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This paper shows that Baudelaire had a great importance for the evolution of modern ideas concerning the art of theatre. In some fragments of his writings, Baudelaire imagines a hyperbolical show, which should be able to combine pantomime, symbolical masks, magical tricks, suggestive music and painting, as well as the most powerful resources of verbal language. By these ideas, Baudelaire anticipates the views of Antonin Artaud (Le Théâtre et son double) and Hermann Hesse (Der Steppenwolf) on what they call a magical theatre, with an entrance open only for mad people. The paper is based on a comparative interpretation of Baudelaire, Artaud, Hesse, and on a very pertinent interdisciplinary approach, meant to recreate the dialogue between theatre and other arts at the very beginning of our modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this written paper is to present the conclusions I reached after investigating in the following topic: the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun as the first modernist novelist in Norway. It is insisted upon the new type of literature he theorised upon in his programmatic article, The Life of the Subconscious. The work required a practical accomplishment, meaning an analysis of some of his novels. Hunger, his breakthrough novel, is the one that is given the most attentive analysis in this particular case. Modernist characteristics such as solitude, estrangement, revolt against the society and against the divinity are concepts that best support its positioning as the first modernist novel in Norway. The analysis on the film made after the book presents it in a different perspective. In order to come with a contribution to an interesting investigation of Hamsun's world, I have chosen to analyse Pan, another captivating work. The key-conflict of the novel, the one between nature and culture has pretty attentively been described. A comparison between two distinct writings, on the one hand, and modern, on the other hand, pertaining to the same author was the most compressed part of my written paper. This refers to Hunger and to what Pan has in common with it until a certain point of the analysis. The conclusion encompasses a reinforcement of what modernity signifies within the hamsunian universe, together with the sincere hope that an attentive reading will be useful for those interested in Knut Hamsun's misleading style. This article was presented at the Hamsun 2009 Conference during a workshop organized for young researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper tries to offer some arguments in favour of articulating an Orthodox social theology suitable for the challenges of the present world. The analysis starts from the actual moment characterized, on the one side, by the consequences of the communism' fall, especially in Europe, but also by the intensification, at a global level, of the debate regarding the so-called post-secular relationship between religion and the public area, on the other side. Within this context, the local Orthodox Churches from East-Europe are called to make use of their regained freedom and to take part to the society project of the countries where they preach the Gospel of our Saviour Jesus Christ. In order to do this, the Orthodox theology must rediscover the foundations of its proper public involvement and reexamine the eventual inhibitions, cautions or prejudices concerning its spiritual and, at the same time, historical mission. A commonplace of the Western analysis about Orthodoxy, turned into a reproach, is the one concerning the supposed indifference of it towards the social crises and towards society in general, a fact explicable if we have in mind the close relationship between the Eastern Church and the political authority of any kind. This is why the Orthodox Church must have a systematic opinion on these aspects, too, in its desire to have a normative message within the present society. In fact, it is an inevitable step on the way of retrieving the prophetic conscience, a conscience almost totally insensitive during the decades of communist dominion. Based on the critical genuine conscience of the Church, the Orthodox social theology must help in the first place the ecclesial body to understand better the data of modernity and the profound effects of it, both at a personal and at a collective level. Following the patristic pattern of the dialogue between the data of faith and those of the world, the Orthodox social theology is called, through the actual reading of Tradition, to offer to the philanthropic practice of the Church a visionary frame, to establish a more visible relationship between ortho-doxy and ortho-praxy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]