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The present paper is an introduction to and analysis of the article "Literary criticism must be scientific", presented here for the first time in English translation. The original was published by Lotman in 1967 in the journal Voprosy Literatury. The article by Lotman is a part of a wider debate, started in 1963, that saw structuralists and their opponents dispute the validity and heuristic value of structuralist methodology in literary criticism. The aim of the introduction is to explore Lotman's engagements with his intellectual context as they emerge in his 1967 article. The first part of the paper discusses the wider context of the debate, and explores the positions of the opponents of structuralism and the ways in which Lotman relates to them. The second part of the paper analyses how Lotman and his structuralist colleagues related to the official Soviet ideology, the diamat. In both cases, it will be seen how Lotman engaged certain aspects of his opponents' ideas, as well as the official ideology, in order to further his goal of reconciling structuralism and historicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Re-reading Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novelette, Mathilda, in the twenty-first century from an ecofeminist perspective sheds a new light on contemporary criticism, opening up multifaceted perspectives. There was a critical moment in British literary history when Elizabeth Nitchie transcribed Mathilda from the microfilm of the manuscript and published it in 1959, which unveiled this piece of revolutionary taboo fiction suppressed for over a century by the author's male relatives, chiefly Shelley's father, William Godwin. Written in 1819-1820, Mathilda is the only work completed during Shelley's lifetime. It is an artfully crafted epistolary work depicting the traumatic confessions and suicidal tendencies of the protagonist, Mathilda, a woman who isolated herself from society by integrating herself with nature due to her father's confession for his incestuous passion towards her. Regarded as an underrated work, Mathilda has often been interpreted from biographical and incest-related perspectives by literary critics, which relegates its literary merits although it is in accordance with feminist and ecological theories and feminine writing. This paper, avoiding biographical accounts and the author's life experiences and with theories consistent with those of ecofeminism, intends to show how nature functions as an effective instrument for the female writer to fictionalize her taboo story. By blending ecofeminism with feminine writing, this paper also investigates the interplay between woman and nature, and navigates how a female character courageously relocates her taboo story on a textual level from a feminist perspective in a natural setting, challenging the male-dominant Romantic tradition of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents war literature as a distinctive genre intertwined with various schools of social thought and literary criticism including nationalism, social realism, and commitment. It puts forward a definition of war literature and the history of its emergence. It also attempts to explore some gray areas in war literature, relating to its artistic and creative modes of writing, its biases and prejudices. It questions the principles of authenticity and representation in this literary genre, addressing the contestation between reality and fiction, aesthetics and ideology, which dominate the discourse of postcolonial studies. The paper chooses Palestinian literature as a model case study, discussing the effects of the Sartrean school of commitment, Arabized in the concept of Adab al-Iltizam, on the creativity and individuality of writers. It discusses some of the general characteristics and themes of Palestinian literature, moving from early war literature (1948) to more contemporary works (1990s-), and presents how some writers manage to walk the thin line between literary representation and national commitment and succeed, without falling into the quagmire of propaganda or mundanity, to depict a national cause still subjected to colonialism in a postcolonial era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from a question about the "diasporic" position of certain authors of cultural criticism in Latin America, always halfway between academic affiliation and a kind of fractious position regarding their increasingly bureaucratized practices of knowledge administration, this paper proposes a reading of three representative texts by the Brazilian-Argentine critic Raul Antelo: Crítica acéfala, Archifilologías latinoamericanas. Lecturas tras el agotamiento and A ruinologia. These strange and problematic texts seem to be articulated from a position that not only (post)critically revises the foundations of more conventional criticism, but also moves toward the behavior of the most radical bids of artistic conceptualism; in other words, in them criticism becomes an act: intervention. And therein lies its forceful emergence in the framework of contemporary literary and cultural studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whitman is often thought of as a chaotic creator, leaving behind an ocean of messy manuscripts, flimsy scraps, scribbled notes, and endless clippings. Nonetheless, this essay argues, storage of his manuscripts and previously printed work was a pressing concern for Whitman in his early and mid-career, occupying his mind even during major life crises. Importantly, he wasn't concerned merely with preserving a bibliographic record but with maintaining a resource for future work. Whitman developed a means of accessing his past writings in a mobile form -- a trunk as both an actual object and symbol -- as he relocated frequently from place to place. This article presents newly identified, almost word for word borrowings in the 1860-1861 "Brooklyniana" series, taken from his 1849-1850 "Traveling Bachelor" series. It connects these new findings to recently identified reviews from the late 1840s appearing almost verbatim in Whitman-edited papers hundreds of miles apart. Framing the "trunk" as both a historical, physical storage medium and an icon of archival practice on the move, "Whitman's Trunk" proposes a new reading of Whitman as a meticulous record keeper and careful practitioner of nineteenth-century copy & paste authorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The passages of literacy criticism in Photius' Bibliotheca have been studied by segmenting their elements, which prevents discernment of the passage structure and the precise meaning of terms. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate, firstly, the existence of two- and three-element groups (binomials and trinomials) in Photius' passages and, secondly, the usefulness of these groups as interpretation tools. These goals will lead to a better understanding of not only the work's composition but the meaning of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A set of memories forged an institutional history, disseminated for and by the Catalan, Aragonese, and Navarrese Hospitallers, that paid attention to the crusader past in the Latin East as justification for their functional and administrative features after the Order was re-founded in Rhodes. The translated versions of the statutes were a key means for transmitting the Order's iconic references to the time of the crusades in the Holy Land. These images operated as a mirror that permitted Hospitallers to recreate identity functions and mythical characters in the most emblematic phase and places, after becoming the crusader Order par excellence in the eastern Mediterranean in Rhodes. Reports on military actions from the 12th to 13th centuries and other allusions stood out in a historiographical tour that extolled its mission and identified itself with symbolic places and people. All this was without forgetting the importance of their caring and religious roles in these narratives. This paper analyses the uses of the memory of the Eastern Hispanic priories of the 14th century found in the crusades and in the history of the Latin East fundamental arguments to affirm and guarantee the strong links between East and West in the headquarters in Rhodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a case for analyzing the way in which the novel of Communism is approached by Mihai Iovănel in his History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020. This is a topic that was intensely discussed by Romanian literary criticism in Post-communism and represents the weakness of Romanian literature, either by it not being able to give a sufficiently convincing novel, or by not being able to agree upon how this novel should look. Accordingly, the critics had difficulties in labeling any novel that had been published after ‘89s as “the novel of communism.” The first part of the article is a panning of recent discussions about this term in relation to the analysis made by Iovănel in his History. The second part aims to trace out a network of this type of novel in the literatures of Central and Eastern Europe and to try to identify its particularities through a comparative analysis. The last part consists of a study case of the novels Acasă, pe câmpia Armaghedonului [At home, on the Field of Armageddon] by Marta Petreu and Bureți de Fag [Oyster Mushrooms] by Mihai Duțescu. The latter has been published after the History and both novels are analyzed from the perspective of the novel of communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching the thousand-year period of medieval European literature and six-hundred years of Old Czech literature in Czech secondary education is often confronted by two interrelated challenges: the subjects are traditionally taught through a chronological approach to literary history in the first year of school, while presenting language, literary genres, themes, and ideas that are distant and difficult to understand for contemporary readers, particularly the target student group (15--16 years of age). A majority of teachers are unwilling to deal with old literature in their lessons. Can we find a way to modify and improve this practice? In this paper we try to grasp the perceived difficulty and otherness of this corpus in a constructive way and show that it can be productively used, for example, by moving away from the traditional chronological framework and focusing on probing texts (especially narratives) that link the present to the past. We show this possibility through the example of the story of Bruncvík, comparing its medieval version to a more recent version by Alois Jirásek in his Staré pověsti české (Legends of Old Bohemia). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Janice Galloway represents one of the most strikingly original voices in new Scottish fiction, which breaks with the tradition of conventional narratives looking back at the national history and looking up to larger-than-life male heroes. Instead, Galloway writes deftly crafted short stories of everyday life in contemporary settings, finding that the past informs the present and proceeding to explore how the stateless nation’s cultural heritage affects her characters. This paper analyses selected stories from Galloway’s collections Blood (1991) and Where You Find It (1996) from the perspective of trauma criticism, which seems a particularly fitting approach to the author’s often disturbing narratives of violence and abuse. The focus is on child characters and on the ways that historical trauma, as introduced by Sigmund Freud and further refined by Cathy Caruth, is passed down to them. Finally, the paper provides examples from the individual short stories which illustrate how the traumatic experience can be acknowledged, witnessed, and ultimately communicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to give an overview of the development of journalism ethics in Croatia. By analyzing the literature on the history of journalism in Croatia and using two research methods, four key periods of the development of interest in journalism ethics have been identified: 1) the emergence of the first informative newspapers and the beginnings of professionalization of journalism in the 1910s; 2) the adoption of the first code of journalists, the establishment of the first successful school for journalists and the beginnings of university education for journalists in the mid-1960s and the early 1970s; 3) the emergence of scientific interest in journalism ethics in the second half of the 1990s and the launch of the first university course on journalism ethics; 4) a period of heightened interest expressed through the proliferation of papers on journalism ethics within the scientific community in Croatia from the mid-2000s.31 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Varied repositories of international literature attend to Juha’s anecdotes as an aspect of collective memory and as national symbols appropriated by their cultures. The reality-mocking humorous situations and philosophical distinctiveness of the anecdotes permeated the fabric of popular culture. The stories were also incorporated into varied rhetorical forms such as novels, children’s fiction, cartoons, proverbs, and folk tales. This study accords due recognition to the importance and stability of this figure in the popular culture of Arabs and Turks, adopting Juha as a subject for study, analysis, and comparison in Arabic and Turkish literature. It comparatively investigates the literary figure of Juha in Arabic literature as a central character of the Arab and Turkish cultures. From the comparative perspective, this literary study encompasses Juha’s presence as an effective and influential character in the Arab and Turkish works of literature. It probes the circulation of anecdotes related to Juha in the literary, cultural, and social contexts of Arabs and Turks, and examines the growing employment of Juha tales in multiple literary genres. Despite the historical precedence of the Arab Juha, Nasr al-Din Khoja al-Turki’s features distinguished him from the Arab Juha in aspects including the themes of anecdotes, the places of their occurrence, the personalities who contributed to the event, and the formulation and presentation of the overall vision. The paper is arranged in three sections. Initially, it introduces the characters of Juha Al-Arabi and Nasr Al-Din Khoja Al-Turki and references Arab and Turkish sources to outline their histories. Second, it delves into the structure of anecdotes: the characters, their natures, the roles they discharge in the narrative exposition, and how they interact with events as protagonists producing linguistic signs and ideas. The paradox is familiar. This section of the paper also focuses on the locational structure of the anecdotes, the aesthetics of the place, and how it functions to advance events. The element of time is also analyzed, demonstrating the temporal aspects of the development of events and the representation of the historical stages at which the anecdotes occurred. The third section presents the similarities and differences between the Arab and Turkish anecdotes and the ways in which the accounts are represented in Arabic and Turkish literature. Finally, the paper concludes by iterating the study’s most significant results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Open Window (1954) is a novel written by the critically acclaimed and renowned poet Desanka Maksimović and continues in the same vein as her pre-war socially engaged short stories. It shows a possible new form of engagement not only in the author's own work but also in Yugoslav literature in general. The initial hypothesis of this paper is that Maksimović - by intentionally choosing the genre of the thesis novel, and by shaping (consciously or unconsciously) the genre of der Arztroman or the medical novel - takes part in a tradition of popular genres which hybridizes enlightenment with entertainment. The aims of this paper are a) to define the given genres and place The Open Window within the traditions mentioned above; b) to define and analyze the novel's representation of tuberculosis; c) to explain how the author placed the subject of this contagious disease and its epidemic spread throughout the Kingdom of Yugoslavia into the frame of the debate between conservative and emancipatory social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the noticeably low presence of Canadian literature in hemispheric American literary research. The fact that hemispheric literary studies focuses on a comparison of the United States and Spanish America is partly because of Canada's marginal position in the Americas, its lack of identification with the continent, and Canadian scholars' reluctance to engage in hemispheric studies due to their insecurity concerning cultural identity and the discipline's potential imperialistic impulses. By examining a representative history of Canadian literature and several literary studies for intersections and tangencies between Canadian literature and other literatures of the Americas, this paper will demonstrate that there are natural links between them, which make a transnational comparative approach to Canadian literature both legitimate and desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperance literature, though widely popular in America and Britain between 1830-80, lost its allure in the decades that followed. In spite of its didactic and moralistic nature, the public eagerly consumed temperance novels, thus reciprocating contemporaneous writers' efforts to promote social ideals and mend social ills. The main aim of this paper is to redress the critical neglect that the temperance prose written by women about women has endured by looking at three literary works--two novellas and one confessional novelette--written by mid-nineteenth-century American female writers. These works serve as a prism through which the authors present generally "tabooed" afflictions such as inebriation among high-class women and society's role in perpetuating such behaviors. The essay examines the conflicting forces underlying such representations and offers an inquiry into the restrictive and hostile social climate in mid- nineteenth-century America and the lack of medical attention given to alcohol addicts as the possible causes that might have prompted women's dangerous behaviors, including inebriation. This paper also demonstrates the cautious approach that nineteenth-century female writers had to take when dealing with prevalent social ills, such as bigotry, hypocrisy and disdain directed at female drunkards. It shows how these writers, often sneered at or belittled by critics and editors, had to maneuver very carefully between the contending forces of openly critiquing social mores, on the one hand, and not being censored, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces the history, including legislation, of the libraries of the State archives, born, often thanks to the will and tenacity of the directors who, through a capillary correspondence network with the cultural institutions of the national territory, fleshed out the newly erected libraries with volumes as a gift or obtained through exchanges of book doubles. The purchase on the antiquarian market and from private citizens of single volumes but also of entire book collections, important for reconstructing the history - including literary history - of the territory of competence, makes these libraries unique in their kind. Established for the updating of archivist officials and to allow them to study, reorganize and inventory documentary collections, over time they have changed their mission by expanding the audience of consultation to external users but only if they are unable to find publications in other libraries. To date, despite boasting a library heritage of a certain importance and often unique, they are managed in the absence of personnel in the role of librarian with all the problems that this entails in terms of cataloguing, planning of purchases and assistance for bibliographic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a narrative analysis of the Passion in the Gospel of Mark with a view to an aesthetic interpretation. The classical method of literary studies is used to analyze this narrative. The purpose of this study is to read the Passion narrative from an analysis of the text as an aesthetic artifact and from its poetic configuration, because we consider that in the aesthetic shock there is also a religious experience with its own theological content. A state of the art is presented with respect to the latest theological and literary research with respect to the Passion narrative and, when necessary, the research refers to the historical discoveries that have been made by the most prominent specialists in Mark. Thus, it is discovered that in this text it is impossible to separate the aesthetics from the theological message and that in the form of the work there is a deep content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a new interpretation of Ar. Nub. 554. The aim is to stress the dependence of the expression ἐκστρέψας ... κακὸς κακῶς on a principle of ancient literary criticism here called the "poetic identity principle", based on the overlap between the author's nature and the content of his work. This dependence has been neglected until now. Therefore, I shall prove the principle is present in the line by first analysing the structure of the sequence in which the line is found (518-559) and then comparing l. 554 to other of Aristophanes' loci. Moreover, I shall argue that Aristophanes usually recalls the principle to build negative and positive poetic paradigms: such a principle may also concern the author himself within his own work, which had not been noticed before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine the development of lesbian literature through a discussion of its history. From ancient Greek poetry, where we learn about the namesake of the term's lesbian and sapphic, to the first half of the 1900s discussing the various authors that fought against censorship, continuing through to the 1950s to explore the genre that launched lesbian fiction into popularity, and finally addressing modern works of the last few decades. By critically examining significant events that have shaped the landscape of lesbian-themed works, we can gain an understanding of the profound effect these works have had on readers and writers alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous evolution of bacteria and the constant use of traditional antibiotics, the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria and super viruses has attracted worldwide attention. Antimicrobial therapy has become the most popular and important research field at present. Coordination Polymer (CP) and/or metal-organic framework (MOF) platforms have the advantages of a high biocompatibility, biodegradability, and non-toxicity, have a great antibacterial potential and have been widely used in antibacterial treatment. This paper reviewed the mechanism and antibacterial effect of three typical MOFs (pure Ag-MOFs, hybrid Ag-MOFs, and Ag-containing-polymer @MOFs) in silver-based coordination polymers. At the same time, the existing shortcomings and future views are briefly discussed. The study on the antibacterial efficacy and mechanism of Ag-MOFs can provide a better basis for its clinical application and, meanwhile, open up a novel strategy for the preparation of more advanced Ag-contained materials with antibacterial characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to demonstrate that two previously unknown manuscript folios from Mircea Eliade’s youth, which emerged in 2022, are the drafted summaries of his unfinished editorial project Valkyries in the Library. The two folios are, in fact, two lists of article titles Eliade published in Cuvântul (22), Gândirea (2), and Sinteza (1), in 1926-1928. Arranged differently, the feuilletons address topics such the Romanian intellectual, the dependance towards French culture and literature, philology and synthesis, the lack of heroism in Romanian literature, Beatrice and Don Quixote, young writers, literary criticism, philosophy. The tone is polemical and radical, condemning the current state of Romanian literature, advancing the author's views, and urging his contemporaries to take action in order to create fundamental and authentic works. Just as Eliade recalls in his diary, the articles from Cuvântul mentioned in the two folios were a whirlwind, a cavalcade meant to take local culture and erudition by surprise and to change it forever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interprets some characteristics of the Colombian conservative literary critics between 1930 and 1950, focusing on the ideas of Laureano Gómez, Antonio Gómez Restrepo and Rafael Maya. For the analysis, the category of "repertoire" by Itamar Even-Zohar helps to understand the relevance of literary criticism in the literary circuit and, at the same time, it gives rise to suggest a dialogue between several thinkers. This paper highlights the significance of religious beliefs in the repertoire of conservative literary critics, and the strong presence of classical poetry as a major literary genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the theoretical status of the emblem in decorative art has methodological significance in emblem studies and art history, comparable to its status in the so-called book’s editorial frame. This claim is justified in the historical and theoretical tradition of defining emblems in the sources. The departure point for the author’s considerations comes from the findings of applied emblematics, and its foundation is provided by the theoretical sources describing symbolic genres (scil. emblema, symbolum, hierogliphicum) published in Poland from the 16th to the 18th century, including books of poetics, rhetoric, dictionaries and compendia. The first part of the article presents an overview of research on decorative emblems in Poland, together with factors responsible for the scarcity of such studies, including the lack of symbolic typology of the decorations, and the division into literary and non-literary studies, motivated by the philological roots of emblem studies. It is noted that the emblemata in the so-called book’s editorial frame and those in decorations should be studied separately, as the latter are of ornamental nature, and require a distinct order of perception, explication, and the recipient’s role. Besides, it is pointed out that the anachronism of the 16th-century formulae of emblema raises problems for the genological classification of Polish decorations, and so does the inter-genre, compendiumtype pattern of symbolism dominant in the 18th century. The second part of the article discusses the definition of the emblema, focusing on its details relevant for the artistic practice and present-day genre classification, such as technique, composition, the content of the image, which is confronted with Polish historical materials. The analysis carried out in the paper supports the claim that providing a genelogical definition of a work of art sheds light on its artistic rendition and aesthetic value. It also enhances the perspective on emblem studies, the workshop of an emblem artist and the reception of the emblem. Additionally, it enables the verification of synthetic accounts and research practice, offering a profound reflection on the chronology and previous conceptions of the emblem. Finally, it helps to formulate postulates, which can be useful for the methodology of literary emblem studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It goes without saying that during the nineteenth and twentieth century literary historiography tries to define national identities. However, a methodological and paradigm shift occur at the beginning of the twenty-first century when, under the auspices of globalization and the emergence of world literature and transnational literary studies, literary historiography is rethought as a collective and transnational project. Yet, the asymmetry of the world literary system affects literary historiography too. When it comes to this scholarly genre, the asymmetry is most visible in the fact that in the era of transnationalism, national histories are still written at the periphery. Given the aforementioned observation, this paper a) looks into the challenges of writing literary history in Romania in the age of world literature and transnational studies, and b) tries to explain why a national literary history is still needed and how it can change the way we think about Romanian literature. The starting point of this inquiry is represented by the publication of Mihai Iovănel’s Istoria literaturii române contemporane: 1990-2020 [History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020]. In the context of the ‘transnational turn’ in literary studies, the attempt to write relevant national histories in a peripheral literary space such as Romania is faced, in my view, with two major challenges: 1) the fact that transnationalism manifests itself differently at the periphery and 2) the tradition of Romanian literary criticism and history. The former refers to the fact that unlike central literatures, where transnationalism is shaped to a large extent by migrant writers (those who enter these literatures), in Romanian literature it comprises exiled or migrant writers (those who left Romania and not vice versa) and, to a lesser extent, the literatures written by ethnic minorities. A comparative approach can cast light on this difference. For example, while the thirteenth volume of The Oxford English Literary History is dedicated entirely to migrant and bicultural writers, transnational histories concerning the peripheries, such as History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, focus on multiple literary spaces and therefore have a different approach to dealing with transnationalism. The latter challenge is represented, as shown by Iovănel, by the long-lasting tradition of the “principle of aesthetic autonomism”, which persists even in post-communist Romania. In this regard, this paper aims to show that Iovănel’s History… overcomes the above-mentioned hindrances of literary criticism and succeeds in offering an image of Romanian literature not as confined to its national boundaries but as part of the world literary system. Along with other significant scholarly works on Romanian literature as and in world literature, this project is a significant step towards re-thinking Romanian literature as a “literature of the world” (Terian 2015). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era in which literary histories are written by collective of academics trying to transcend the national paradigm in which these works were once wrote, The History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020 by Mihai Iovănel is an intellectual effort that may seem obsolete. Nevertheless, Mihai Iovănel’s book proposes new ways of understanding the contemporary Romanian literary field that were not taken into consideration by previous similar critical endeavours. This paper aims to investigate how The History of Contemporary Romanian Literature constructs an overview of the Romanian fiction wrote in the last three decades and the critical approaches deployed for this purpose. The main interest of this article will be how does Mihai Iovănel discusses Romanian contemporary fiction and how does he instrumentalizes the concept of realism. We will look more closely at the third part of the book, “The Evolution of Fiction,” but the discussion will not omit the relation of this chapter with others. The paper will concentrate on the concepts put forward by Mihai Iovănel to systematize the complex subfield of contemporary Romanian fiction, like capitalist realism, the famous term coined by Mark Fisher. Also, we will try to see how The History of Contemporary Romanian Literature relate to previous literary histories or books of literary criticism that resembles Mihai Iovănel’s work in some respects or that have similar goals but different methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employed in the study of national or transnational literatures, the relevance of digital humanities, computational analyses, and quantitative sociology can no longer be ignored. In this paper, we aim to argue that, in spite of it still being seen as a niche endeavor, the digital or quantitative study of literature generates paradigmatic shifts in literary scholarship, both in literary criticism and comparative studies. In order to demonstrate this statement, the following study will illustrate how three core principles of digital humanities are actively shaping humanities as we know it. These principles – openness, replicability, and collaboration – challenge the way we understand the role of the literary historian and their „traditional” tasks. To consolidate this argumentation further, we will briefly present an example of how digital humanities start changing the dominant narrative in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TiAl alloys are regarded as ideal lightweight structural materials above 600 °C and show remarkable application prospects in the field of aerospace materials. However, many potential TiAl alloy engineering applications have been limited by their low room-temperature tensile plasticity and insufficient high-temperature capability. Composite technology is an effective method for enhancing the comprehensive properties of TiAl alloys. In this paper, recent research progress in TiAl matrix composites is reviewed to highlight the scientific and technological investigation of TiAl matrix composites with excellent properties. The content includes four aspects of TiAl matrix composites: reinforcement selection, configuration design, interfacial microstructure, and processing technology. The aim of this work is to provide a reference for the preparation and research of TiAl matrix composites and open up a novel design direction for TiAl matrix composites with excellent comprehensive properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we revisit the impulse response of a perfectly conducting sphere from a short pulse excitation. From the basics associated with that response, we assess a novel late response turn-on time criterion that we investigate by means of simulation. In this way, we determine a better late response turn-on time criterion compared to the well-established one used in natural resonance estimation algorithms in the literature so far. The results obtained are in agreement with those expected from the theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the Czech version of the popular story Peter of Provence and the Fair Maguelone, its origins as a late mediaeval prose romance written in Middle French, and its passage to the Czech lands during the second half of the 16th century via Veit Warbeck’s German translation and its first edition, both influenced by Martin Luther’s ideas for the reformation of the Church. We follow up with an overview and classification of existing Czech editions and other forms of the story (one reworking and popular songs). In this study, we analyse not only the relations and differences between French, German, and Czech versions of the story but also possible connections between Czech and Polish versions. We also consider the possibility that the Polish version served as a source of inspiration for certain Czech editions or for the anonymous reworking of the theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper reconsiders the notions of dissonance and consonance introduced in Dorrit Cohn's Transparent Minds (1978). Cohn applies the terms to psycho- and self-narration and defines them with reference to the narrator's prominence, distance/intimacy as well as moral and cognitive privilege with reference to the character. Taking advantage of stance theory, we argue that dissonance and consonance are best taken as dimensions of the narrator's attitude towards the character and/or the narratee, we relate aspects of consonance/dissonance to the basic facets of focalization -- emotional, interpretive, and evaluative -- and we analyze them in terms of convergence or divergence and further, in the case of divergence, in terms of superiority or inferiority. We claim that there is no automatic correlation between narratorial consonance/dissonance and reliability. Overall, we believe that narratorial consonance/dissonance deserves much attention because it has great impact on the reader's reception of the narrator and characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bluetooth monitoring systems (BTMS) have opened a new era in traffic sensing, providing a reliable, economical, and easy-to-deploy solution to uniquely identify vehicles. Raw data from BTMS have traditionally been used to calculate travel time and origin–destination matrices. However, we could extend this to include other information like the number of vehicles or their residence times. This information, together with their temporal components, can be applied to the complex task of forecasting traffic. Level of service (LOS) prediction has opened a novel research line that fulfills the need to anticipate future traffic states, based on a standard link-based variable, accepted for both researchers and practitioners. In this paper, we incorporate BTMS's extended variables and temporal information to an LOS classifier based on a Random Undersampling Boost algorithm, which is proven to efficiently respond to the data unbalance intrinsic to this problem. By using this approach, we achieve an overall recall of 87.2 % for up to 15-min prediction horizons, reaching 96.6 % predicting congestion, and improving the results for the intermediate traffic states, especially complex given their intrinsic instability. Additionally, we provide detailed analyses on the impact of temporal information on the LOS predictor's performance, observing improvements up to a separation of 50 min between last features and prediction horizons. Furthermore, we study the predictor importance resulting from the classifiers to highlight those features contributing the most to the final achievements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the crisis suffered by literary criticism in the nineteen seventies and that has extended with even greater force today, it seems useful to return to the approach Borges developed in a paper that was first published in 1953 with the title “El escritor argentino y la tradición” which was later included in the reedition of Discusión in 1957. Here the author analyzes a recurring theme in Hispanoamerican literary studies, the tradition of “South American” bellelettres, especially Argentinean: “I think our tradition is that of all Western culture and I also think we have a right to this tradition which is greater than that of inhabitants of any other Western nation”. The replies were not long in coming. I dare suggest they were a glimpse of the perplexity of today’s reader, who is familiar with other answers, in particular, those of sociology or related fields, such as cultural anthropology, that have proposed that the way to reach the originality and autonomy of Hispanoacamerican literature resides in highlighting the differences that separate us from the Western Cannon. To examine and argue in favor of Borges´ thesis in the framework of the current situation of literary criticism, slowly but seemingly inexorably displaced by cultural studies, especially in university literature departments, is the pretensión of this work, which I hope is free of prejudice although I recognize that they never cease to be present in an undertaking of this type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The members of the Sibiu Literary Circle coined and disseminated the rather abusive term “pășunism” (from the Romanian word “pășune,” meaning pasture) in order to combat the confusion between ethnic, ethical and aesthetic. In the spirit of Eugen Lovinescu’s literary ideology, this was considered by the Literary Circle as an urgent mission in the context of Romanian literature in the 1940s. Originally intended to ironize (neo)“sămănătorist” or “fascist-sămănătorist” literature, the term “pășunism,” given the thematic aspect which it implies, gained a lax usage. Therefore, rural literature and folklore-inspired literature among others fit in the satirical term’s category. The aim of the following paper is to investigate the origins and manifestations of the anti-ruralist tendencies of the Sibiu Literary Circle in its earlier days, starting from, but not limited to the writings of I. Negoițescu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On June 3-4, 2022, the international conference Astrobiology and Society. Third Conference on History and Philosophy of Astrobiology was held in Höör (Sweden), organized by the European Astrobiology Institute and Lund University. The papers presented covered topics in history, philosophy, sociology, literary studies and theology dealing with astrobiology issues. The conference was an opportunity to present the results of humanities research inspired by the findings of modern astrobiology and to exchange views on the importance of this interdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyse Teolinda Gersão's most recent book, O Regresso de Júlia Mann a Paraty (Júlia Mann's Return to Paraty, 2021), through the concept of Black psychology developed by Wade W. Nobles. I intend to further elaborate on one of the novel's central questions, posed by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, whom Gersão (2021) turns into a fictional character-narrator: "can it be that we are unable to evolve in the ethical realm, just as we seem unable to love and feel compassion after all?" (p. 14). At the same time, dissect the wrongs of two of history's most significant agents, both in the scientific and literary fields, the novel highlights. Intellectually influenced and influential, prominent figures in the history of literature, science, and thought in Gersão's book were exposed for the same wrong: not critically questioning a world rooted in White hegemony, which erased the difference and dignity of the "other". Drawing on Catherine Hall's and Corinna McLeod's work, among others, about writing history as a redressing process, I also demonstrate how O Regresso de Júlia Mann a Paraty engages in a critical and redeeming dialogue with the past reflected in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to explore the multiple character of the concept of passive revolution, developed by Antonio Gramsci, as theoretical tool and ponder its strategic value. We begin with the analysis of what we consider the analytic background of the concept in his pre-prison writings. Following, we address the concept itself, its construction method and the different proposals that Gramsci developed. Thereafter we analyze some contemporary works that from within Marxism have developed avenues of inquiry revisiting these different proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E. L. Doctorow became world-famous primarily for his novel Ragtime (1975), which references a distinct style of playing the piano that had a profound impact on the development of jazz. Music also plays a principal role in a number of the author’s other works. This paper explores the role of music in one of his later novels, City of God (2000), with a focus on selected scenes in which music is represented. From the viewpoint of different modes of music in literature, namely the thematization of music, the sound layer and the musicalization of fiction, this contribution examines the emotions elicited in the protagonists in the scenes in question, as well as the atmosphere that the music creates or accentuates. It also takes into account which musical instruments are employed, including the symbolic meaning that one of them, the violin, carries. Furthermore, an investigation is presented as to what extent musical elements from other novels by E. L. Doctorow can be found, and in which respects this novel is unique. In City of God, the lyrics of jazz tunes emerge throughout the novel, thus the importance of this motif is discussed in detail along with the attention devoted to other major manifestations of music in this literary work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the feasibility of MXenes (Ti3C2Tx) enforcing corrosion resistance performance and thermal stability of waterborne polyurethane (WPU). Firstly, the Ti3C2Tx was modified by hydrolysis of titanium butoxide (TBOT) and the 1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane. Then, the modified Ti3C2Tx (SiOx/TiO2@Ti3C2) was grafted into the WPU composite. The electrochemistry station and thermal analysis technique was used to detailly evaluate the effect of SiOx/TiO2@Ti3C2 on the anticorrosion performance and thermal stability of all samples. The results revealed that the WPU with 0.15% SiOx/TiO2@Ti3C2 showed the best thermal stability and anticorrosion performance. In detail, 0.15% SiOx/TiO2@Ti3C2/WPU improved the 31.71 °C Tmax1 compared with that of WPU. In terms of electrochemistry results, after 28 days of immersion in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution, the |Z|f=0.01 Hz of WPU was 3.65 × 106 Ω·cm2. However, the |Z|f=0.01 Hz of 0.15% SiOx/TiO2@Ti3C2/WPU was still at 1.15 × 107 Ω·cm2, after 64 days of immersion in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution. In a word, this work opened up a novel strategy to enhance the performances of WPU polymer via introducing the SiOx/TiO2@Ti3C2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literary renditions of cities have always gravitated towards the spatial imagination and its ethical counterpart outside the textual space. This paper explores the multicultural geography of the North Indian city Allahabad (recently renamed Prayagraj) observed through Neelum Saran Gour's postcolonial narratives Allahabad Aria and Invisible Ink, projecting the narrative alignment of spatial aesthetics and cultural ethics. Interrogating the spatial dimensions of a "narrative world" within narrative theory (Ryan) and its interdisciplinary crossover with cultural geography (Sauer; Mitchell; Anderson et al.), the article seeks to examine Gour's literary city not simply as an objective homogeneous representation, but as a "kshetra" of spatio-cultural cosmos of lived traditions, memories, experiences and collective attitudes of its people, in the context of E. V Ramakrishnan's theoretical reflections. The article proposes new possibilities of adapting the Indian concept "kshetra" to spatial literary studies; its aim is also to suggest a new source of knowledge about the city of Allahabad through a community introspection of "doing culture" in the texts, bringing into view people's shared experiences, beliefs, religious practices and traditions as offshoots of the postcolonial ethos. The article aims to re-contextualize the city's longstanding multicultural ethics in the contemporary times of crisis, which may affect a shift in the city's relevance: from regional concern to large-scale significance within ethnically diverse South Asian countries and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A post-anthropocentric epistemological assemblage becomes indispensable in the investigation of the ecology of the Romanian novel. We examine the interactive relationship of various dynamic systems, such as 1) the evolution of the Romanian novel, 2) the modes of representation of the environment, and 3) the social-political history of the autochthonous space. Using a wide range of methodological perspectives, this paper also examines the relationship between literature and the Earth sciences, thus envisioning a new type of literary history where the Romanian novel should be thought as existing within hyper-objects, such as the climate, agriculture, wilderness, pollution, biosphere, cultural politics, capitalism, or geology. The article finally addresses the issue of zoopoetics both as an object of study in the MDRR digital archive (1845-1947) and as a reading strategy, thus, favoring the relationship between animality and narrativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the temporal relations and the hostility of the surrounding spaces experienced by the narrator-protagonist of O verão tardio (2019), by Luiz Ruffato. We propose that the realism in this work is not due to the richness of detail with which the narrator describes the world around him, or the objectivity of the narrative that evokes social critique, but rather the subjectivity of a particular - and therefore limited - gaze about the same fictional world. The confessional tone of the first-person narrative is the first element to establish empathy between the reader and the protagonist - a melancholic man, whose physical sensations are on the surface of the text and whose mechanical and repetitive gestures question the value of adapting to social expectations, and the relationship between the subject, his past and his hopelessness regarding the future. We rely on the theoretical support of Schøllhammer's (2009, 2012, 2020) discussions about affective realism as a trend in recent Brazilian literature (to which we align our reading of the novel), Pellegrini's critical observations on Ruffato's work and the contributions of Ginzburg (2012, 2017) about the narrator, and about violence and melancholy as constitutive elements of relationships throughout the history of Brazilian literature and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is an attempt to link literature and society based on the idea of babaylanism-ecocriticism. The idea or relationship of the two fields was highlighted by looking at the strength of women rooted in their power and role in the early Filipino society. The structure of the ancient community, especially the state of babaylan, was used as a basis for the representation of women. It is linked to the ecocritical view, particularly ecofeminism. Therefore, this paper presents as a preliminary study, the analysis of three siday in Merlie M. Alunan's anthology “Tinalunay: Hinugpong nga Panurat nga Winaray”: “Ha Akon Tunang Natawhan” (To My Motherland) by Iluminado Lucente, “Kan Inay, Paraghilot” (To Mother, Paraghilot) by Jhonil Colima Bajado, and “Babayi” (Woman) by John B. Simborios. It examines the relationship of women to ecology, how their strength or power is used as an important component in the relationships that take place within the system such as its relationship to others, to nature and to society. Babaylanismo is proposed as a theory that focuses on the strength of women within ecology through her participation in social and environmental relations that bring about change. This change viewed in the analysis focuses on three: environmental, social, and political or economic. It is a comparison to the efficiency of babaylan and babaylanism to mobilize its constituents or influence how creatures within the ecosystem are treated, whether visible or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper disscusses the literary-historiographical enterprise of Mihai Iovănel’s History of the Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2000 as a turning point in respect with the twofold aesthetic and ethnocentric dominant of this genre in Romania, whose tradition that is traceable back to the pos-Thaw period prolongs into postcommunism. Iovănel’s self-claimed ”postmarxist” approach puts under a deconstructive lens the ideological embededness of the Romanian literary space, whose postcommunist avatar still owes largely to its communist heritage by its indebtment to dominantly conservative and right ideologies. It also switches the analytical focus of the literary history towards the material (i.e. social, institutional, and so forth) conditions of the literary production per se. My essays develops two basic critical points derived from the above-mentioned premises. One concerns the topicality of the literary historian’s leftist vantage point in the view of deciphering long-engrained myths of the national literature and of its criticism, thus providing a clearer, more realist picture of its concrete phenomena. The other debates the utility and eventual drawbacks of the retrospective analysis the historian is forced to assume in order to achieve his deconstructive task, a retrospection that pushes his investigation way behind the confines of ”contemporaneity”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]