian press conceived of the ascetics of a faraway country. Our research methodology is based on text analysis, relying on a broader cultural perspective. For the purpose of this paper, we have selected a series of article samples, taking into consideration diversity in terms of regions (southern Romania and Transylvania), as well as the most relevant period (1906-1935). The interest in Indian sadhus and their doings basically emerged starting with the mid-nineteenth century. Yet over the following decades accounts have changed in terms of focus. While nineteenth century authors were primarily concerned with the physical aspects of their work, texts written in the first decades of the twentieth century suggest that journalists and writers generally looked at the more surprising and entertaining side of fakirs’ actions. Finally, the paper suggests why Romanian press lost interest in Indian ascetics after the 1940s.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45965899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Mircea Eliade’s text to its cinematographic representations: the picture of Miss Christina as centre of the labyrinthine pathway","authors":"Carmen Dominte","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23811","url":null,"abstract":"As commonly known the labyrinth represents not only a major element of the intercultural dialogue but also a cultural, mythological, religious, literary and artistic icon. Its pattern implies several stages, among which the initiation, the inner change and the conversion, all being meant to deeply modify the subject that is confronting such a complex pathway. Plunged into a space full of obstacles, the subject is continuously experimenting. Thus, he has to enter the labyrinth, to search the only true way through the labyrinth, to hesitate, to lose himself, to descend into Inferno, to split his soul, to find the centre of the labyrinth and finally to find the exit. Such complex patterns could be found in many of Mircea Eliade’s narrative texts. For the characters that find themselves trapped inside the maze every experience can be regarded as an attempt to reach the centre of the labyrinth. It is the case of the novel “Miss Christina”, where the protagonists, despite their efforts, miss their meeting in the centre of the labyrinth and implicitly their individual initiation. Since this centre stands for the place where two different types of worlds could find each other, it may be interpreted as the most important element of the labyrinthine pathway. The study intends to give an insight into the protagonists’ search for the centre as well as an analysis of the very centre as a synthesis between life and death. Having the form of a picture, this centre is meant to become a substitute of life. Exceeding the literary area, the analysis of Miss Christina’s picture takes into consideration its cinematographic representations as means of visual expression of the same experience.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49441509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Drama unei familii țărănești din Ardeal","authors":"Gabriela Chiciudean","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v5i1.23929","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v5i1.23929","url":null,"abstract":"As the traditional village had gradually faded with time, writing a novel encompassing this subject has become a predicament, yet Lucian Domșa undertook writing about the Transylvanian rural context, revealing his most authentic sense of artistry. Măriuca is a novel portraying the tragic existence of a countryman returning home after World War I. The realities of the traditional village are depicted in the background, for it is the character development, the representation of the profound history of a family, the history of an existence lived according to the old ways of the countryside, all explored under the veil of most authentic vernacular language, that notably constitute the centre of the novel. The typical tragedy of a family from a village in Transylvania is gradually built in the novel, in sync with the space it inhabits, and with the action, also capturing several monographical elements of the Transylvanian village. Although the novel is entitled Măriuca, the main character is Manole a lui Țapu’, however, in virtue of the way the female heroine is composed, through her desire for emancipation, Măriuca becomes the main important character who announces a change of mentality and attitude in the interwar period in the rural environment.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43230701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Content based learning-Task based learning-Problem based learning in Teaching Romanian Language to Foreign Students","authors":"Gabriel Barbulet","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23924","url":null,"abstract":"When talking about the process of Romanian language teaching, learning and using the Romanian language, leads us to the idea that we are faced with a considerably large number of variables. No matter what happens during the process, there is always something good to acquire and put into practice. Despite this “methodological painkiller”, boosting efficiency is the determining factor. In the practical, everyday management of classes, it is common knowledge that it is more challenging for a teacher to do something “inappropriate” than to do it “correctly”. However, considering that almost all actions count, the teachers’ exclusive attention to the process comes as a necessity. As for the rest of the process, the things we have mentioned above are to be seen in a different way. Natural Romanian usage involves fluency and one can get the impression that Romanian is not difficult to learn and activate. It is pointless to say that this is a determining factor in encouraging students to be part of the “effort”. In contrast, artificial, highly automated Romanian tends to change into a nightmare for both teachers and learners. The context of CBL, TBL and PBL is represented by Communicative language teaching. The communicative approach was developed mainly by British applied linguists in the 1980s as a reaction against grammar-based approaches like situational language teaching and the audiolingual method. Strange as it may seem, the foreign language being taught during modern/current classes tends to lose the center of attention in this context. The main focus of attention is no longer on language but on some relevant subjects. Indeed, language should not be an end but a means. In different terms, the process works mostly with message-focused activities rather than form-focused ones. When it comes to modern approaches, the term “learning” becomes a very general one, mainly biased in favor of acquisition.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45752382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Instances of (un)translatability in Ion Creangă’s “Amintiri din copilărie”/”Memories of my boyhood”","authors":"A. Ursa","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23925","url":null,"abstract":"These days, writing about untranslatability may seem courageous, as more and more voices associate this issue with translation incapacity and, instead, advocate for creative remedies or even reject such an instance. This study does not deal with a contemporary novel, nor does it have to do with a powerful textual space. However, we believe that translation theories mainly focus on analyses of a certain category of languages, and raise questions of discrepancies between subordinate and dominant cultures, a tendency which derives from the proneness of the international publishing industry to favour certain languages and types of writing. We are not aiming for a debate around the subject of publishing politics or endeavours, but rather we try to cast some light on the ambitious project of rendering vernacular into a powerful language. This paper deals with the work of a great Moldavian storyteller who contributes significantly to the enhancement of expressiveness through linguistic characteristics that occur informally. We hypothesise that the vibrant vernacular writing “Memories of my boyhood” creates potential instances of untranslatability, due to significant differences between the Romanian variety and English, not necessarily in the linguistic inventory but rather in the cognitive structures of the readership. Therefore, the case study focuses on how source text and target text readers infer meaning from interjections and terms of address, originally belonging to the Moldavian modes of expression. Although the translators re-create these short utterances, due to a lack of a similar background from the part of the receiving culture, we witness a limitation on conveying their original intentionality, emotion and plethora of meanings.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44391632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Romanian migration reflected in recent Portuguese literature: the Roma ethnicity as a case in point","authors":"Catalina Iliescu-Gheorghiu","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23958","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23958","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on three contemporary Portuguese literary works that feature Roma characters and culture-specific elements within a wider selection of authors who mention or delve into past and present Romanian realities. This selection was aimed at determining which are the themes, historical events, lived or narrated memories, symbols, images, and ethnotypes that interest contemporary Portuguese authors in relation with the Romanian immigrant segment, a population fairly representative in Portugal (ninth largest minority group, with some 31,000 residents and an annual immigration rate of 2,000 new arrivals). My exploration (through several channels: library catalogues, oral sources, databases) revealed ten literary works which tackle elements related to: the Roma ethnic group and the negative ethnotype of prostitution, crime and begging; the former elite (aristocracy, intelligentsia), above all, temporally anchored in the early years of the 20th century; and the Communist regime, its apparatus (party and secret police) and its fall at the end of the eighth decade of the 20th century. In this article I shall focus on the analysis of the first group, basing this on the concept of “ethnotype”, observing how the image of a given immigrant population is constructed, and how this image affects its members in the public and private spheres.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45993327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cartografierea ca enactivare. Poetica cognitivă și subgenurile narativului: repere teoretice","authors":"Alina Buzatu","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v5i1.23889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v5i1.23889","url":null,"abstract":"My study, though concise, problematizes the methodology and some of the conceptual vocabulary of cognitive poetics in relation to the narrative (sub)genre(s). This metatheoretical research attempts to reveal the specific algorithms and concepts of cognitive literary cartography, seen as an enactive process - the interpretation of narrative texts is defined as a dynamic interaction, a mutual transformation of both the `literary mind` and the text. In this respect, concepts such as `figure`, `image schemata`,`scenario` or`cognitive model` are relevant for the attempts to observe and  explain the enactive (interpretative) approaches.\u0000 ","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44810903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Easy-to-read in Romania: current status and future perspectives in a European context","authors":"M. Fărcașiu, Daniel Dejica, Simona Șimon, Annamaria Kilyeni","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v5i2.23692","url":null,"abstract":"As the European Union’s Strategy for people with disabilities has been extended to 2030, emphasising the need for these people’s social inclusion, which also comprises accessibility to different information and documents, Romania has to align its legislation and best practices in order to solve its problems concerning this topic. Therefore, this paper focuses on an important aspect of social inclusion, namely Easy-to-Read (E2R) language, which is paramount for the disabled people’s access to information, culture and education. It starts by presenting the concept of Easy-to-Read across Europe, its perception and implementation by various countries, to finally delve into the current situation of Easy-to-Read in Romania. By looking at the analysis and reports on the previous governmental strategies regarding people with disabilities (and especially reading disabilities, for the purpose of this paper), it can be said that Romania still faces challenges in this respect and needs to work on making documents and information accessible by first creating E2R guidelines and then implementing them in printed documents (e.g. adapted textbooks, healthcare leaflets) as well as in the electronic information (e.g. government websites). The paper also traces some future perspectives concerning Easy-to-Read in Romania, namely the Train2Validate “Professional training for Easy-to-Read facilitators and validators” (T2V) project, an Erasmus+ programme, a collaboration between various European countries, that Romania is part of, which goes one step further into helping people with reading disabilities and creating professional roles for them, i.e. facilitators and validators, in order to integrate them on the employment market. Moreover, this research will hopefully raise awareness of the importance of conducting other studies on creating Easy-to-Read guidelines and on simplifying the text according to the different target groups of people with reading disabilities or difficulties and to different text types.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49174221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Imaginarul rețelelor de socializare și poetica distanțării în romanul Interior Zero de Lavinia Braniște","authors":"Cristina Hermeziu","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v5i1.23884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v5i1.23884","url":null,"abstract":"After 2004, the year when Facebook was created, the issue of social networks as increasingly widespread and generalized ways of communication and relationship in society also invested in the field of literature, becoming an ingredient of the literary diegesis. To the extent that the writers of the so-called digital generation, respectively the one born and formed directly in the society of communication technologies, can no longer ignore the presence of social networks in the daily lives of created characters, what kind of imaginary literature does this create? Our analysis focuses on how the narrative voice in Lavinia Braniște's novels establishes a meta-critical relationship with social networks, especially in the universe of the first novel, Interior Zero, published in 2016. We are interested in finding out to what extent, in the age of millennials and the virtualization of existence, literature is a subtle form of ontological resistance through catharsis.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43547840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Brașovul și cartea veche între 1805 și 1827","authors":"Marcela Ciortea","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v5i1.23918","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v5i1.23918","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents the volume “Graphic Art of Old Romanian Books Printed in Brașov” (1805-1827) written by Anca Elisabeta Tatay and Cornel Tatai-Baltă and published in excellent graphic conditions at the Mega Publishing House in Cluj-Napoca, in 2020. First, we talk about the theoretical excursion in the first part, then about the album with fine reproductions of title sheets, vignettes, seals, engravings, in the second part.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41922070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}