Contents

 

Doina Zaharia - Italian Cultural Influences upon England in the Period of the Renaissance

Silvia Florea - Ezra Pound as Model for the Romanian Poetry of the Eighties

Karina Schneider - Othello - The Play of Jealousy?

Dan-Şerban Sava - Love and Violence in Carson McCullers’ Novels

Nicoleta Burduşel - The European Cultural and Intellectual Life at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Ileana Cristea - Africa, Africans and Their Stormy Past

Mirela Petraşcu - Narrative Discourse in Fiction by Women

Liliana Ciocoi-Pop - Aldous Huxley’s Literary Ideas Expressed in Essays and Letters – A Theoretical Approach

Alexandra Mitrea - Norman Mailer’s Sexual Politics

Adriana Neagu - Identity and Alterity in Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude

Nicoleta Răileanu - French Tradition in Huxley’s Brave New World

Lucia Pavelescu - Duality Illustrated in New Terms in Anthony Burgess’s Novels

 

Abstracts

 

"Ezra Pound as Model for the Romanian Poets of the Eighties"

 Florea, Silvia

 

Abstract: The approach has been less concerned explicitly to relate Pound's poetry to his critical ideas, nor, when dealing to with his influence on Romanian poetry, to make final judgments about the sundry poetic output of the eighties, rather the approach is intended to be more opportune in helping to sort out just how much and exactly what dimensions of his poetry and poetics have been consonantly recuperated, integrated and made functional in our poetry.

 

Keywords: (anti)metaphor-ism ; total poetry ; dissociation of sensibility; experimental; dissimulation, metatext; assimilation; organic; juxtaposition; commonplace.

 

 

“Love and Violence in Carson McCullers’ Novels”

Sava, Dan-Şerban

 

Abstract: What impresses the reader in Carson McCullers’ novels is the rigorous, geometrically-designed structure of her novels. However, the pattern differs from one piece to another: circular with four spokes to a hub in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter; couples evolving into love triangles in Reflections in a Golden Eye; ‘rotating’ love triangle in The Ballad of the Sad Café, pyramidal structure in The Member of the Wedding; two pairs of opposing characters with symbolic value in Clock Without Hands. Despite this distinct individual pattern, there is one ‘disguised’ narrative pattern common to all her novels, suggesting a gradual glide from order to disorder, sometimes to general commotion, i.e. that fact that the first sentence or paragraph always illustrates order and often voices the theme, whereas the last paragraph suggests disorder. Moreover, the thematic common denominator, applicable to her entire fiction, is “love as a driving and a linking force of the community.”

Fully expanded in the essay Loneliness . . . An American Malady, this idea represents the bridge that leads from I (the lonely individual in search for love) to We (his/her aspirations of finding love and communication out side the ‘inner’ room). Though, when love is unrequited, order becomes unbalanced in both worlds, violence breaks out and eventually the individual returns to the condition of I, i.e. to the inner room. In other words, it is the American adaptation of the classical Gothic motif of imprisonment in the haunted castle, flight-and-pursuit, and the final succumbence to the villain.

 

Keywords: antithesis, Bildungsroman, Carson McCullers, Gothic, Hegelian pattern, inner room, outer room, synthesis, thesis, vicious circle.

 

 

“Norman Mailer’s Sexual Politics in Ancient Evenings”

Mitrea, Alexandra

 

Abstract: The paper explores the power-structured relationships whereby women are controlled by men in Norman Mailer’s work in general, Ancient Evenings in particular. An ample space is devoted to an analysis of Mailer’s views regarding sex and sexuality as expressed in his non-fictional work Advertisements for Myself. Mailer’s fiction is investigated from the perspective of the libidinal circuits which are controlled by men. The paper also goes into Mailer’s “sexistentialism,” showing how in the case of men, it translates into a test of self played according to a demanding performance ethic. In Ancient Evenings, however, for Mailer’s men, sexuality is nothing but a means of gaining power, whereas for women it is a means of gratifying their libidinal desires. This makes us fully agree to the label stuck to Mailer, that of a “phallic narcissist.”

 

Keywords: sexuality, mythology, libido, power, patriarchy, phallic narcissism, Freud, gnosticism.

 

 

“Identity and Alterity in Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude”

Neagu, Adriana

 

Abstract: The article is excerpted from a book-length comparative literature study of postmodernist textual practice, Sublimating the Postmodern Discourse: toward a Post-Postmodern Fiction in the Writings of Paul Auster and Peter Ackroyd (Sibiu: Lucian Blaga University Press, 2001). Drawing on core concepts of the philosophy of the subject and Paul Ricoeur’s seminal work in the structures of narrativity and subjectivity, it proposes an archetypal-metatextual investigation of the discourse of identity in Paul Auster’s debut prose, The Invention of Solitude. It performs an in-depth textual analysis aiming to uncover the multiple avatars of spiritual parenthood and (af)filiation in Auster’s work. Central to the analyses are Ricoeur’s theses on the dependence of self-knowledge on signification and symbolisation processes, and the metaphoricity inherent in all locutionary acts. The chief argument that the study advances is that, in the final analysis, Auster foregrounds writing as the very medium of interconnection shaping self and subjectivity.

 

Keywords: identity, representation, voice, selfhood, sameness, difference, otherness, genesis, authenticity, consciousness

 

 

“Duality Illustrated in New Terms in Anthony Burgess’s Novels”

Pavelescu, Lucia

 

Abstract: The examination of the three novels of the Burgessian canon tried to demonstrate that they are constructed on the same Manichaean pattern of doubles, which applies to each of them, irrespective of the fact that they were labelled differently (i.e. a dystopian novel of ideas – The Wanting Seed –, a cacotopia – A Clockwork Orange –, and an eschatological spy thriller – Tremor of Intent). Burgess invites the reader to make a choice (be it historical, moral or political) which proves to be false, because the doubles make up one single reality. The real choice is to be made between this reality and another evil which is even worse – neutrality. And this neutrality may take the shape of a sociological/historical phase – the Interphase in The Wanting Seed –, a condition – Alex becoming a “thing” in A Clockwork Orange – or a character – Theodorescu in Tremor of Intent.

 

Keywords: free moral choice, neutrality, Pelagianism, Augustinianism, History, Psychology, Politics.