OTHERS IN HERITOLOGY

/in /by

The museum is a permanent, non-profit institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public. It collects, preserves, researches, communicates and exhibits material testimonies of man and his environment, for the purpose of study, education and entertainment. In recent times, museums are primarily communication centres thatretain and develop all other functions of a traditional museum. The main form of communication is an exhibition, although any transmission of information is considered as communication. However, the museum is not the only institution where objects of this purpose can be found. Namely, there are many alternative types of collecting and storing things from the past, although not enough attention has been paid to them or real significance attributed. A true collector is a special type of collector, their purpose being to put together a collection of related items as complete, unique and as representative as possible. A collector is a person who is passionate about collecting specific items for his own pleasure. There are a large number of people like this, because in fact it is very difficult to think of any object that nobody would collect. Some of the typical examples vary from the collectors of works of art and precious vases, to the collectors of the most ordinary, trivial, useless, discarded items that are searched for in attics and basements, sometimes even in the landfills… In search of at least one such unusual collector, I came across a small heritage museum created based on geographical affiliation: the objects collected in this collection are all representative of the past of Banat.

DEVELOPMENT OF ROMANIAN LITERARY CREATION IN VOJVODINA AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR

/in /by

In this paper we will analyse the historical progress of the development of the Romanian intelligentsia in Vojvodina, the establishing of Romanian institutions as a result of intellectual activism, but also the emergence of the first magazines and writers in Vojvodina who contributed to the development of Romanian mentality and culture in this area. In the first part of the paper, we will present the historical context of the appearance of the first publications in Romanian, then the presence of literary works in Romanian magazines, publication of the first books in Romanian and the beginnings of the publishing house Libertatea from Pančevo. The aim of this paper is to show to a wider readership the development of the Romanian writing culture in Vojvodina after the First World War until the last decades of the twentieth century, when the Romanian books can be placed side by side with the books of other minorities in Vojvodina. Romanian literature, although relatively “young”, developed rapidly, reaching the level of the literature in the home country in less than a century. Due to its geographical origin and intercultural permeation on the territory of Vojvodina, Romanian literature is unique, interesting and can be explored as a special cultural phenomenon.

BOOKS AND EDUCATION AS A MEANS OF NAZIFICATION OF VOJVODINA GERMANS

/in /by

This paper analyses the book as a means of Nazi indoctrination of Germans in Vojvodina in the 1930s. The paper presents books by Nazi authors that were used as the main literature for ideological indoctrination in the Nazi spirit. Less well-known data are given from the Novi Sad bookstore “Kultura”, which specialized in wider scale Nazi literature. The Private German Teachers’ School in Novi Vrbas, which was the centre of Nazi propaganda, is a special focus. This isimportant to mention because future teachers used their position toideologically guide their students in the Nazi spirit through books. It was published and reported in the Serbian press of that time about the Nazi propaganda that was conducted in the area of the Danube County (Dunavska Banovina). The conclusion of this paper suggests that the books had a huge impact on the nazification of Germans as a Yugoslav minority, at a time when other media (except the press) were hardly present in the national community.

TRANSLATION WORK OF ROMANIANS FROM THE TERRITORY OF PRESENT DAY VOJVODINA IN THE 19TH AND THE FIRST DECADES OF THE 20TH CENTURY

/in /by

The paper presents different aspects of the translation work o fRomanians from the territory of the present day Vojvodina (Banat)during the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century, up until theSecond World War. The translation work in administration, education, religious institutions, and primarily in journalism and literature, has played an important role in the multicultural society of Banat. Various languages, cultures, traditions and religions interacted and intertwined there, and the society functioned on principles which enabled mutual understanding and cooperative work of all those who lived in Banat, regardless of the differences. The first translations in the Romanian language, primarily from German and Serbian, appeared in the 18th century, for the needs of state administration, education or religious work. The translations became more diverse and of a higher quality thanks to the work of the first elite Romanian intellectuals from the period of the late Enlightenment, the representatives of whom were Paul Iorgovici, Constantin Diaconovici Loga, and Sofronie Ivacicovici. In the 19th century, the translations got new content in the form of publication of multilingual posters, invitations, association rules, monetary instructions, newspaper articles, religious books, but also literary works, among which the most prominent were the translations of Hungarian literary works to the Romanian language, done by the writer and publicist Alexandru Țințariu. In the period between the two World Wars, translation work also gained new content because translations from German and Hungarian to Romanian stopped as the focus was placed on translations from Serbian to Romanian and viceversa. 

MEDIEVAL LIBRARIES IN PRESENT-DAY VOJVODINA

/in /by

Throughout history, the region of present-day northern Serbian province of Vojvodina has been a crossroads of cultures and civilizations. In this context, one can observe the history of medieval libraries. In this period of time, some sources have documented the existence of a library in a very famous and rich Cistercian monastery in Petrovaradin. This was one of the most prominent convents in medieval Hungary and even Rodrigo Borgia was trying to obtain the incomes of this abbey by becoming its governor. There is an inventory of this monastery dating back to 1495 where many liturgical books are listed. The city and the fortress of Bač were a centre of renaissance in the medieval Southern Hungary, thanks to the work of the archbishop Peter Varadi. What has remained of his library shows that he has read classical Greek and Roman authors, patristic texts, Byzantine writers and so on. Finally, in the monastery of Krušedol, built in 1508, the Serbs who fled to Hungary had their first large-scale cultural and spiritual centre, with a vast library from which several valuable manuscripts have survived.

IMAGINARY PROTAGONISTS IN IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS OF THE CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN LANGUAGE

/in /by

The aim of this paper is to present imaginary personalities from oral and written literature who have found their place in Italian fixed expressions due to their character, specific circumstances, events or the things they have done or said. Most of the analysed characters in this paper are fictional, while some are associated with the most diverse stories and legends, mostly of unclear origin. If the analysed characters have been taken from a literary work, their creator is an individual and therefore a known subject. The creator of these characters can also be a collective author, and therefore an unknown subject. The characteristics of the protagonists in folk fiction and folklore have been created for a longtime and they have been constantly attributed new meanings and language varieties. Although the subject of research in this paper are phrases of the contemporary Italian language, when it comes to these language forms, we cannot talk about contemporaneity in a narrower sense. Namely, due to their stability, these expressions represent a kind of antiquity, passed down from generation to generation through time and space. We will consider as contemporary those idioms which are recognizable in form and meaning in the language and speech of the XX and XXI century, and we will extract them from general and phraseological dictionaries and collections.

WHAT CATS HAVE TO DREAM ABOUT?

/in /by

Relying on recent theoretical work in the field of critical animal studies and ecocriticism, the paper discusses several fantasies across different media and genres (a comic book series, a young adult novel, and an animated film), whose common characteristic is a critical stance towards anthropocentrism, also known, tellingly, as “human exceptionalism”, “human supremacy”, and “human chauvinism”. The selected corpus consists of Neil Gaiman’s “A Dream of a Thousand Cats”, Hannah Moskowitz’s “Teeth”, and Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke”. Dissimilar as they are, these fantasies share common thematic concern with the relationship between the human and the nonhuman – primarily animals – as well as commitment to challenging the notions of natural, just and desirable human supremacy over all other forms of life. In the selected works, human exceptionalism is challenged by unmasking human exceptional brutality at its root,and, perhaps more unnervingly, by the exploration of the fundamentalkinship between human and nonhuman animals. Although these popular fantasies do not voice explicit or simple ecological messages, due to the above mentioned concerns, they function as ecocritical texts as well. In the context of the global environmental crisis, it is in this ecocritical potential that some relevance of fantasy arguably lies.

MAGIC, REALISM, AND THE RIVER BETWEEN

/in /by

Magic(al) realism has for long attracted critical attention as one of the more theoretically elusive concepts which has been termed magic, magical, and magic(al), interpreted as a narrative genre, mode,or strategy, and analyzed alongside similar terms and neighbouring genres. While it briefly summarizes the troubling terminology associated with magic(al) realism, this paper focuses on the cultural significance of magic(al) realism for postcolonial writing, and delves into its role as a strategy of resistance in the representation of culture and history, its destabilizing project, and the possible pitfalls in its employment. 

SYMBOLISM AND IMAGINATION OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

/in /by

The French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau often used the motifs of fantastic beings and animals in his works, amongst which the unicorn found its place. Moreau got the inspiration for the unicorn motif after a visit to the Cluny Museum in Paris, in which six medieval tapestries with the name “The Lady and the Unicorn” were exhibited. Relying on the French Middle Age heritage, Moreau has interpreted the medieval legend of the hunt for this fantastic beast (with the aid of a virgin) in a new way, close to the art of Symbolism and the ideas of the cultural and intellectual climate of Paris at the end of the 19th century. In the Moreau’s paintings “The Unicorn” and “The Unicorns”, beautiful young nude girls are portrayed in the company of one or multiple unicorns. Similarly to the lady on the medieval tapestry, they too gently caress the animal, showing a close and sensual relationship between them. Although they were rid of their clothes, the artist donned lavish capes, crowns and jewellery on them, alluding to their privileged social status. Their beauty, nudity and closeness with the unicorns ties them to the theme of the femme fatal, which was often depicted in the Symbolist art forms. Showing the fairer sex as beings closer to the material,instinctual and irrational, Moreau has equated women and animals, as is the case with these paintings. Another important theme of the Symbolic art forms which can be seen on the aforementioned paintings is nature,wild and untouched. The landscape in the paintings shows a harmony between the unrestrained nature and the heroes of the painting, freed from strict moral laws of the civil society, or civilization in general.Putting the ladies and the unicorns in an ideal forest landscape, Moreau paints an intimate vision of an imaginary golden age, in this case the Middle Age, through a harmonic relationship of unicorns, women and nature. In that manner, Moreau’s unicorns tell a fairy tale of a modern European man at the end of the 19th century: a fairy tale of harmony,sensuality and beauty, hidden in the realms of imagination and dreams.