<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> If the changes of the “discourse networks” (Aufschreibesysteme) from 1800 to 1900 model the relations pertaining to the personality, to the cultural determinedness of technology and personality as well as to their interconnections (Kittler 1995), especially having in view the literary mise en scène, it applies all the more to travelling - setting out on a journey, heading towards a destination, pilgrimage and/or wandering as well as the relationship between transport technology and personality. The changes taking place in “transport” are partly of technological, partly (in close connection with the former) indicative of individual and collective claims. The diplomatic, religious, commercial and educational journeys essentially belong to the continuous processes of European centuries; however, the appearance of the railway starts a new era at least to the same extent as the car and the airplane in the twentieth century. The journeys becoming systematic and perhaps most tightly connected to pilgrimages from the Middle Ages on assured the “transfer” of ideas, attitudes and cultural materials in the widest sense; the journeys and personal encounters (of course, taking place, in part, through correspondence) of the more cultured layers mainly, are to be highly appreciated from the viewpoint of the history of mentalities and society.</abstract>

“Journeys are Meaningful” (Travelling, Travellers, Literary Periods, Literary Journeys)

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Travelling was not less popular in ancient times than nowadays. People would set out for distant lands with various purposes: to trade, to do business, to gain information, to further develop science, to fight a battle, to visit sacred sites, and last but not least, they travelled with political-administrative purposes. Those who returned from these voyages often shared their exotic experiences; sometimes they even put them down on paper (like Herodotus, Pausanias, Caesar, etc.]. When somebody’s journey or delegation had not been very successful, they could still cosmeticize the story when telling it in the City, in case there had not been any witnesses to tell otherwise. On the other hand, such cases could easily be exploited by the prosecutor in critical situations such as a trial: Cicero used this exact method in his attack against Piso.</abstract>

Piso the Rambler: Travelling and Tracking in Cicero’s Rhetoric Discourse

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The Pre-Raphaelite artists and poets rejected contemporary conventional style in art, and did not concern themselves with the representation of contemporary life either. They viewed the surrounding social life as sordid, and reached back to the Middle Ages both for technique and subject matter. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and later William Morris found inspiration in late medieval art and literature. They took their subjects from history, legend, religion or poetry, focusing on moral or psychological issues, and expressed fascination for beauty as a value of spiritual nature. This paper examines three of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s medieval fantasy pictures (The Tune of Seven Towers, The Blue Closet and A Christmas Carol), which prompt a meditative and imaginative response through their enigmatic references, and thus attest the mysterious feature of Pre-Raphaelite medieval imagery. The paper discusses their enigmatic nature in the light of William Morris’s early dream poems The Tune of Seven Towers and The Blue Closet, written on the relevant Rossetti pictures. A parallel reading of poem and picture evidences how Pre-Raphaelite medievalism in painting can invite the onlooker for an inner journey through exploring an imagined referential background.</abstract>

The Pre-Raphaelite Journey into the Middle Ages

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> In my study I deal with descents to the underworld and hell in literature in the 20th century and in contemporary literature. I will focus on modem literary reinterpretations of the myth of Orpheus, starting with Rilke’s Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes. In Seamus Heaney’s The Underground. in the Hungarian Istvan Baka’s Descending to the Underground of Moscow and in Czesław Miłosz’s Orpheus and Eurydice underworld appears as underground, similarly to the contemporary Hungarian János Térey’s play entitled Jeramiah. where underground will also be a metaphorical underworld which is populated with the ghosts of the famous deceased people of Debrecen, and finally, in Péter Kárpáti’s Everywoman the grave of the final scene of the medieval Everyman will be replaced with a contemporary underground station. I analyse how an underground station could be parallel with the underworld and I deal with the role of musicality and sounds in the literary works based on the myth of Orpheus.</abstract>

Orpheus in the Underground

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Analyzing Stevens’s 1952 The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain I trace the laborious journey the persona of the poem undertakes - an external as well as an internal adventure - transforming thus the world into a possible home. I show how the poem - through its self-reflexive nature and complex system of interwoven external and internal images and circular movements - may offer the persona a sense of self and home in space and time among the fragments of the broken universe. </abstract>

Homeward Journey through Poetry: Wallace Stevens’s The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Saturn is the planet of melancholy, about which Walter Benjamin writes: “I came into the world under the sign of Saturn - the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.” W. G. Sebald’s prose poetics seems to be driven by this motion, which is more than a simple state of being: it is a way of perceiving the world as well as a way of writing, perpetual transition, walk, halt, deviation from the road, getting lost and finding the way back. The paper reflects on W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn (Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine englische Wallfahrt, 1995], a unique literary achievement deeply embedded into the history of literature, culture and the arts, which can be best construed from the direction of “the order of melancholy.” On the pages of the book the reader can traverse, together with the Sebald-narrator, a route in East Anglia, with digressions in various directions of (culture) history. The journey in the concrete physical space turns into an inner journey, into a spiritual pilgrimage; the traversed locations become documents of destruction and transience. From the perspective of the order of melancholy places are determined by their relations, temporality and role in history rather than by their concrete geographic coordinates. The infinitely rich construction of the narrative creates a continuous passage between the local and the universal, the concrete locations of the journey and the scenes of world history, between the time of the journey and the (colonial] past, between East and West. The traversed historical, cultural and medial spaces displace the perception of human existence and result in the incommensurable aesthetic experience of the Sebaldian prose.</abstract>

A Melancholy Journey through Landscapes of Transience

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The present paper aims at analyzing the significance and occurrence of pilgrimages as inner and outer journeys, focusing on their form(s) and role(s] in today’s postmodern society. The introductory part presents the phenomenon from a theoretical point of view, that is taking into consideration its possible definitions (e.g. as a religious phenomenon in pre-Christian and Christian cultures from the Middle Ages to the present: and pilgrimages in literature). The core of the paper then discusses Paulo Coelho’s novel entitled The Pilgrimage. A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom, which, though extremely popular, has not yet undergone any significant literary analysis. We shall examine the protagonist’s spiritual journey from the perspective of the postmodern human condition. The questions that the paper tries to answer also refer to the relationship between the novel and different religions such as Christianity and New Age. respectively neo-pagan movements that are the product and proof of postmodern pluralism at the same time. </abstract>

The Pilgrimage as Inner and Outer Journey in Paulo Coelho’s The Pilgrimage

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> In Rose Tremain’s The Road Home, the culture clash of the British and the East-Central European is portrayed through a complex symbolism centred on images of food, consumption and waste. This literary representation may shed light on British literary auto-images, as well as hetero-images of the Eastern European immigrant. The novel’s presentation of this culture shock is defined by the cultural historical and economic circumstances of the parties. Food and material provide the symbolic sphere where the relationship between Britain and East-Central Europe is characterized in terms of capitalist worldview as opposed to a post-communist existence. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the most important intertext for Tremain’s novel. Hamlet is obsessed with the vulnerability of material in light of the spiritual value attached to it in the form of human soul. Stephen Greenblatt’s ideas on food, waste and the Christian belief in divine existence residing in material objects - ideas that originate in early modern times - shed light on the motif of material and food in The Road Home. Seen through the symbolism of food and the idea of differing values being attached to matter, the narrative identity of Lev, the protagonist of Tremain’s work, experiences drastic change due to his encounter with the capitalist, British ‘other’. </abstract>

The Image of the East-Central European in Rose Tremain’s The Road Home

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The paper examines the view and representation of space in Terézia Mora’s prose, primarily based on her novel entitled The Only Man on the Continent (Der einzige Mann auf dem Kontinent). In the universe of the novel the perception of space basically determines the individual’s space of action and highly influences his self-image as well as his attitude toward alterity. The city not only functions as space, but also forms a multicultural medium which becomes itself the subject of reflection and metanarration. In the novel the anthropological places and non-places, in Augé’s sense, change their function and thus the borders of referential, mental and virtual worlds are blurred, the notion of space itself is revaluated. The protagonist is the Ulysses of our days; his journeys and adventures mainly take place in his imagination. In the virtual world he loses his sense of reality, which can also be perceived in the narrative procedures of the text: the novel is in fact the protagonist’s quest for identity, his endless monologue, which is interrupted by the omniscient narrator’s comments from time to time. In the meantime the evident intertextual context also gets shape: the text maintains an ironical intertextual connection with James Joyce’s Ulysses. </abstract>

Change of Place, Space Perception and Topographic Discourse

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> In Jože Hradil’s Faceless Pictures [Slike brez obrazov] the characters go astray or get into the attraction of adventures and set off for a journey. The spiritual and identity shifts can be interpreted along these eternal human desires as well. A patchwork of remembering and forgetting, the internal journeys of identity preservation, spontaneous or forced assimilation, tolerance and all kinds of politics-induced human deformations are depicted in the novel. The text traces the roles of the journey defined by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant such as the search for justice, peace, immortality and finding the spiritual center. This study examines how the concrete physical journey changes into an internal road determining the evolution of personality. </abstract>

Quo Vadis, Homo Viator? / Journeys in Jože Hradil’s Faceless Pictures

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> In my paper I want to deal with the question of identity and Gary Shteyngart’s last novel, Little Failure (2014). The novel is a memoir that deals with young Gary’s struggle as an individual of Russian Jewish origins trying to accommodate himself to the American way of life. America with its multicultural and multiethnic environment puts the immigrant Gary in a very sensitive position. He does not know how to deal with African Americans; shall he avoid them or rim away? Shall he befriend Asian colleagues or not? Are Jewish friends more valuable than others? These are the questions that Gary Shteyngart has to answer and find his own voice. The protagonist of the novel under discussion tries to find his identity which is in continuous change. He tries to figure out in a world filled with cultural, racial and urban conflicts his own identity from the perspective of a former immigrant and as a member of a minority group. The task of my paper is to show how the question of identity has changed and what solution Shteyngart’s novel can offer for the protagonist in the process of identity formation. </abstract>

The Question of Identity in Gary Shteyngart’s Little Failure

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City (2011) is a nonfictional graphic novel which narrates the experiences during a year that the Canadian artist and his family spent living far from home, in the occasionally dangerous and perilous city of the ancient Middle East. Part humorous memoir filled with “the logistics of everyday life,” part an inquisitive and sharp-eyed travelogue, Jerusalem is interspersed with enthralling lessons on the history of the region, together with vignettes of brief strips of Delisle’s encounters with expatriates and locals, with Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities in and around the city, with Bedouins, Israeli and Palestinians. Since the comic strip is considered amongst the privileged genres able to disseminate stereotypes, Jerusalem tackles cultural as well as physical barriers, delimiting between domestic and foreign space, while revealing the historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian present conflict. Using this idea as a point of departure, I employ an imagological method of interpretation to address cross-cultural confusions in analysing the cartoonist’s travelogue as discourse of representation and ways of understanding cultural transmission, paying attention to the genre’s convention, where Delisle’s drawing style fits nicely the narrative techniques employed. Through an imagological perspective, I will also pay attention to the interaction between cultures and the dynamics between the images which characterise the Other (the nationalities represented or the spected) and those which characterise - not without a sense of irony - his own identity (self-portraits or auto-images). I shall take into account throughout my analysis that the source of this graphic memoir is inevitably a subjective one: even though Delisle professes an unbiased mind-set from the very beginning, the comic is at times coloured by his secular views. Delisle’s book is a dark, yet gentle comedy, and his wife’s job at the Doctors Without Borders paired with his personal experiences are paradoxically a gentle reminder that “There’ll always be borders.” In sum, the comic medium brings a sense of novelty to the imagological and hermeneutic conception of the interpretation of cultural and national stereotypes and/or otherness in artistic and literary works.</abstract>

Understanding Jerusalem and its Cross-Cultural Dilemmas in Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles From the Holy City

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 15 (2023): Issue 3 (December 2023)

Volume 15 (2023): Issue 2 (November 2023)

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Volume 12 (2020): Issue 3 (November 2020)

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Volume 11 (2019): Issue 3 (December 2019)

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Volume 7 (2015): Issue 3 (December 2015)

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Volume 5 (2013): Issue 2 (July 2013)

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Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica

 Acta Universitatis Sapientiae,Philologica publishes original, previously unpublished articles in the wide field of philological studies. It is published in one volume and three numbers annually. The printed and online versions of the journal are identical. Papers are double blind peer-reviewed by an international group of reviewers.     Aims and Scope    to publish scientific articles that report research findings in the fields of literature, linguistics and cultural studies;   to offer the possibility of presenting high-quality research　 in the following domains:    Number 1 – Studies on Literature: literary theory, literary history, comparative literary studies;   Number 2 – Studies on Language: theoretical and applied linguistics, language pedagogy, language and culture, translation studies;   Number 3 – Studies on Culture: cultural studies, translation studies;    to promote interdisciplinarity in the field of the humanities;   to disseminate research findings on interculturality, literary connections, linguistic and cultural transfers;   to transmit the literary, linguistic and cultural values of Eastern and Central Europe in the international sphere, without being limited to topics connected to this region;   to ensure the wide visibility of the published research results.    Contact   In order to inquire about current deadlines or any additional information regarding publication in the journal, please write to the Executive Editor, Judit Pieldner, to the following e-mail address: pieldnerjudit@uni.sapientia.ro   Why subscribe and read   Series Philologica contains highly interesting articles in literature, linguistics and cultural studies written by scholars from all over the world.   Why submit   Series Philologica gives you the opportunity to share your ideas and thoughts with a large number of fellow scholars from all over the world.   Rejection rates    30% (Literature)   20% (Language and Linguistics)   15% (Cultural Studies)      Average    20%      Archiving   Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.   Plagiarism Policy   The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process.   Article Processing Charge (APC)   The journal does not have article processing charges (APCs) nor article submission charges. 