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The present paper discusses art as an environment for communicating meanings, as shared by the members of a community or culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries; for this purpose, the paper focuses on the changes taking place in cultural production as well as the consumption practices of the digital age: more specifically, on the shift from a goods-centred economy to a service-centred economy, on the experience as a commodity, on interactive art and relational aesthetics, as well as on the emergence of a new way of production and consumption. The paper also discusses a possible modernity and the cultural differences that appear in the works of Eastern European artists (and Romanian artists in particular), works which reflect the transition from communism to post-communism and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to present the way in which the biography of the Moldavian prince Dimitrie Cantemir entered the Romanian culture at the beginning of the 19th century. Written in English, as an abridged version of a French prototext, the biographical text about Dimitrie Cantemir reached the Romanian culture through a German intermediary, the preface to the second German edition of Descriptio Moldaviae. Almost simultaneously it appeared in Romanian translation in two versions: as foreword to Scrisoarea Moldovei (1825) and as independent text, in the periodical Bibliotecă românească (1829). The purpose of this paper is to identify the circulation of the biographical text from French to English, German, and Romanian, with a focus on the textual changes along this route. Furthermore, this paper also concentrates on the versions of the biography, initially designed as afterword, then as foreword, and which also circulated as independent text in Romanian. The analysis of these versions focuses on the intentionality of each translation: a paratextual element with an informative scope, and an autonomous text, published in a periodical, whose purpose was the education of the Romanian readership, and the creation of a national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modality is characterized by the important fact that it may be found within the grammar of all languages, which cannot be said of mood, for instance, another category of grammar. The present paper aims to identify deontic modal markers, specifically four English modal verbs, in George Orwell's Animal Farm, and analyze the grammatical / lexical instruments used for rendering them into five Romanian translated editions. The conclusions reveal that, although English seems easier in lexicalizing the meanings of modality, Romanian tends to be more explicative and thus, more comprehensive, due to its analytic character, which provides it with more variety in the choice of words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to outline the process of humanization using certain concepts proposed by Daniel Stern in his works. Whereas Marc Richir has drawn on Husserl and applied phenomenological concepts upon psychoanalytical theories, for example those of Donald Winnicott, in Stern we can find an alternative to this process. By following Stern's thematizations of the infant's life, as they evolved throughout his work, I want to analyse the concepts of affect attunement, moments of meeting and vitality affects, so that I can prove that there might be such a thing as the Sternian process of humanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Founded in 1909 by W. Doegen in Berlin, the Sound Archive (Lautarchiv) was enriched during the First World War with valuable texts and folk songs recorded on discs and wax cylinders or recorded on paper. The research took place in 32 of the 175 prisoner-of-war camps of the Allied Powers, which covered the territory of Germany at that time. The prisoners came from European, Asian, African countries and the United States of America, and the research was carried out by a team of 50 German specialists in the languages spoken in those countries. Among them are three camps with prisoners from the Kingdom of Romania and from Bessarabia located in the perimeter of the cities of Chemnitz, Mannheim and Lamsdorf. The study presents some of the results obtained by the professors M. Friedwagner and H. Urtel in the research of the Romanian prisoners in those camps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying primarily on Bruno Latour's works, such as "We Have Never Been Modern" (1991) and "An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns" (2012), alongside influential texts by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Peter Osborne, Quentin Meillassoux, and Justine Huppe, and contributions from New Modernist Studies scholars like Sascha Bru and Jean-Michel Rabaté, among others, this paper sets two aims. Firstly, it seeks to articulate a concept of modernism distinct from both Latourian perspectives and the approach of the New Modernist Studies, but aiming to foster a dialogue between the two. I will coin it "conceptual modernism" and I will explore the way in which through "We Have Never Been Modern," Bruno Latour transcends his role as a mere sociologist of science, making a significant impact on the humanities. In the second part of the essay, I endeavor to define the paradox of modernism, characterized by a discourse asserting the failure of theories alone to accurately represent truth about reality and the world. The emerging theoretical landscape, indebted to anthropology, shaped by Latour's prominence in the early 21st century, necessitates an interaction between theory and practice. Latour brings theory "down to Earth" as I will illustrate in the final section of this paper. I will explore how Latour, as a new kind of Modernist thinker, addresses this paradox by establishing and practicing a novel "deal" between words (ideas, theory) and things (fieldwork). This involves not only traditional academic pursuits such as writing books and giving lectures but also engaging in various forms of fieldwork, functioning as an anthropologist, artist, scene director, and even a poet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A contested notion, the figure of the translator--like that of the author--is (and has always been), I would argue, a travelling concept. It is, however, a powerful force, perpetually wielding a certain enchanting lure over those involved in the field of literary culture and academic studies. Nevertheless, the translator still currently lacks the appropriate symbolic capital. In the wake of poststructuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial theories, my paper examines contemporary translation by mapping the network of interacting structures and transformations that underpin ongoing literary phenomena. The said conceptual frameworks start to fade with the expansion of planetary studies and relational aesthetics, and the birth of post-internet communication technologies. Globalization and digitization, as well as world and systemic approaches to literary studies, have decisively altered the structure of the field, establishing a 21st-century translational symptomatology. The importance of translators and the ways in which they work and transport works across international landscapes have, indeed, recently come to the fore. Nevertheless, the question of how the translator should be redefined in our late global society remains deeply contested. Defined either as a media construct or as a set of textual images, the translator still seems to inhabit the realm of authorial presence and/or absence. No work has hitherto examined the question of the translator in ecological terms, even if ecology and literature have, indeed, been associated in many ways. By exploring the diversity of translation theories and practices, my paper will reveal the mechanisms through which our current literary system works, showing that--in a post-critical age--'the ascension of the translator' constitutes an unfolding site of controversy and dissent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims at analysing the extent to which motivation and autonomy shape the process of learning English for medical purposes (EMP). This research paper was designed to investigate the connection between students' motivation and their autonomy level in the context of online training during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to the traditional classes. A quantitative approach was developed to explore students' motivation to learn EMP by means of technology-enhanced training. The article presents the data obtained and represents a point of departure for exploring more effective methods of using technology to both motivate medical students and enhance their autonomy in learning EMP. Furthermore, it generates a basis for designing EMP courses in an effort to encourage self-regulated learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper presents the results of an empirical research that was conducted last year in the Romanian business environment. The analyzed corpus comprises approximately 2000 associations of the sustainable development concept, all provided by 627 respondents (employees in the Romanian business environment whose main interest is to use information technology properly in order to create new paradigms and values that will help contribute to a more affluent, creative and harmonious society). The main aim of this paper is to analyse how the employees from the Romanian business environment grasp the concept of sustainable development and relate to it, firstly, on the linguistic level and secondly, on the cultural level. The point of departure is the standpoint that the sustainable development concept is based upon three main pillars: environment, economy and society and it focuses on social sub-themes. Within this framework, we consider cultural diversity and intercultural understanding through language and its infinite association possibilities. Through language, the individual relates to certain concepts and this is done affectively. Therefore, the concept related approach is not univocal, but it involves both positive (e.g., future, environment, education, growth, resources, recycle, responsibility, health, nature) and negative associations (e.g., climate change, global warming, compromise, poverty) which are always culturally conditioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a preliminary exploration of the question of literacy among women in Byzantium and the kingdom of Hungary, focusing on the types of writing that are most likely to indicate the participation of women in the written culture. The paper discusses the historiography of women’s literacy the Byzantine and Western areas and some examples of letters destined to noble women from the Banat are discussed. There are several private letters addressed to women dating from the 1360s. For example, the letters of the Himfi family show that women in this family received letters from the monarch, bishops, noblemen, knezes, and family members. By the second half of the fourteenth century there is evidence of common use of written communication through private letters among nobles, including noblewomen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper is threefold. Firstly, in line with Stephen Ross and Susan Friedman's contributions in Modernism and theory: a critical debate (2009), our paper highlights how modernism survived throughout the second half of the 20th century in critical, literary and cultural theory. Secondly, it explains why postmodernism has failed both as a scientific (theoretical) discourse and as a periodization category. Lastly, the paper states the importance of both the achronological and non-historical category of "contemporary" and "the modern turn" in the Modernist Studies today, showing why these are major players in rethinking both modernism and the contemporary literature on the grounds of the former. Today, what we are witnessing is not the afterlife of modernism, but rather its full and "true" modernist life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of Gradiva's affinities with (pre-)Christian symbolism through the discussion of two texts representing Gradiva: Ghirlandaio's Birth of Saint John the Baptist and Wilhelm Jensen's Gradiva. A Pompeian Fancy. This article analyses the symbolism of fire and cinders in Jensen's texts as well as the relations of this symbolism with Saint John the Baptist via the figure of Gradiva. Taking on theoretical concepts from Bachelard's Psychoanalysis of Fire and Derrida's Cinders, this paper suggests that Gradiva symbolizes the anima figure which, having been repressed through an Apollonian preference, reemerges in key moments in the art and literature of different epochs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper is twofold. The first task which we proposed is to offer an alternative interpretation of Winnicott's concept of the subjective object. This interpretation will be not psychoanalytical, but hermeneutical or even dialogical and it will approach the possibility of human understanding. The second task will concern the possibility of an interpersonal hermeneutics, drawing from the work of Martin Buber and Alfred Schutz. Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer will also be interrogated so that we can establish the possibility of the authentic listening to the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of understanding in a sense of comprehension is well illustrated in literature by Javier Marias -- a Spanish writer born in 1951, son of the Spanish philosopher Julian Marias Aguilera (1914-2005), who lived a great deal of time abroad (America) and who also studied and taught in England. The paper is focused, from an inter- and multi-disciplinary approach of philosophy, literature and ethics, on the problem of the "exile from the world," with a special focus on identity, trans-world identity and implications for the moral aspects. The present paper begins with a summary analysis of the idea of exile from the world, continuing with several considerations on the membranes of the world and the membranes of the good, and ending with a few words about the world, truth and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Modernist Studies, Critical Theory and the work of Bruno Latour, the aim of my paper is to explore how Romanian modernist literature from the late 19th century to the first three decades of the 20th century engages with, participates in, and contributes to a culture of modernity. I will investigate the way in which Romanian modernist literature negotiates the relationship that the modern society constructs between the public and private dimensions of life, starting from two important sociocultural and economic phenomena: (1) the intensification of migration, and (2) the development of cultural tourism. In the first part of the article, I will provide an operational definition of the concept of modernity starting from Hartmut Rosa and Bruno Latour's work and discuss its intertwining with literary modernism. In the second part, I will delve into the way that the Romanian modernist characters, both male and female, migrate from one place to another in pursuit of employment opportunities and a better life. In the third part, I will explore the modern context of travelling the world, and the idea of youth culture from both historical and sociological perspectives. This section sets the stage for the final part of the article, in which I will focus on what I consider to be the first modern female cosmopolitan in Romanian literature and I will explore the aspects of modernity that the cosmopolitan novel sheds light on and constructs. The literary modernism discussed in this article spans from the late 19th century, exemplified by Vasile Alecsandri's novel Dridri1 (1871), to novels from the second and third decades of the 20th century, including Codin2 (1926), În lumea Mediteranei3 (1934) by Panait Istrati, and Femei4 (1934) by Mihail Sebastian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine Timothy Bewes's book, Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age, published in 2022 by Columbia University Press. My critical examination will consist of three stages: a contextualizing stage, which involves analysing the macro-ideological context in which Bewes's book is situated (i.e., the status of literary criticism and theory nowadays); a synthetic exposition of the book's main arguments, along with a critical analysis that highlights problematic concepts in Bewes's methodology and arguments. In the first part of the article, I will revise the genealogy of aesthetic regimes, as referred to by Jacques Rancière. These regimes are defined as the relationship between subject, world, language, and text, and I will delve into how this relationship operates in the 21st century. In the second part of the paper, I will tackle Bewes's primary (hypo)theses concerning the free indirect structure of the novel in a postfictional age. The key concept here is "instantiation," which refers to the intrinsic structure of the novel. I aim to connect this concept with the notion of the "narrative unconscious" and explore the idea of authorial responsibility. Additionally, I will draw on Moretti's delimitation of the modern epic and the novel, as well as Mark Fisher's concept of "capitalist realism," to analyse the relationship between the contemporary novel and the (post)ideology of neoliberalism. Lastly, in the final part of my analytical approach, I will offer a critique of Bewes's "totalizing" theory from a world literature perspective. Specifically, I will focus on the unequal dynamics of literatures within the capitalist world-system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Written in the period between 1691 and 1702, probably closer to the former date, Teodor Corbea's Latin-Romanian Dictionary has continuously been an inexhaustible source of research for Romanian culture ever since the late 17th century. Reclining on Albert Szenczi Molnár's Latin-Hungarian Dictionary as a source, as claimed by the author himself, Corbea's dictionary takes over a selected list of Latin words from Szenczi's work, translating or reworking its definitions. The present research is only concerned with the dictionary's entries connected to books, reading, and the library, convinced that this is the first Romanian text containing references to this field of interest. In addition, the paper also examines the historical uses of an unusual word appearing in Corbea's dictionary, bibliotaphus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the case of Irish English with an emphasis on the relationship between language and identity. Within the mosaic of World Englishes, Irish English occupies its own place, as its emergence can be considered a form of resistance from the forces of colonialism. The essay is divided into two main parts. The first section investigates irregularities in morphology and syntax with examples taken from the forms of the language spoken in Galway and Dublin, alongside external influences observed at the phonetic level. From these perspectives, the second part of the paper will further illustrate the status of the Irish language, culture, and identity within the global context, seeking to see if future generations will continue to be part of what now bears the name of Irish nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeing that the majority of folk tales feature a male protagonist, the "Ileana Sâmziana" fairy tale, collected by Petre Ispirescu, represents a deviation from this heroic archetype by focusing on the emperor's daughter, who would become Prince Charming. Circumscribed to the ATU 514 folk motif, i.e., change of sex, it depicts gender fluidity reminiscent of cross-dressing in pubertal rites of passage. Based on these premises, the present paper closely analyses the process of transsexual metamorphosis of the main character. Ultimately, it is aimed to expose any resemblance to traditional formative discourses on masculine social values and determine whether the emperor's daughter should be regarded as a true feminine and /or a heroic figure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses Clement of Alexandria’s Pedagogue, a moral treatise written as a guide for the Christian community of Alexandria, whose wealthy population grew considerably in the second century. The treatise is a rich source of information about the customs of the Greek-Roman society around the end of the second century AD. The author described, listed, and exemplified negative behaviours that Christians had to renounce or avoid. The analysis focuses on the private and social life of Greek–Roman society and especially on the perception of women and their clothing, cosmetics and intimate practices. According to Clement, woman possesses most “bad habits”, and these can turn her into a vicious woman with the ability to corrupt those around her. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Pălatca Commune (Cluj County), a prehistoric (probably elk) antler axe was discovered accidentally. It later came into the possession of a collector. The item is extremely rare, which is why we subjected it to analysis in the present paper. The best analogies found are among the Bronze Age items from the current space of Ukraine and Russia. We believe that the closest analogy is the famous sceptre-axe discovered in Dudarkov, which is particularly remarkable due to the numerous zoomorphic, phytoform and geometric motifs incised on its surface, attributed to the Mnogovalikovaja culture. Based on these correspondences, our assessment is that the axe from Pălatca can be interpreted as a sceptre, similar to other antler items already discovered in the Mid- and Late Bronze Age in Transylvania or neighbouring regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transnational reading of Tar Baby and the identification of certain aspects of this theoretical framework will be the focus of this paper. Even though, as a whole, transnationalism seems to be a rather negative option given the fact that the novel's ending is a perfect cul-de-sac, Morrison's approach to solving this crux is by deconstructing the ever-present binary of myth vs. reality. The opposition between colonization and the black cultural mythos as represented in the novel by the "love-me-hate-me" relationship between Jadine and Son seems to be the most compelling rendering of the transnationalism from above / transnationalism from below binary. When Jadine manages to escape this binary, by acquiring a new identity through what Lionnet and Shih call a minoritized culture, the transnationalism from above / transnationalism from below paradigm is reinstated by the irreconcilable antagonism between Valerian and Son. In the end, by reinterpreting the myth of Eden through the lenses of the tar baby parable, Morrison literally creates, both out of clay and tar, a transnational identity for Jadine who leaves behind a traditional and dual world, proving that her reality is more compelling than Son's or Valerian's myths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The old book collection of the University Library of Cluj -Napoca contains items of mixed origins: The library of the Transylvanian Museum Association, the book collection of the university, the library of the Reformed College of Orăștie (Szászváros) etc. The goal of this paper is to present a segment of this diverse collection: We have selected fifteen protestant theologians, so-called "protestant reformers," who were active during the 16th century: Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Georg Major, Johann Brenz, David Chyträus, John Calvin, Thédore de Béze, Pietro Martire Vermigli, Heinrich Bullinger, Rudolf Gwalther, Ludwig Lavater, Johannes Oekolampad, Wolfgang Musculus, Benedictus Aretius and Girolamo Zanchi. I have examined a total of 97 prints from this theologians. Nearly half of these volumes were in the Carpathian Basin before 1600. Among the owners of that time, there is a similar number of Transylvanian Saxons and Hungarians from the Partium and Transylvania, the former in slightly larger proportions. Throughout the 17th century, these were the most important groups of owners as well, but now the group of the Transylvanian Reformed Hungarians is the largest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-modern disappointment with modern utopia, with the megalopolis as its preferred example, represents the general context of the present study. More particularly, in the context of contemporary re-evaluations of modernity, the paper tries to see whether holding to the validity of the modern paradigm, in respect to the scientific model, may still create space for contemporary utopia. In the realm of architecture, such texts do exist, but a framework of analysis is needed in order to make their evaluation. Addressing the intrinsic relation between myth and utopia, under its various forms (rural - city, nature - culture, domus - megalopolis), the paper borrows from science-fiction criticism considerations on such discourses and proposes a possible set of criteria for their analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to analyse the novel The Sound of the Mountain (...-Yama no oto, 1949-1954), by Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972), beginning with a storytelling image, or an image that automatically produces a story. The image under scrutiny is auditory, an image of a mysterious, strongly affective intimacy, which sets the narrative tone and generates the function of the unreal (in the sense that follows Bachelard's view) and, implicitly, of the imagination (which truly stimulates the psyche), in an obvious opposition with the function of the real. By regarding the Japanese novel as an internal narration with a "limited" viewpoint, given by the actorial narrative type, since the centre for orientation coincides with the narrative perspective of an actor playing the role of a nucleus-character with a dynamic psychology, the present paper aims to explain, from a poetic and hermeneutic perspective, the meaning of the text beginning from the surface level that hides another view beneath. Moreover, in the case of the Japanese writer in question, the study highlights the search for the appropriate linguistic expression meant to depict the dual appearance of the perceptions, sensations, emotions and ideas that are, on the one hand, clear, precise, but impersonal and, on the other hand, confused, mobile and inexpressible, revealing the means by which Kawabata sometimes tries to extract the abstract from the concreteness of words, in order to give them a purer meaning. Furthermore, by contextualising within the field of Kawabata's literature, the narrative plot of the novel The Sound of the Mountain, which is seemingly devoid of intrigue, climax and denouement, I outlined a narrative technique that I would call a linked novel, an architectonic construction that covers Yasunari Kawabata's entire literary creation, through which the author simultaneously reveals and hides himself, while offering reading and interpretation keys for his works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper advances a new understanding of Fyodor Dostoevsky's first novel, Poor Folk (1846), - as a parody of literary patterns promoted by Natural School's ideology. Dostoevsky builds his text on an underlying network of literary conventions, artistic devices, and intertextual references, used in a parodic manner. In addition, the novel makes use of a complex narratological strategy, in which the two characters play several roles simultaneously. All this turns the text into a literary experiment, intended by the young Dostoevsky to define his original contribution to the Russian literary tradition, in an overt dialogue with Aleksandr Pushkin and Nikolay Gogol. More specifically, it is the revival of the epistolary genre that allows Dostoevsky to engage in a dialog with his two predecessors. Therefore, Dostoevsky's debut novel should not be seen as a simple literary exercise, but, rather, as the assertion of its author's artistic individuality in the context of the literary tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The OCR process is a complex one and with interdisciplinary implications. This paper deals with old historical religious manuscripts and old books to offer solutions for the digitalization process. A high rate of success in the OCR process will help researchers from various fields to use relevant content and to value it in their research. When a research in the field of theology or history is conducted, there are many issues, especially when trying to access old manuscripts. There is no digitalized content to access old Romanian manuscripts and researchers need to learn specific old writing. The focus of the present study is on the problematic technical aspects that we encountered in our attempt to establish the equilibrium ratio between the instruments for the capitalization of the information and the contribution of the specialists in such research studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Institute of Hungarian Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Debrecen formed a research group in 2010 in order to launch the research of Hungarian realms of memory. This paper was written within the frameworks of the research group. Its basic hypothesis is that the identification of Hungary as the Bastion of Christendom is an established part of Hungarian collective memory. This paper attempts to demonstrate the changes of this realm of memory, regarding its meaning and function, from its formation up to the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from some examples of the famous Romanian literary critic and historian G. Călinescu's misreading of some words or lines of the poems he edited, and also quoting a few of his most striking conclusions on Eminescu's erotic life and poems, Romanian philologist I.E. Torouțiu made some methodology observations and reproaches which infuriated the editor. The present paper follows their literary polemic step by step, from its beginning in 1932 to the apparent ceasefire, in 1937. We shall try to locate this episode within our national literature, paying attention to the relevance of the case under discussion for the specific practices of text editing, author ranking, conflicting views, and cultural clash relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the theories of the Mu'tazilite Abū l-Huḏail al-ʿAllāf (d. ca. 841) and Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm an-Naẓẓām (d. 845) with respect to the atomistic structure of reality. The former was one of the first promoters of an atomistic theory in Islamic lands, while the latter was an influent adversary of kalām atomism. I also describe the transfer of this debate into the domain of Arabic philosophy, by examining the anti-atomistic arguments of two Arabic philosophers, Abū Zakarīyā' Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī (d. 974) and Abū-ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn-ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā/Avicenna (d. 1037), with a close focus on the popular argument of the sphere touching a plane. Finally, I argue that Avicenna's interpretation of said argument might have influenced the debates on the continuum in the Latin world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the present paper is to show how both in the autumn of 1918 and before the Union of Transylvania with Romania on 1 December 1918, liberalism and nationalism steered the course of the Romanian nation in Transylvania as it entered the modern era. Romanians had accumulated democratic experience over several decades, with effective results in managing ecclesiastical, educational, cultural, social and economic problems. Our attempt at reconstructing the destiny of the Romanian civil society in the process of laying the democratic foundations of the Union of 1918 has revealed the complex political, economic and social transformations of the Habsburg monarchy from the 1848 revolution to the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the following paper Richard Rorty's legacy is discussed according to the significance he contributed to 20th century philosophy. After a brief characterization of Rorty's thought in general, a selection of themes follows by highlighting certain aspects characteristic of his interests with reference, respectively, to pragmatism and hermeneutics, and to the interconnections of pragmatism, solidarity, and globalisation. As an autonomous research field, closely connected to Rorty's anti-foundationalism, I propose to draw on Hegel'a criticism of Kant with regard to the concept of deposit. This may be called an argumentation against the obligation of providing arguments, very much in line with Rorty's dismissal of any neutral and a historical point of view. At the end of the paper I shortly assess the comprehensive significance of Rorty's philosophy and attempt to show an internal tension in his thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the period of high-Stalinism until the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the increasingly tyrannical public policy completely subdued the operation of intellectual areas. Publishing can be conceived of as a tentacle of the literary policies of the period, the principal place where state-control could be exerted. My paper provides a picture of the inescapable paths for a publisher in this era through the analysis of samples from the operation of a state-owned publishing enterprise: the Literary Fiction Publishers' and illustrate how József Révai executed ideological control at many phases of the publishing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Romanian post-totalitarian recount of the communist past embraces various forms: from individual and civic actions to recollect the memories of the past and gather testimonies from the regime's victims, to institutionalized forms of memory and public memory discourse. The research described in this paper focused on the use of oral history as a mechanism to recollect the past and its effects at the level of the Romanian society: the creation of new institutions dedicated to researching the past, agents of memory, public memory discourse, political class reluctance, mass media, and the resulting politics of memory. The paper shows that this remembrance involves a permanent reconstruction of the past in which different agents of memory are involved, all of whom consequently project their own interests, ideas, and in some cases stereotypes onto their perceptions of the past. Identifying different topics and approaches to past narratives, we argue that the permanent dialogue and openness to others' stories can offer valuable insights into the remembrance process, especially when traumatic events are involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The systematisation policy was one of the more significant projects of the socialist leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union aiming at eradicating existing disparities between the centre and the periphery, and finally leading to the much desired 'socialist city'. In Romania, the "re-organization of settlements and territory" affected millions of people in urban and rural areas. This paper deals with the Roma marginal communities living in Transylvania during the communist years and the changes they encountered due to the systematisation process which, mostly in the 70s, explicitly targeted them because of their peripheral social behaviour, as they lived in "inappropriate neighbourhoods" and were practicing a parasitic lifestyle -- considered harmful to the socialist society in the making. Some of the research questions to which the essay aims to provide answers are the following: Which were the peripheral dwelling conditions in the rural and urban areas in post-war Romania? When and how did the communist authorities decide to destroy peripheral Roma settlements? How do Roma remember forced displacement / forced residency (in case of the nomads) during the communist years? In order to give relevant answers, the research took as a starting point the archives and the post 1989 historiography. After that, an oral history approach was used to collect and recover life stories of Roma from Transylvania in the communist period which intends to complete the Romanian historical narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a theoretical analysis of the various aspects involved in the construction of knowledge in the medical research article, currently a highly demanding but also rewarding genre in the international academic environment. The analysis takes into consideration the most prevalent features of present-day written academic discourse, with focus on the writing conventions and rhetorical strategies primarily used for successful scientific communication in medicine. The paper offers a multidisciplinary approach by adopting a pragmatic view of linguistics applied to written medical discourse in order to create a comprehensive picture of the current requirements of medical research reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article is based on the disputes caused by the means of organising the central and local museums from La Belle Époque, in order to identify certain concepts regarding heritage, as well as certain arguments that supported such concepts. Considering the clashes or convergences between different epistemes of that time, the present paper exploits the academic polemics in order to emphasise the ways in which the development of sciences was - more or less directly - reflected by the evolution of the representations of the past. Thus, these confrontations are illustrated by appealing to the dominant figures of the Romanian cultural life from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses an important aspect of André Scrima's writings: the way he uses history from the perspective of the theory of revelation. The paper presents some examples (communism, the situation of Jerusalem seen from the perspective of the conflicts in the Middle East), then analyses the main lines of the interpretive methods used by Scrima in describing and understanding these. The historical sense which observes in time, and through transient institutions, the forms of manifestation of transcendence works from this perspective as a critical and hermeneutic agenda related to events and historical figures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the self-financing experience of the Cluj Medical Library, Romania. The recurrent library budget given by the University covers mostly book and periodical acquisitions: other expenses, such as equipment, consumables can only be partially (i.e. 10-50%) covered from this budget, the rest must be borne by the library itself. In order to continue improvements, the library budget had to be increased by self-financing schemes, therefore a conscious decision was made to introduce fees for additional library services given. The influence of old mentalities are discussed as well as the implications and the results of the scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyses how Virgil Tănase and Șerban Foarță depict the oneiric group in works of fiction that are autobiographical in nature. The two texts that we have selected for the analysis are Playing Tag with Death and Show with Dimov. We are interested in what aspects and events the authors have selected to present in their recounts of the oneiric group and how these descriptions fit with previous portrayals of the group. Our approach takes into consideration how the writers revisit and reproduce the past, as well as the fictional practices that they utilize in the process of doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from a recently published memoir, authored by the British pilot Betrand Whitley, recounting his experiences during World War II, the present paper aims to emphasise the role played by the linguistic transfer of such texts from multiple perspectives. As such, in the case of texts originally written in one language, covering the subject of a different cultural space, the translation that pulls the text back into the language of the depicted space raises several issues. Fidelity is given by the negotiation between the meaning present in both linguistic instances, filtered by the style that encompasses an authorial stance on a foreignness that, through translation, needs to be reflected back into the familiar, as foreign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to show the importance of analysing "cuteness" as a cultural phenomenon and to reveal the hidden meaning of "cute" / "kawaii" signs and symbols, omnipresent in the contemporary Japanese culture. Starting from Konrad Lorenz's "baby schema", elaborated in 1943, which revealed specific features that trigger the caregiving instinct, several cultural anthropologists and scholars like Brooks, V. & Hochberg, J., 1965; Kinsella, S., 1995; Nittono, H., 2016; Dale, J.P., 2016, etc. focused on explaining not only the physical characteristics which arouse our emotions, but also their cultural implications. "Cuteness" represents much more than a mere aesthetic, it is a subjective term, thus it strongly depends on one's culture, language, communication style and ideals promoted within the society, which eventually determine what people perceive as "cute". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the relation between technology and the female body in one of the most controversial books written by the Japanese writer Haruki Muramaki, 1Q84, starting from cyberpunk fiction and its perspective on the human body as one of the research directions put forth in my doctoral thesis Fenomenul Science fiction în cultura postmodernă (The science fiction phenomenon in postmodern culture). Somewhere between science fiction and realistic literature, the novel 1Q84 approaches one of the most interesting issues of the contemporary world: the posthuman condition. The discussion of the post-human condition implies a dual perspective. On the one hand, it implies the dissolution of ontological limitations that favour information over matter, understanding consciousness as an epiphenomenon, the body conceived technologically as "adjustable" through an intelligent implant (the cyberbody). On the other hand, the posthuman condition creates a tension that renders problematic the traditional conflict between Nature and Culture, leading to a fictional conceptualization of the human entailing the Biology-Technology relation. With this dual perspective in mind, the prefix post in post-human necessarily implies an evolution to a new order of the human (not necessarily a superior one) in a sort of biological avant-garde. Instead, the paper advances the concept of BQdy for use in Haruki Murakami's case, offering not a new, evolution-based order of the human (the female body) but a different order or condition which, in the wQrld of 1Q84, is transformed into a bQdy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on Petrarch's epistle De ignorantia, the present paper offers a critique of the thesis of the modern demarcation of humanism proposed by Th. E. Mommsen, a thesis that still causes reverberations within the scholarly literature that focuses on Petrarch. The paper analyses Petrarch's stance on what he calls medium nostrum tempus in relation with Antiquity and the way in which his notion of darkness represents a means to delimit humanism within a Christian philosophy of history based on ethics. The conclusion of the paper shows that Th. E. Mommsen's interpretation, together with other contemporary readings of humanism must be recalibrated in accordance with the practical and eschatological finality that Petrarch gave to his notion of studia humanitatis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to reconsider our approaches to the suppositio theory (in the particular case of Peter of Spain's Summaries of logic) in light of a new hypothesis of the double nature1 of medieval logic. Starting from the existing points of view, i.e. the theory of suppositio as a theory of reference and suppositio as a theory of an untranslatable, this paper will examine their underlying commitments to the nature of medieval logic. Such an analysis will entail for the former approach a commitment to a formal nature, while for the latter to a non-formal one. The possibility of a new approach emerges when both natures can be traced in Peter's theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Apor Codex is one of the earliest Hungarian linguistic records, its value is further increased by its preserved original Hungarian Renaissance binding. The pages of the codex were destroyed by ink corrosion; since this destructive effect does not cease by itself, it has become necessary to restore the codex in order be preserved. The restoration was completed as a joint project of the National Széchényi Library Budapest, Hungary, the Szekler National Museum Sfântu Gheorghe, Romania, and the Romanian National Library Bucharest, Romania, thanks to the exhibition of early Hungarian linguistic records organized in the framework of the programme series Year of the Hungarian Language. The restoration took place in the National Széchényi Library, with the financial support of the Balassi Institute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The communist regime in Romania created a centralized media, characterized by the interlocking of censorship and propaganda, as well as an extensive economic control. After the regime change in Romania, free publicity displaced guided socialist publicity with no transition period. However, neither the new actors of political life, nor the media possessed the basic knowledge, rules, and norms for operating a democratic press. The assertion is based on the analysis of the issues of the Hungarian daily paper Romániai Magyar Szó (Hungarian Word of Romania) in the first half of 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to examine the main directions the historical research of medieval seals has followed in the recent decades. Starting from several sigillography handbooks developed in both Western and Romanian academic environments, but also from the published inquiries of the most important contemporary scholars active in this field of study, the present article focuses on their most relevant contributions, their historiographical impact, as well as the concepts and ideas formulated and debated on these occasions. Therefore, the purpose of this approach is not only to make a brief review of the state-of-the-art research in Western sigillography, but also to point out the main directions the Romanian sigillographic research should pursue in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to focus on the Calvinist and Lutheran refugees of Royal Hungary in order to introduce the major types of exile cases and to evaluate their particular significance in the relevant historical and intellectual contexts of the late seventeenth century. It will argue that the emergence of a reformed confessional identity may well have been influenced by exile experiences, yet the Hungarian case displayed some special features, such as the close interrelatedness of martyrological discourses with patterns of early modern proto-nationalism. It will conclude establishing that the delayed character of both persecution and the emergence of a protestant martyrology demand a rather different perception of Reformation too. Taking into account the historical facts that it was only the Edict of Tolerance (1782) and its validation (1791) that terminated religious persecution and granted free practice of religions, the concept of long Reformation appears to be the most fitting application to the Hungarian case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates university students' motivation and learning strategies in an English for Medical Purposes (EMP) context. This research paper establishes a quantitative framework for exploring students' intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to learn EMP. The aim of this study was to analyse if motivation shapes the learning behaviours and influences students' participation in the English classes and in tasks outside the class. The article presents the data obtained and constitutes a first step in determining the most effective way of elaborating teaching strategies for improving the language competences of the medical students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]