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G. Călinescu highlighted the absence of a major balzacian novel in Romanian literature and set out to fill this gap himself. Enigma Otiliei, has become one of the most frequently cited examples of the genre in Romanian literature. While many key balzacian elements are present, however, the novel often strays from its professed model. This paper examines the complex ways in which Călinescu’s novel both adheres to and deviates from the balzacian tradition. Modern themes, sensibilities, and literary techniques permeate Călinescu’s work. Critics have noted the presence of humor and the predominance of scenes over summary, action, or plot. The most significant deviation from the balzacian novel, however, lies in the complexity of Călinescu’s main characters, and, consequently, in relationships that are much harder to define. Contrary to secondary characters that conform to balzacian types, Felix and Pascalopol transcend their suggested social categories, be it through their fraught and contradictory relationship itself – a complex interplay of jealousy and affection. The study also addresses the challenge of integrating the intellectual into social categories and into balzacian types. Otilia is said to be an enigma, but, as the author states himself, she is an enigma for Felix, and for Pascalopol incidentally. Another focus of this paper is the influence of the reflector character in instilling ambiguity within the narrative, a feature more characteristic of 20th-century literature than the balzacian tradition.

Luigi Malerba’s novel Ithaca forever, a rewriting of the second part of the Odyssey, presents what happened in Ithaca after Ulysses’ return from the perspective of the protagonist and his wife in the form of contrasting alternative monologues. Interested in the borderline between truth and lies, in the relationship between reality and fiction, between life and art, the author depicts the recognition of Ulysses by those close to him as a complex game of masks, in which the characters in the foreground assume a role without fully controlling it.

In her novel, Madeline Miller proposes reconstructing Circe's legends from classical sources by offering a feminine, even feminist, perspective on events. In the protagonist's account, the witch's history appears as a delineation from the despotic deities and a way of coming closer to the mortals which ultimately ammounts to abandoning her own condition. The central part of the novel starts from the story of Odissey and continues with events narrated in Telegony, poem which was dedicated to the son of Odysseus and Circe who unwillingly became the killer of his father. Although she follows the Homeric narrative in detail, the author sometimes relates critically to the literary model. The events told by Odysseus and Circe in a heroic or debunking form reveal their polivalence. In the extension of the Homeric narrative, the last part of the novel encompasses the events that occurred after the return to Itaca of Odysseus, unable to find fulfillment on his native lands because of his thirst for the unknown and adventures. The hero's image gradually darkens, the author accentuating his violence or his generalized suspicion. Reconstructing the events from Circe's perspective allows Madeline Miller to delineate from the Odyssey which she has followed scrupulously up to a certain point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Анистратенко Антонина, Мойсей Антоний. Альтернативная история и христианский мотив в новейший украинской литературе. Христианский мотив в неомодерном романе достаточно характерен для украинской литературы ХХ - ХХI вв. Эту проблему исследовали авторитетные теоретики литературы Т. Бовсунивська, Т. Гундорова, С. Митосек, Р. Нич и др. Однако, говоря об альтернативной истории, важная роль христианского мотива или библейского концепта до сих пор не была описана в ходе генологичнои исследования. Выяснить какова же степень его влияния в литературном процессе и, в частности, в современном романе - цель представленной статьи. Ключевые слова: альтернативная история, христианство, современный роман, картина мира. Anistratenko Antonina, Moysey Antoniy. Alternative history and christian themes in modern ukrainian literature. Christian themes is one of characteristics in neomodern novel of the Ukrainian literature in XX - XXI century. This problem was investigated by wellknown theorists of literature: T. Bovsunovska, T. Hundorova, S. Mitosek, R. Nych and others. However, we are going to speak about alternative history, the important role of Christian motive or the biblical concept have not been investigated in the genealogic research. First of all, the mental outlook of the Ukrainian nation and therefore the average Ukrainian world view have been shaped by millennia of Christianity. Our goal is to find out in this article what is the impact in the literary process and in particular in the modern novel it make. In the article analise in comparative way consideration of the separate factors and influences that are reflected in the history of Ukrainian literature, but what are situated in the field of history, sociology, religion, culture, ethnology: Religious dominant component is visible in the traditional worldview of Ukrainians, tradition in family life, demythologization passion, canonization features of the image "a women "and"a man"and others. Such images build the foundation for the development of the genre in Ukrainian literature. Ivan Bilyk wrote down his novels for the reconstruction of the national worldview and the historical consciousness of the Ukrainian nation, V. Vladko resumed the canon of science fiction in our literature, and even, to some extent, took part in it formation, and made the first attempt to implement a quality alternative history novel in two points of bifurcation. These works belong to the history of the origin and existence of Christianity in Ukraine. When analyzing consept sources and literary texts in the genre of alternative history come to the conviction we may makr, that the most important stylistic markers of alternative history, the experience of the presently known Ukrainian literary texts, are the following: immersion in the national mental peculiarities of historical development and the laws of motion and change historical events; hermeneutic communication alternative history of Christianity. It is seen that most of the works of alternate history, the written material in history after the advent of Christianity, or, indeed, the material of the process or its negation; noticeable characteristic features science fiction works are diving in mythology and esoteric knowledge. Here is also criticism of the theory of linear time-space in a general sense. Mimetic techniques began to attract other arts, science, and a wide range of formal and specific formations. Key words: alternative history, Christianity, Modern novel, the worldview.

Colloquial language has become a real tool that everybody should handle for a better understanding of the world (s)he lives in. The present paper is meant to highlight those particular situations that we encounter everyday within the act of communication and to point out some slang lexical resources detected in Spanish modern novels, underlining the fact that conversational language does not need to be regarded as inferior, but just distinctive and special.

This article deals with the role of the literary topos of the city and its importance in the Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s novels. According to the Daniela Hodrová’s typology we attempt to demonstrate, through the analysis of some novels, that the Serna’s city is specified as “the city-subjec”. The author personifies the city and he fuses the soul of novel’s heroes with the local atmosphere. The protagonists are united themselves with the place and ambient, that are influenced by its attitude and the personality. We distinguished two main conceptions of the city in Serna’s works: “a modern city” and “a city-refugium” and their modalities. The modern city is characterized by its ambivalence: it offers an attractive and adventurous modern lifestyle, on the other hand it shows an existential chaos and dehumanization. As opposed to the topos of “the modern city” appears the topos of “the city-refugium” characterized by the historical memory and mythical tradition.

Fairy tales, issued from folklore, belong to a common heritage and that is why they undergo a constant transformation. In 2012, Amélie Nothomb draws the inspiration for her 21st novel Barbe bleue from this inexhaustible source. The paper discusses modifications introduced by the famous Belgian writer to Charles Perrault's version of the fairy tale of Bluebeard observed in the chronotope and in the way characters are created, particularly in the aesthetic and spiritual proximity between the protagonist from Nothomb's novel and its prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The image of the door, either literal or metaphorical, allows us to explore of the fundamental dynamism that characterizes the oeuvre of Levrero and to specify his existential position as author : a writer who finds himself on the threshold of a text to come. In fact, whether it be through the spatial dynamic of the first texts or through the continual mise-en-scène of writing that never ceases to begin, we observe the omnipresent projection of self towards an ideal and chimeric oeuvre of surpassing. In the article, I focus on several texts (El Lugar, Desplazamientos, La Novela Luminosa) to suggest a panoramic view that underlines continuity in places where some have seen full-on rupture. These thematics also allow the illustration of a contemporary obsession with beginnings. In Levrero’s work, a response, already present in the work of Juan Emar and Macedonio Fernández, to the disorientation of current creators crystalizes : to only write beginnings, to focus on a never-realized textual promise that is still being made.

As the nineteenth-century novel seeks to depict what Balzac calls “the present in progress”, novelists have to devise their own way of creating an ending, a way that would not be inherited from drama like the denouement was. One may argue that the novel is promoted to the dignity of Philosophy mostly because the genre is able to embody a new conception of time, which can be described as an entropic process—i.e. a story whose end is not perceived as a Revelation but as a dissipation (extinction of species or exhaustion of all possibilities). The article examines the recurrent novelistic figure of “The Last Man” from Cousin de Grainville (Le Dernier Homme) and Mary Shelley (The Last Man) to Balzac (La Peau de chagrin) and Proust (Albertine disparue et Le Temps retrouvé).

The novel as Lukacs defines it up to Dostoievsky is characterized by a hero who dreams of a life he is able to represent to himself: for this hero, the ideal life is a life that can be projected through the figures of exemplary models. At about the same time as Lukacs, while writing The Theory of the Novel, foresees the fading out of such a hero and, along with him, the end of the genre, Jacques Rivière calls for a new kind of novel and a new breed of hero. For Rivière, this new hero does not dream of a life that is already mapped out, but of a life that is unknown, or to put it differently, a life of endless possibilities. This article looks at the way in which this change in what is defined as an ideal life is at once an event in the history of the novel and a consequence of modernity. Flaubert’s last novel, Bouvard et Pécuchet, serves as an illustration for this transformation, which concerns the way both character and reality are defined.