HyperCultura - SoftAdviser.ro

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UNIVERSITATEA HYPERION DIN BUCUREŞTI FACULTATEA DE ŞTIINȚE SOCIALE, UMANISTE ŞI ALE NATURII DEPARTAMENTUL DE LITERE ŞI LIMBI STRĂINE HyperCultura Revistă bianuală de studii literare, culturale şi lingvistice A Biannual Journal of Literary, Cultural and Linguistic Studies MULTICULTURALISM ŞI/SAU TRANSCULTURALISM Volumul II MULTICULTURALISM AND/OR TRANSCULTURALISM Volume II CONFERINȚĂ INTERNAȚIONALĂ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 6‐7 IUNIE 2012 6‐7 JUNE 2012 Editura Victor Bucureşti, 2012 Editor-in-chief
Sandra-Lucia ISTRATE (Hyperion University)
Associate Editors
Sorina GEORGESCU – editorial-assistant (Hyperion University)
Doina SIMION – editor – English language (Hyperion University)
Dragoş-Lucian IVAN – English language (SNSPA)
Carmen DOMINTE – editor – Spanish language (Hyperion University)
Cosmin PERŢA – editor – Romanian language (Hyperion University)
Andreea SION – sub-editor (Hyperion University)
Advisory Board
Ph.D. Grigore BRANCUS (Romanian Academy)
Ph.D. Gheorghe CHIVU (University of Bucharest)
Ph.D. Dorina DONEA (Hyperion University)
Ph.D. Felix NICOLAU (Hyperion University)
Ph.D. Doina RUŞTI (Hyperion University)
Ph.D. Alexandru ZUB (Romanian Academy)
Ph.D. Gian Claudio BATIC (University of Naples)
Ph.D. Christopher BIGSBY (University of East Anglia)
Ph.D. Francois BRUNET (Université Paris Diderot)
Ph.D Maureen DALY GOGGIN (Arizona State University)
Ph.D. Carmen FLYS-JUNQUERA (Universidad de Alcala)
Ph.D. Shahzaman HAQUE (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations
Orientales)
Ph.D. Seetha JAYARAMAN (Dhofar University)
Ph.D. Asuncion LOPEZ-VARELA AZCARATE (Universidad Complutense de
Madrid)
Ph.D. Carl POLLEY (University of Hawai)
Ph.D. Sahoo KALYANAMALINI (Unversity of Hyderabad)
Ph.D. Ferit KILICKAYA (Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Turkey.)
Ph.D. Carolyn KRAUS (University of Michigan-Dearborn)
Ph.D. Rob KROES (University of Amsterdam)
Ph.D. Barbara NELSON (University of Bucharest, University of Michigan)
Ph.D. Ileana ORLICH (Arizona State University)
Ph.D. Dominique SIPIERE (Université Paris-Ouest Defense)
The present issue was coordinated by:
Lecturer PhD Student Sorina GEORGESCU
ISSN 2285-2115
5
CUPRINS
STUDII LITERARE ŞI CULTURALE/ CULTURAL AND LITERARY STUDIES
Newfound Land, A New Beginning: Romanian Immigrant Writers on Individual Memories..
Dacian BǍRBOSU
7
Some Recent Irish Feminine Voices In The Multicultural And/Or Transcultural (Immigrant)
Poetic Space .................................................................................................................
Ligia Doina CONSTANTINESCU
15
The Reproduction of Violence in Alice Walker’s Novels: From Heroic to Victimized
Rapist............................................................................................................................
Adelina VARTOLOMEI
25
The Game of Double Meanings in Andrea Levy’s Small Island and The Long Song..............
Cristina CHIFANE
Romanian Literature in the Context of the Rroma Integration Decade: Ion Budai-Deleanu’s
Ţiganiada – Cantos I And II ........................................................................................
Sorina GEORGESCU
39
51
LINGVISTICǍ ŞI DIDACTICǍ/ LINGUISTICS AND TEACHING
Digital Multimodality in Pedagogical Tools: A Semiotic Analysis of the Hypermedia Novel
Inanimate Alice ............................................................................................................
Ana ABRIL HERNÁNDEZ
67
From Self-Awareness To Cultural Awareness .........................................................................
Fabiola POPA
81
Universals in the Syntax of Cardinal-Noun Constructions......................................................
Mihaela TǍNASE-DOGARU
87
Transculturalism on an Everyday Basis ..................................................................................
Slava TCHERPOKOVA
97
Teaching-Workshop .................................................................................................................
Maureen Daly GOGGIN, Slava TCHERPOKOVA, Dacian BǍRBOSU, Sandra-Lucia
ISTRATE, Dragos-Lucian IVAN, Thomas PARSONS
107
CRONICI / BOOK REVIEWS
Sorina GEORGESCU
Africa Is Not My Home (Introducere în literatura afro-americană de călătorie, Oana
Cogeanu) .......................................................................................................................
129
“United We Stand, Divided We Fall”: Romania and Japan, Two Branches of the Same Tree
(Folclor românesc şi japonez. Proverbe, Sandra-Lucia Istrate) ...................................
133
STUDII LITERARE ŞI CULTURALE CULTURAL AND LITERARY STUDIES HyperCultura, nr. 2(10), 2012
6
HyperCultura, nr. 2(11), 2012
Dacian BĂRBOSU
NEWFOUND LAND, A NEW BEGINNING: ROMANIAN IMMIGRANT WRITERS …..
7
NEWFOUND LAND, A NEW BEGINNING:
ROMANIAN IMMIGRANT WRITERS
ON INDIVIDUAL MEMORIES
Dacian BǍRBOSU*
Abstract: Since the fall of the Berlin Wall that opened the floodgates to recent waves
of immigrants, writers like Aura Imbaruş (Out of Transylvania Night, 2010) and
Bogdan Suceavă (Coming from an Off-Key Time: A Novel, 2011) show the way
individual freedom is understood during Romania’s difficult transition to
democracy. A land of chaos which had no constitution for two years after the
Revolution, a land where prophets rose like flowers after the rain, this is the place
which was left behind by many people who sought a better life. They also chronicle
a new beginning in a land their protagonists could only dream about before
escaping to the West.
Key-words: individual freedom, immigrant, democracy, Romania, satire, memory.
During the1 past two decades there
were many Romanian immigrants who
sought for a better life in the United
States of America. There were a few
who wrote about their experiences
before leaving their native land and
how the impact with the new society
changed their lives. Writing about your
homeland as an immigrant has many
connotations. On many occasions the
tone of the writings is sorrowful, or it is
filled with humor, but on every
occasion the immigrant writers have a
sense of regret of their homeland. I will
analyze the way in which individual
memories have shaped the identities of
these two writers: Aura Imbaruş’s Out
of Transylvania Night (2010) and
Bogdan Suceavă’s Coming from an
Off-Key Time: A Novel (Writings from
an Unbound Europe) (2011).
Aura Imbaruş prefers the biographical novel whereas Suceavă uses
more of a mockery type of writing, a
novel of the absurd. These novels show
the way individual freedom was
understood during Romania’s difficult
transition to democracy. They emphasize the psycho-social transformations
of post-communist societies and try to
satirize the past in order to search for a
new identity. Both writers were
confronted with totalitarianism and
impositions on individual identity.
They witnessed the rise and fall of
communism, with all the flaws of those
times: lack of electricity, heat, and
food.
***
1*
Arizona State University
8
Aura Imbaruş is a survivor of those
difficult times as she was born and
raised in Sibiu/Hermannstadt, Romania, or to be more precise, in Dracula’s
county, Transylvania. Later she came to
the United States in 1993 where she
continued her education at UCLA and
began her teaching career both as a
high school and college professor. In
2010, her best-seller Out of Transylvania Time soon became very popular
among the American public and also
the Romanian community in the U.S.
who wanted to find out a good cultural
insight on Romania and the realities of
an Eastern European country after the
fall of communism.
Aura Imbaruş’s novel tells the story
of tyranny and freedom, love, success,
and the price paid for uneven dreams in
an epic tale of identity and human
spirit. It is a narrative about finding
new meaning and fulfillment in a free
world, and an exploration of how social
issues affect the human spirit. It is a
chronicle of one woman’s pursuit for
her own identity, firstly under the
Communist dictatorship of the brutal
and oppressive Ceauşescu, and, later, as
she struggles to maintain her integrity
in the face of overwhelming capitalist
materialism.
Out of the Transylvania Night opens
in the dying days of the Ceauşescu’s
regime, as the local people decide to
fight back after decades of misrule. The
writer succeeds in recreating a time, the
1989 Romanian revolution, when
people were fighting for liberty, for an
escape into the supposed freedom that
any democratic country has to offer.
Against all hopes, the new regime
remained corrupt and was still
controlling the population. Though our
Dacian BĂRBOSU
writer was well settled, financially
secured, had a supportive family and
had also found her love, a sense of
independence made her yearn for
something more. It is an inner fight that
all of us once had to take against all the
blunders that took place around us, so
she went on to follow her dream in the
Newfound land.
The first five chapters set the scene
in the city of Sibiu, the birthplace of the
author, who describes the atmosphere
and the people’s fight during what was
to become their struggle for freedom,
and Aura Imbaraş’s in the years to
come. Back in those days, every soul
was close to dying. The writer states
that the place where she grew up was
“turned […] into a land of gray-clad
zombies who never dared to show their
individuality and the Securitate made
people disappear” (Imbarus online
book description). That was the place
where your neighbors became informants so how would you trust these
people? Aura Imbaraş describes in
vivid detail how she perceived the
Romanian revolution through the eyes
of a teenager and how the society was
prone to change after that. The
description of the people standing in
line to get anything was the materiallization of the never-to-be-fulfilled
desire induced by the utopian ideology
that the Communist regime relied on.
The absence of rules, back in those
days, is taken for the lack of rules after
the fall of communism by the main
character who had an instinct for
freedom which had been suppressed
mercilessly for years.
During those times people were put
in jail should they oppose the regime.
Her family had to struggle as her
uncles, Petre and Nelu tried to flee the
country but were caught and had to do
time in prison.
Having to bury her family jewels
was a very common thing back then;
the same gesture can be found in
Carmen Burgan’s novel, Burying the
Typewriter. Carmen’s father and
mother typed anti-Ceausescu leaflets on
an illegally owned typewriter and then
buried the typewriter in a hole behind
the house in the morning, and then
unearthed it at night.
However, when her countrymen
manage to topple one of the most brutal
regimes in the Soviet bloc, Aura
Imbaruş tells herself that life after the
Revolution would be different. But
little in the country changes. She has to
pass her entry exam at the university
the following year and it is very
difficult for her to focus as other riots
take place: the miners come to the
capital trying to take the government
down. The writer tells the most
important events without giving any
personal
interpretations.
Having
managed to pass the entrance examination and then working for a local
radio station, Aura Imbaraş still feels
attracted by the idea of living a better
life, a life of glamour.
The main character, the author, and
the text itself, return to their native
Romania.
Out of Transylvania Night is
actually made up of two movements,
both externally oriented: a movement
out of Romania and a movement out of
an American marriage towards an
independent existence in the New
World.
Through sacrifice and hard work,
the couple acquire the ‘American
9
Dream’ – but discover that straddling
two cultures is much more complicated
than expected.
In 1997 Aura and Michael, her
newlywed, flee their country with two
pieces of luggage, and a powerful
dream, settling in Los Angeles and
opting for a new life in the New World.
They face a cultural shock, having to
start from scratch, not being able to
carry a simple conversation with a
McDonald’s employee, even though
she is an English major graduate in a
former communist country. During a
span of seven years, they are to find out
all the outward trappings of the
‘American Dream’. In the big
American metropolis Aura tries to get
(to) her true freedom. She makes her
own way into the world and society.
Gradually, Aura adapts herself to her
new homeland despite the fact that she
has to travel to Romania to get her PhD
degree. She brings her family to
America for summer visits, showing
them places and how she has fulfilled
her dream.
She and Michael move from a more
comfortable place to another. They
move up the ladder by getting better
jobs. She manages to find a teaching
job at a high school, Michael works for
movie studios in Hollywood and he is
also the handyman in the house. Now
she knows what it means to “park on
the driveway and to drive on a
parkway” (Imbaruş 220). They buy a
home, the BMW that she dreamed of,
travel the world. They are re-living
Gatsby’s Jazz age. But soon they find
that this life of extravagance strain their
marriage more severely than their years
of struggle. But as we all know, out of
the bleakest nights come the hungriest
10
of wolves, and the devouring sets in.
The stock market reaches rock bottom,
so the couple lose all of their savings.
This is just the beginning of the
nightmare: the house falls into
foreclosure, a robbery targets her
precious family heirlooms and Aura's
mother is diagnosed with terminal
cancer. Under this strain, the couple
divorce. She is soon to realize how
important the social norms and the love
story that she learned from Buni, her
grandmother, is.
It is during these times that Aura
realizes that if she had survived in the
darkest days of her experiences in
Transylvania, she could come through
this, too, she can find her way to the
light. She goes around high social
circles, meets interesting, high-class
men but still she is lured into Michael.
And so their love story lives on. The
memories of living in a country at war
during its darkest days will reunite
them, this time with a better
understanding of themselves. They
think about the personal freedoms they
would, or wouldn’t, give up in
exchange for their love.
During these times, her family and
relationships with others render her true
inner strength. Her determination to
outlive herself as a woman with a deep
self-knowledge is more acute because
of the difficulties that she has had to
endure. One could tell that she has been
privileged to have lived in a really tight
family, but during moments like the
1989 Revolution everyone gets close to
death, every soul stands on the same
page. “Maybe because she is an
Imbaruş” (Imbaruş 260).
Her sense of humor is also catchy.
She says that “in America, one has to
Dacian BĂRBOSU
apply for a TP certificate to qualify for
using toilet paper!” (Imbaruş 260). Her
syntax makes you see that you are not
reading someone's biography, but a
story of a friend who suffered through
tribulations to get to a better place. It is
a personal journey, which gives hope to
other immigrants who want to get away
from their terrible home lives and
emigrate to a new place that will be
more tolerant and safe. By reading this
novel you feel as if you're walking
alongside her through her journey, and
the way that she adjusts herself to a
new and foreign American lifestyle. By
rendering anecdotes and conversations
with her grandmother and friends and
writing about her teenage idols,
Imbaruş makes the story cater to both
immigrants and natives.
Out of the Transylvania Night
presents a fragmented and devastated
world, with few redemptive qualities,
and using a realism that implies a
genuine sincerity of perspectives, a
paradoxical perception that involves the
other and surpasses the photography
obedient to the surface of things.
***
On a different note Coming From an
Off-Key Time is a pledge for normality,
a novel of transition, a chronicle of the
nostalgic Bucharest after 1990 in which
people’s naïveté gav rise to monsters.
Even from the first pages of the novel,
one could note the South American
writers’ magic realism, especially
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s, whose
characters have supernatural powers,
such as Melquiades, who brings magic,
wonders, and books during his visit to
the town of Macondo2, a fictional town
in the novel. He also chronicles the
history and the future of the town,
meticulously penning the secrets of its
cyclical nature in a cryptic code.
Suceavă’s novel is about Romanian
madness. The omniscient writer states
from the start. “The story-teller is I”
(Suceavă 3). And this is not accidental
as Bogdan Suceavă warns us from the
motto of the book.
Bucharest had remained faithful to its old
custom of corruption; at every step we
remembered that we were at the gates of
the Orient. But nevertheless, the
debauchery astonished me less than the
insanity that dominated in every case; I
confess that I had not expected to see
such numerous and various aspects of
folly flourishing to meet such unbridled
madness. As I was not to find almost
anyone who, sooner or later did not
reveal some vice or other, anyone whom,
unexpectedly, I did not have occasion to
hear raving, in the end I lost hope of
meeting, in the flesh and blood, any
human being wholly sound of mind.
(Mateiu Caragiale, The Rakes of the Old
Court3)
The book includes the essence of
life after communism in an uncivilized
and dirty Bucharest. Bogdan Suceavă
created this character Vespasian Moisă
in order to elegantly mock an era, a
belief. Vespasian came into this world
with a stigma. He was born with the
map of Bucharest drawn on his chest.
He is called Teacher, Prophet, Son of
2
See Gabriel Garia Marquez: One
Hundred Years of Solitude (2007)
3
Suceavã, Bogdan. Comming from an
Off-Key Time: Writings from an Unbound
Europe. Trans. Blythe, Alistair Ian. Evanston:
Northwestern UP, 2011.
11
God at His second coming. From an
early age, he gets to the capital city
where he sets up a religious sect,
Vestea Domnului (God’s Herald).
Academics, doctors and also young
people join it “in place of devilish
splendor called Ferentari” (Suceavă
13). Professor Diaconescu is also a
member of this religious sect and he
proves that the Romanian language is
the oldest language in the world and
that the Dacians spoke Romanian. His
nephew is the first to be convinced. He
is a fan of “The Flame” Literary Circle.
Toni the Troubadour is a street
performer having many girlfriends. The
Stephenists, with Darius, the unofficial
leader of the gang, are a group who
have Stephen the Great and Saint as
their imagined leader and who make
their own justice. Both the Tidings of
the Lord and the Stephanists dream to
conquer Bucharest; they win more and
more followers from all social strata, of
all ages, including senators and
deputies who are the followers of both
Ceausescu and Iliescu. Vespasian
Moisă has so many followers that he is
offered a seat in the Parliament. At one
time, the writer brings up Stephen the
Great Reincarnated, whose authenticity
is checked by a PhD professor of
History who wrote his doctoral thesis
on Stephen the Great. When the rivalry
thickens, the two groups collide and
destroy one another. The Stephanists
are humiliating Vespasian Moisă and
also the Reincarnation of Stephen the
Great proves to be another lunatic. The
third group is that of the Secret Service.
The bizarre and the humorous are very
frequent especially when Officer
Trăistaru, the cat-security officer, joins
the group of the pursued ones.
12
One can easily realize how Bogdan
Suceavă mocks us. It is only when the
ideology of the sect groups itself in a
space among the interpersonal vibrations and the cosmic ones that one can
listen to the angels’ song, that doctor
Aghir and the cure against baldness
gather believers easily. The ascension
of the prophet Vespasian seems
unstoppable. The religious movements
spread to the Vatican and the neurosis
justifies the mad-prophet’s job. All the
believers think that Bucharest has a
code as the capital city was called ‘The
New Jerusalem’. Everything would
have gone to deification if it hadn’t
been for the rebel groups, the
Stephenists, the Cuzists, the Pavelists
who fought for supremacy in a city full
of injuctice. Vespasian is not crucified
like all the fake prophets, as the reader
would have expected. He finds his end
like any other homeless on whom some
tramps peed on. Lietuenant Cat seems
to be from another era. He resembles a
character from Bulgakov but anyhow,
Trăistariu is a very funny character who
stirs people.
As we were at the beginning of the
1990’s and Romania hadn’t had any
constitution for two years, the writer
mocks any idea of national rebirth by
making fun of some historical figures,
not directly but by throwing them in the
helpless hands of the so-called ‘chosen
ones’. The metaphor from the title of
Bogdan Suceavă’s novel unveils all the
decadence and the ignorance of a
population that still believes in spiritual
cleansing by fake prophets.
All the characters in the novel have
very strong religious and nationalistic
obsessions. They gather in groups to
fight for something more or less
Dacian BĂRBOSU
abstract, directly or indirectly, in legal
terms or outside the law. Hence the
psychedelics and that Romanian/
Bucharest magical realism and the
outstanding atmosphere of the novel.
All the characters in the novel live in
today’s Romania. They allow the writer
to easily combine the periods, the personalities, the historical and religious
characters thus creating a psychedelic
state.
Writing about the political and
social situation in Romania has become
a mirage for these writers, who
immigrated to the United States mostly
because they could detach themselves
from the reality in the country. Once in
a land where anything was possible,
where you could live the American
dream and succeed as an individual,
one could understand better what was
not working with the Romanian system.
Aura Imbaruş’s novel is the journey
of everyone who is attracted by the
possibility of living in a great
democracy and of knowing that nothing
is for granted and that in order to make
your way up you need to work a lot and
be humble. Luckily, the Romanian
system teaches you how to work a lot
but once you have a taste of
achievement, one can try harder.
Bogdan Suceavă says:
I’ve always been impressed that us,
Romanians, put all our hopes in
somebody we know little of. A
providential character who is seen as the
Nation’s Savior, the Chosen One, the
one we fall in love with and find it hard
to get through him. It’s a sort of
metaphysical Caritas where we gamble
but still we do not learn anything. We
have the capacity of investing illusions
in a man that we do not know anything
about. I find this as an ever-repeating
syndrome. We will forever be hopeful in
Romania, purposelessly, with no
wisdom. It’s some sort of lying-to yourself science, doubled by naïveté. It’s
a syndrome, which does not only apply
to the political space but to all the
compartments of our public life. I
wanted to write a comedy about this; a
comedy in which different groups wait
for the other’s prophet’s salvation. And
the prophets never cease to appear; there
are a lot like this in the book. The battle
to conquer Bucharest is fought among
the sects, each with their own methods
and purposes. The secret services spy
closely these sects, which are considered
dangerous for our young democracy. It’s
a country with so many secret services:
how can one not write a comedy about
this? (Suceavă: online book description).
Running from the past and anxious
about the future, both Imbaruş and
Suceavă get stuck in a disquieting
eternal present. Irony is not only
instrumentalized when characterizing
the old country and the new one. Irony
is also directed at the authors
themselves.
The two writers point to immigrant
routes at a moment in Eastern Europe’s
recent past canvassing the hopes of the
Romanian people for a better life. The
fact is that, after joining the EU in
2005, more than three million of
Romania’s inhabitants sought a better
life in a foreign country. They were out
of Transylvania night and into the day
of the Newfound Land.
Both writers became increasingly
important for an ongoing phenomenon
in the American republic of letters
nowadays: the rising of Eastern
13
European – American literature, hyphenated ethnic literature which rose into
prominence in the wake of the fall of
the Communist regimes.
WORKS CITED
Burgan, Carmen. Burying the Typewriter: A
Memoir. 1ed. Gardena: Bettie Youngs
Books, 2010. Print.
Imbaruş, Aura. Out of Transylvania Night. 1ed.
Gardena: Bettie Youngs Books, 2011. Print.
Imbaruş, Aura. "Out of the Transylvania Night
". 2012. web. Amazon.com. 3 October
2012. <http://www.amazon.com/Out-Transylvania-Night-AuraImbarus/dp/0984308121>.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. One Hundred Years
of Solitude. London: Penguin Books, 2007.
Print.
Suceavă, Bogdan. Coming from an Off-Key
Time: Writings from an Unbound Europe.
Trans. Blythe, Alistair Ian. Evanston:
Northwestern UP, 2011. Print.
Suceavă, Bogdan. "Venea din timpul diez".
2012. web. Polirom. 3 October 2012 2012.
<http://www.polirom.ro/catalog/carte/venea
-din-timpul-diez-1673/>.
Short bio
Dacian BĂRBOSU is a Faculty
Associate, teaching in the Romanian Studies
Program at the Arizona State University. He
is the Romanian online course coordinator,
having designed and taught Elementary and
Intermediate Romanian online courses. He is
also the co-director of ASU's summer Study
Abroad program to Romania and Central
Europe. He is currently in the graduate
program at ASU's College of Liberal Arts
and Sciences. His academic preparation
includes a BA in Philology (West University,
Timişoara) and MBA (The Academy of
Economic Sciences, Bucharest).
Contact: [email protected]
2
Dacian BĂRBOSU
SOME RECENT IRISH FEMININE VOICES IN THE
MULTICULTURAL AND/OR TRANSCULTURAL
(IMMIGRANT) POETIC SPACE
CASE STUDIES
Ligia Doina CONSTANTINESCU*
Abstract: The subject of “Immigrant Women Poets of Ireland” is topical in several
ways, one being the enquiry about Irishness. My contention is that although women
emigrant poets have been considerably anthologized, the immigrant ones to Ireland
have remained relatively ‘invisible’ as a group (Borbala Farago, 2008). This
prompts me into working out a conceptual framework on migration, identity and
minority (G. Deleuze, J. Kristeva, Hugo Hamilton), on the basis of which to be able
to discuss, with close reading arguments, existential, psychological and aesthetic
implications of poetic and dramatic texts by (the Belgian) Anne Cluysenaar, (the
Polish) Sabine Wichert, (the England born) Jo Slade, (the Canadian) Heather Brett,
(the Ireland born Indian) Ursula Rani Sarma, (the American born) Nuala Archer;
many of whom are of mixed ethnicity. The topos of displacement is going to get
explored from various perspectives, ranging from the (immigrant) female body in
relation to a host (-/ile environment), through journeying along nomadic selves to a
mother-figure (as both origin and destination), up to the issue of language, with its
pivotal part for identity formation.
Key-words: Irishness, lyrical, displacement, hybrid, women, migration, nomadic
consciousness, other.
Thematic1 concerns with migration
focus on the ambivalence of the
relation between home – as loss and
desire –, and destination. Acknowledged as the most intense drive about
migrant identities, this ambivalence of
the migratory self stems from a
condition of relativity/shifting sense of
reality, and has been figured out as
stamped by:
1*
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi,
Romania
Ambivalence towards the past and the
present: as to whether things were better
‘then’ or ‘now’. Ambivalence towards
the future: whether to retain a ‘myth of
return’ or to design a new project
without further expected movement built
in. Ambivalence towards standards of
behaviour: whether to cling to the old or
to discard it, whether to compromise via
symbolic events whilst adhering to the
new on an everyday basis (White 3).
The migrant’s identity is continuously traced out in relation to or
against ‘an/the other’. Whereas in the
16
context of modernism, they represent
estrangement/uprooted-ness, in the
postmodernist context/paradigm, they
become
embodiments
of
the
fragmented, plural subject-/ivity. The
immigrants’ sense of identity is broadly
relational – they are fragmented in
relation to the complete, mobile in
relation with the static –. On the other
hand, other analysts contend that –
along with all minorities– migrants can
be identifiable “by the gap that
separates them from this or that axiom
constituting a redundant majority
(Deleuze & Guattari 518)”.
Regardless of origin (-al culture), for
much of the 20th century, a largely
inflexible social structure seems to
have been the strongest influence on
the immigrant women’s lives in
Ireland, which had deep impact on
literary representations of sexuality and
motherhood, further restricting the
‘nomadic’ freedom of expression.
As for the construct of Irishness, in
the collections or anthologies surveyed,
there can be registered a “reluctance
to...interrogate
the
notions
[of
Irishness]”; most of the poets are
considered as “appropriated Irish –,
Irish with a ‘however’; as such, their
differences have remained largely
invisible and suffused in an assumed
homogeneity” (Farago 150). A
generous definition is given in the
‘Introduction’ to the collection The
White Page: 20th Century Women
Poets, Cliffs of Mother: “The poets are
Irish by birth, descent or adoption, and
they identify themselves or their work
with Ireland” (McBreen V).
Writing itself can metaphorically be
viewed as reinforcing the notion of the
clash between the empirical drive of the
home and the cyclical attraction of the
nomad. Writing “opens up a space that
invites movement, migration, a
journey. It involves putting a certain
distance between ourselves and the
contexts that define our identity
(Chambers 10)”; correspondingly,
migrancy might as well be viewed as a
distinctive condition of postmodernity.
Cluysenaar Anne is the daughter of
the Belgian painter John Cluysenaar;
she graduated from Trinity College,
Dublin, in 1957 and took Irish
citizenship in 1961; she has lived on a
smallholding in Wales with her
husband Walt Jackson for over 20
years, and edits poetry for the journal
Scintilla; her recent publications
include: Timeslips, New and Selected
Poems (Carcanet: 1997), Batu-Angas:
Envisioning Nature with Alfred Russel
Wallace, (Seren: 2008) and autobiographical poems, Water to Breathe,
(Flarestack: 2009); her work has
appeared in many anthologies and was
included in Poetry 1900-2000, One
Hundred Poets from Wales (The
Library of Wales, ed. Meic Stephens,
Parthian: 2007). Worthwhile considering here are some of her autobiographical views, such as the following:
My father was the sculptor and painter
John Cluysenaar, from a long line of
architects, sculptors, painters …. The
male line seems to have originated near
Clausen in Bavaria, and three brothers
worked as journeymen-builders on
Cologne Cathedral before one moved to
Amsterdam, starting our particular line
which eventually settled in Belgium four
generations ago. My mother was of
Scottish-Irish stock. She trained as a
painter at the Slade in London under
Melton Fisher (who made a fine portrait
of her), and did some fine work in
stained glass as well as painting before
SOME RECENT IRISH FEMININE VOICES IN THE MULTI-CULTURAL AND/OR … 17
she married. After her marriage, she
found (as she told me) that ‘two
temperaments in one house’ led to
difficulties, so she gave up her career to
support my father’s. We emigrated
because my father foresaw the war
(when many of his Belgian friends did
not). He had some contacts with
England, his mother being of Scottish
descent – a Gordon of Thrieve Castle –
and he himself having spent some (not
very happy) years in an English public
school, Marlborough (A Cluysenaar in
Lidia Vianu, 2006).
In her poem “A Presence”,
Cluysenaar Anne x-rays the persona’s
body in its representation of identity as
a gendered and ethnically differentiated
presence; e.g. “I stood with my toes to
the pool’s margin”. The immigrant
woman is gazing from/out of a body
that seems to get precariously balanced
between origin and destination, two
spaces with their entailing epistemological manifestations; these two
spaces contest her identification as
either outsider or insider (Puwar 2004),
whereas her body encroaches on an
imaginary space of ‘belonging’, where,
“as in a trick picture, a presence
emerged from the gold, pink brown
spots held fast/by invisible edges, a
ghostly thickening”. Her sight/vision
looms over the self-conscious site
within the poem; it becomes the only
genuine ‘presence’, subordinating the
physical component to the psychic one.
Her identity hangs “in the precarious
equilibrium
outside
its
own
boundaries”, as construct of the self;
this turns out to become problematic, as
lacking ‘substance’; reason why there
emerges an energy/initiative of
‘moving’ on:
I wondered, was it conscious (of me,
that is)?
I leant a fraction forward. I must have
crossed
some safety barrier. Its judgment of my
shape
changed: no longer a blundering passerby,
one of the sheep, the donkey browsing
rushes,
but something with intentions – a
threatening intentness.
The interrogative punctuation at the
I-st line-ending further problematizes
the feminine persona’s identity.
Outside the physically body limitations,
and standing at the pool edge, she is
tight-roping a sense of presupposed
consciousness; thus, the/a “ghostly
thickening” seems endowed with
judgment capacity, while the woman’s
gaze shifts – from looking to being
looked at –.
This shift of the specular gaze can
be symbolic of one’s stepping over a
“safety barrier” of identity construction.
The self gets dissolved into a blurred
vision which enables self-perception as
a “threatening intentness”. It might as
well be worth wondering whether such
a split is characteristic of migrant
identity in transition or in crisis. The
woman self-perceives as misplaced
shape – without boundaries –, yet with
threatening self-intention, out of
context in both worlds:
So it went, in a puff of mud, the
convulsion
too fast to be seen, its after-image
(from before I tried to get too close,
which I carry with me)
still motionless on the retina.
Here a sense of peripherality stamps
such an expression that gets articulated
18
on the becoming site of an ‘afterimage’ of its presupposed ‘substance/
content.’
Originally from Prussia, now
Poland, Sabine Wichert was educated
in
Germany
(Universities
of
Frankfurt/Main, Marburg, FU Berlin
and Mannheim) and in England (LSE
and Oxford); she has been lecturing at
Queen’s Univ, Belfast since 1971; she
has been editor of From the United
Irishmen to Twentieth-Century Unionism. A Festschrift for A.T.Q Stewart
(Dublin, 2004); Northern Ireland since
1945 (Harlow, Longmans, 1991, 2nd
ed. 1999, 3rd impression, 1994); athor
of “The role of Nationalism in the
Northern Ireland Conflict” in History of
European Ideas, vol. 16, 1993; “Der
Konflikt in Nordirland. Geschichte,
Ursachen,
Loesungsansaetze”
in
Ethnos-Nation, II, I, 1994; “Bloody
Sunday and the End of Unionist
Government”
in Nordirland
in
Geschichte und Gegenwart/Northern
Ireland – Past and Present (Stuttgart,
1994); “Terence O'Neill and his
Politics”, ibid.; she has edited (with M.
O'Dowd), Chattel, Servant or Citizen:
Women's Status in Church, State and
Society, (Institute of Irish Studies,
Belfast, 1995); she wrote “The
Northern Ireland Conflict: New Wine
in Old Bottles?” in Contemporary
European History, 9, 2 (2000) and
“The Troubles” in The Penguin Atlas of
British and Irish History (London,
2001).
Sabine Wichert takes a less
phenomenological
approach
to
migration. In “Small Things” (Tin
Drum Country, 1995), for instance, she
traces out immigrant perceptions of an
adopted environment, where daily
images get changed into ‘displaced’
representations, imbued with sadness:
These get me down today: a face in a
passing car,
A signature in a visitor’s book,
A supermarket trolley.
The melancholy vein is emblematic
of internal insecurity and of a
generalized sense of disconnectedness ,
not only with the outside world but also
with a coherent self:
I do not dare
To touch my lips
Yet I smoke and smoke.
Thus, she further dissipates any
traces of security. Under the threat of
foreign
surroundings,
her
selfperception changes to the point of her
seeing that:
even the grass
Outside the window
Grows at an alien angle.
The persona’s sense of self collapses
when perceived in relation to the
outside, which can hardly supply her
with any clear-cut boundaries of
belonging. So much so that she can
hardly get content with a shifting
identity sense; with an imaginary knife,
she wishes she could “cut through the
news and the power/and find a way”.
Yet the only ‘constant’ (here) seems to
be a sense of depression brought about
by a half-failure of the self-security or
of its misdirection.
The English born Jo Slade re-writes
her version of home and displacement
in In Fields I Hear Them Sing
(1994/1998), by choosing to ignore
(real or imaginary) space as a selfdefining variable, as for instance in ‘I
Am the Place’, where she is
deconstructing notions of belonging,
while assimilating them by cutting
through linear expectations about
ethnic heritage:
I will destroy your principles
Of order and cleanliness
And I will not tell
My own children
The stories I was told.
Rather than remaining contingent on
relating the self to space, the identity
construct turns into space itself:
Because so much has occurred,
Because I have been
So may other women,
Because I am the place
In which things happen.
By overstepping binaries (home/lessness),
the
nomadic/migratory
subject internalizes her condition, while
simultaneously becoming detached
from spatial anchoring. In this
representation of the nomadic self, the
subject signifies the nomadic potential
of ‘becoming’, which remains emotionnally ambiguous and unresolved.
The pattern of nomadic journeying
is revisited in “Homecoming: Up and
Down an Octave in Nine Movements”
(Slade 13-18); it is a poem in nine
parts, which traces out the wandering
paths of ‘home-/coming’:
Nomadic tribes trudge over me –
Look for the brightest spot on the line
Look for home
Search the sea
Light moves on
Moves over me
Chant psalms
I hear – I understand
Sacred songs mother tongue
I am eager to understand, ready to be
cheated
To die.
Her desire to be “nomadic forever”
gets subverted by a recurrent
exclamation “look for home/now is the
time for home”. Moreover, although
the poem ends on the persona’s getting
“prepared” for her journey, yet her
attraction for becoming takes a cyclical
pattern: the last two lines register her
“cycle after cycle/going home”.
Heather Brett is a Canadian, born
in Newfoundland, and raised in County
Antrim, Ireland; she has lived in the
South of Ireland for twenty years,
mainly Dublin, Monaghan and now
Cavan; she started writing poetry in
1986 when she met Leland Bardwell in
Tallaght; she has three collections to
date: Abigail Brown, The Touch-Maker
and Green Monkey, Travelling; she has
published in numerous magazines and
anthologies; in 2005, she was
Bluechrome Poet of the Year; she has
been founder and editor of Windows
Publications since 1992 and dedicated
to the promotion of new voices,
especially young writers; she has been
writer-in-residence
for
Cavan,
Drogheda and The Midlands Collaboration Project; she is also editor of
some ten anthologies of young people
writing, including Voices from the
Hollow (1, 2 and 3), Toadstools and
Glue (1,2,3 and 4) and I Caught Fire;
she has edited and co-ordinated The
Caught Bouquet (anthology and CD of
poetry), commissioned music and
contemporary art-work from artists in
Cavan since Cathal Bui Mac Giolla
Chunna to the present.
For Heather Brett, migrancy sounds
rather threatening. In “Journey” (Brett
Heather, Abigail Brown, 1991), there is
a metaphorical association between the
un-belonging space and a “bleak
20
absence”, where the poetic self is alone,
“stripped and without guile”:
I know nothing
but wait for the cadence
to surround me.
I have never reached the last turn
always I hesitate
unsure of my right to go ahead.
Trapped and reluctant, the hesitating
subject gets urged into movement and
finally into erosion:
and then I will fade
somersault slowly into a thundercloud
and roll away.
Ursula Rani Sarma was born in
Ireland from Indian father and Irish
mother; she is an Irish/Indian
playwright, screenwriter and poet; she
grew up in Co Clare and has a BA from
University College Cork and an MPhil
from Trinity College Dublin; she began
directing and writing plays while a
student at University College Cork; the
first play she directed was Innocence
by Frank McGuinness (1997) at the
University's Granary Theatre; in 1999
she wrote and directed Like Sugar on
Skin, which was selected to represent
the University at the annual Irish
Student Drama Awards in Galway
where it won several awards; her
breakthrough came in August 1999
when she wrote and directed her first
professional play ...touched..., which
premiered at Edinburgh's Hillstreet
Theatre Venue. ...touched... received
critical acclaim and attracted attention
from The Traverse Theatre, The
National Theatre London and the BBC;
she founded Djinn Theatre Company in
1999 and has served as artistic director
since that time; since 1999, she has
written thirteen plays for stage, three
radio plays, contributed episodes to
Ecosse FIlms series RAW on RTE, and
had her poetry is included in several
anthologies; she has won numerous
awards for her plays including an
Edinburgh Fringe Award, an Irish
Times/ ESB Theatre Award, and the
Critics Awards for Theatre in
Scotland's 2010 Best New Play Award
for The Dark Things, produced by The
Traverse Theatre in 2009. The Dark
Things also won Best Production at the
CATS awards; her plays include Like
Sugar on Skin, ...touched..., Blue,
Wanderings, Gift, The Spiderman,
Orpheus Road, Birdsong, The Parting
Glass, RIOT, The Magic Tree, Car
Four, The Fisherman, A Tiny Light in
the Darkness, The Dark Things and a
version of Lorca's Yerma; these plays
have been translated and produced
extensively and were written for
companies such as The Traverse
Theatre, The National Theatre of
London, The Abbey Theatre, Paines
Plough, The American Conservatory
Theatre, The Origin Theatre Company,
The BBC amongst others; over the past
few years, she has begun writing for the
screen and as well as writing for RAW
and has developed feature films (with
B3 Media, Film4 and The Irish Film
Board); in 2011 she was selected to
take part in the Guiding Lights film
mentoring project; in 2011 she wrote
and directed her first short film The
Woods; she has been Writer in
Residence for Paines Plough Theatre
Company, The Eugene O'Neill Theatre
Centre,
The
National
Theatre,
CREATE and Galway Local Authorities; her plays are published by
Oberon Books and Faber and Faber and
her poetry is published by Arlen House
and Dedalus Press; she is currently on
attachment at the Soho Theatre in
London as one of their Soho six
Writers.
In The Hindu –West Clare Project,
Ursula Rani Sarma traces out a
daughter’s psychological journey to get
the consent of her father’s inheritance
Stunning,
With breaths of lace and threads of gold
I have become
My father’s daughter,
At last.
On her travelling to Calcutta, the
early “morning city” permeates the
poet’s identity until her sense of self
gets dissolved in the environment:
We travelled through the early morning
city
Our netted minds caught in tangles of
sweet and sour smells,
Entranced and entwined bloodily...
Our luggage lost,
I slipped inside the sari folds
And tried to make them my second skin.
The Hindu heritage seems to fit
loosely backing up her desire to belong
as expressed through the emotional
bond to her father, who seemingly
holds together all threads of insecurity:
I wanted to be an ingredient of him,
A tiny part that would make me fraction
of something
Someone so perfect and delicate
That he is dead.
Yet there is a simultaneous mock
search (for homogeneous identity –
“glorified and sanctified” father -), or a
subverted one, because the origin space
(of the country) remains detached, as in
the last two lines:
And so I want my crooked nose to be the
same as his.
A link to the divine.
The persona’s journey to Calcutta
becomes one of her paternal heritage
quests resulting in mockery of ‘racial’
identity construct/s; the only heritage
passed on from father to daughter
seems to be dislocation/displacement.
Nuala Archer was born in 1955 in
New York, to Irish parents; her family
moved to Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador
and Panama; she is the author of five
books, most recently, Inch Aeons (Les
Figues Press, 2006); her first book,
Whale on the Line, won the Patrick
Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1980; she
has published poems in literary journals
and magazines including The American
Poetry Review, Mid-American Review
and Seneca Review; until 2011, she was
an Associate Professor in the English
Department at Cleveland State University; during the 1990s, she briefly
served as the director of Cleveland
State University Poetry Centre; she has
taught literature and edited the Midland
Review at Oklahoma State University;
she has also taught at Yale University
and Albertus Magnus College; she also
published From a Mobile Home
(Salmon Poetry, 1995); The Hour of
Pan/Amá (Salmon Publishing, 1992);
Two Women, Two Shores: Poems by
Medbh McGuckian and Nuala Archer
(New Poets Series/Salmon Press,
1989); Whale on the Line (Gallery
Books, 1981).
Nuala Archer is performing another
identity-quest-type: parental influence
of the dominating Mother figure, as
somehow usual in the case of poetry
written by women. In “The Lost Glove
is Happy” (McBreen 4-5), the maternal
figure is viewed both as origin and as
22
destination all along the journey of a
pair of “rabbit fur lined gloves”, which
travel on the persona’s hands (through
Bull Island and Howth), before getting
separated from their owner and lost
“between still water, /Oklahoma and
Lubbock, Texas”. From here on, the
journey branches off: loss of gloves, as
well as the woman’s return to Mother,
although the destination remains a
negative experience: “Come, she said,
I’m in /the midst of desolation...I’ll be
waiting for you”, says the mother’s
voice, dissipating illusions about homereturning. When the persona comes to
“embrace [her] mother in desolation”,
she’s asked “to try an outfit after
outfit”, thus further foregrounding a
sense of identity shifting. Both journey
and destination get problematized by
the persona’s getting reunited with a
child-like construction of the self,
where she refuses to fit into the
“sweaters, trousers/skirts, shorts, slips/
and blouses offered by Mother”. The
climax comes at the end, when in their
failure to attain any sense of
‘substantial’ identity, Mother and
daughter join in the metaphor of the
‘mismatched glove’, without getting
deprived of the note of “strange
happiness” though. Women seem to
find comfort in ambiguity, in escaping
labelling/naming, thus settling in their
migrant identities, whose meaning and
content constantly shift from desolation
to destination.
When I got
There, when I arrived, when
I reached desolation, my mother
Alone, in the middle of crazy
Cotton fields, my mother in
Desolation, I reached her,
I travelled to her,
To desolation, and in desolation
We were as lost as any
Two mismatched gloves and
For a few moments we relaxed, lost
And strangely happy,
In the Lubbock Mall, without
Labels stripped to our bones.
Another Mother-quest is enacted
both physically and metaphorically in
“Between Swilly and Sewanee”
(Archer Nuala, 1995, From a Mobile
Home); the initial “Who is the Mother
of these words?” speaks volumes about
a sense of linguistic orphanage, as
specific to immigrant identities floating
between different mother tongues.
All such perspectives strategically
converge on the common ground of
critical interrogation of representations,
now
and
here,
of
migration
consciousness in a feminist light.
The lyrical samples are illustrative
either of ‘schizophrenic split’ (Anne
Cluysenaar), or of ‘internal insecurity’,
feeling of disconnectedness and even
depression (Sabine Wichert), or of
deconstruction of the notion of
belonging altogether (Jo Slade), or of
the ambiguity about the nomadic
‘becoming’, as enacted in cyclical
representations or in metaphorically
threatening ones (Heather Brett), or of
ironic enactments of quest for paternal
heritage (Ursula Rani Sarma), or of the
problematization of the maternal figure
legacy, as well as desiring (Nuala
Archer).
Almost all can be read as hypostases
of linguistic ‘orphanage’ – an orphannage undermining identity, rather than
empowering it –; and consequently, as
potentially integrated in a multicultural
ethos, which has “assimilated them into
a hegemonic majority culture” in terms
of a politics of interrogation (Lentin &
McVeigh 162). More often than not,
this has resulted in rendering the
invisible (minority) visible (civilized
majority), within the current narratives
of Irishness, according to an agenda of
‘Irish
feminisms’
(Brah
1996).
Therefore, the meaning of Irish
womanhood is to get re-articulated in
keeping with not only the re-exploration of Irishness and the emergent
awareness about the obsoleteness of
contemporary Ireland as mono-cultural,
‘authentic’ voice, but also with the
correlative
sensitivity
to
the
‘sameness’- nomadic becoming in all
of us -. In other words, because there is
a nomad in all of us, and we are all in
the process of becoming, minority
identity can be viewed as a
recognizable sameness:
The nomadic subject signifies the
potential becoming, the opening out –
the transformative power of all the
exploited, marginalized, oppressed
minorities. Just being a minority,
however, is not enough: it is only the
starting point. What is crucial to
becoming-Nomad is undoing the
oppositional
dualism
of
majority/minority and arousing an
affirmative passion and desire for the
transformative flows that destabilize all
identities (Braidotti 84).
WORKS CITEY
Primary Sources
Archer, Nuala. From a Mobile Home. Galway:
Salmon Publishing,1995. Print.
Bourke, A., et all. Eds. The Field Day Anthology
of Irish Writing, Vol V. Cork: Cork UP and
Field Day, 2002. Print.
Brett, Heather. Abigail Brown. Galway: Salmon
Publishing,1991. Print.
Knight, Susan. Ed. Where the Grass is Greener:
Voices of Immigrant Women in Ireland.
Dublin: Oak Tree Press, 2001. Print.
McBreen, Joan. Ed. The White Page: 20th Century
Women Poets, Cliffs of Mother. Galway:
Salmon Publishing, 2000. Print.
Slade, Jo. In Fields I Hear Them Sing. Galway:
Salmon Publishing, 1994/1998. Print.
Wichert, Sabine. Tin Drum Country. Galway:
Salmon Poetry, 1995. Print.
Secondary Sources
Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora:
Contesting Identities. London and New York:
Routledge,1996. Print.
Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards a
Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2002. Print.
Chambers, Iain. Migrancy, Culture, Identity.
London and New York: Routledge,1994. Print.
Coughlan, Patricia and Tina O’Toole. Eds. Irish
Literature: Feminist Perspectives. IASIL
Studies in Irish Writing. Dublin: Carysfort
Press, 2008. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand
Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
London and New York: Continuum, 2004.
Print.
Faragó, Borbála and Moynagh Sullivan. Eds.
Facing the Other: Interdisciplinary Studies on
Race, Gender and Social Justice in Ireland.
Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing:
2008. Print.
Hamilton, Hugo. The Speckled People. London
and New York: Fourth Estate, 2003. Print.
Kristeva, Julia. Strangers to Ourselves. New York:
Columbia UP,1991. Print.
Lentin, R. and R. McVeigh. Eds. Racism and AntiRacism in Ireland. Belfast: Beyond the Pale,
2002. Print.
Puwar, Nirmal. Space Invaders, Race, Gender and
Bodies out of Place. New York: Berg, 2004.
Print.
Vianu, Lidia. Desperado Essay Interviews.
Bucureşti: Editura Universităţii, 2006. Print.
White, Paul. “Geography, Literature and
Migration” in King et all. Eds. Writing Across
Worlds: Literature and Migration. London and
New York: Routledge, 1995. Print.
24
Short bio
Ligia Doina CONSTANTINESCU is
Reader at the Department of English, Letters,
University Alexandru Ioan Cuza University
of Iaşi, with lecturing and research/
publication experience in Stylistics-Poetics,
Irish, American and Canadian Literary and
Cultural Studies, preferably but not
exclusively 20th Century Short Story Practice,
Gender and Translation Studies. Publications
include Dictionaries, several books, several
courses of lectures, text-books, translations of
books and of studies in inter-/national
journals and Annals; affiliated to several
professional associations and with professionnal contribution/s acknowledged in
several ways including book-form.
THE REPRODUCTION OF VIOLENCE
IN ALICE WALKER’S NOVELS:
FROM HEROIC TO VICTIMIZED RAPIST
Adelina VARTOLOMEI*
Abstract: The paper analyzes the reproduction of violence in three novels written by
Alice Walker (The Color Purple, Meridian, The Third Life of Grange Copeland).
This physical and psychological abuse is not blamed on a certain race or ethnicity.
More specifically, this system of injustice is reiterated by African Americans who
have been submitted to it during/after slavery. Calvin Hernton, for instance,
observes how the roles of masters and slaves are reassigned in Walker’s novels as
African American men are “masters” while the women are still oppressed. The
paper focuses especially on African American women and the suffering they endure
on account of the fact that before and after freedom they are still in chains. The
main instrument of oppression is that of rape, reason why Martha Cutter, for
example, states that the myth of Philomela has greatly influenced the writing of
African American women. However, a conflict is born as Alice Walker depicts black
men as both peaceful and violent, description with which Angela Davis disagrees
because the negative examples might create fake stereotypes as they did in the past
such as that of the black rapist and black whore.
Key-words: Violence, Rape, Philomela, Stereotypes, Slavery, African American.
Violence1 appears to be a vicious
circle one cannot escape regardless of
race, ethnicity, gender, or even culture.
The oppressors and the oppressed are
timeless roles played by different actors
throughout history. One finds it
difficult to imagine a peaceful world
without having a common enemy or
some sort of threat to bring people
together. Alice Walker has tried to
reveal the repetition of abusive systems
through her novels and achieve some
type of understanding of her own self
and of the world. Walker has stated
1*
Ovidiul Univesity, Constanţa
that, while being in the South and
fighting for equal rights, she was
tempted to surrender to violence as her
philosophy of peace appeared useless
and without consequences. Often she
desired to fight fire with fire, but the
act of writing rescued her. She
oscillated between constructing and
destroying the world but she confesses
in “One Child of One’s Own: A
Meaningful Digression within the
Work(s)”, an article which was
included in her well-known In Search
of Our Mothers’ Gardens, that “writing
saved me [her] from the sin of
inconvenience of violence – as it saves
26
Adelina VARTOLOMEI
most writers who live in ‘interesting’
oppressive times and are not afflicted
by personal immunity.” (Walker, In
Search of 379) She escaped this cycle
of brutality and embarked on a mission
to disrupt it. In her fiction, Walker
deals with rape and domestic violence.
The problem she confronts is that
African American women were
subjected to abuse during slavery and
this has not stopped after the
Proclamation of Emancipation. On the
contrary, the system of violence has
been propagated preserving the same
roles of villains and victims and simply
changing the actors.
In order to better explain the new
façade of the slavery system, Calvin
Hernton states, in “Who’s Afraid of
Alice Walker?,”(1987) that the novel
The Color Purple (1982)depicts a
situation in which the white people
have disappeared only to leave their
form of organization behind, the black
men have become the oppressors and
the black women the oppressed. The
novel actually begins with a detailed
description of Celie’s unfortunate
sexual experience, i.e. her father
habitually raping her. This is a
reminder of the times when white men
raped their slaves without caring about
their feelings:
He never had a kine word to say to me.
Just say you gonna do what your
mammy wouldn't. First he put his thing
up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it
around. Then he grab hold my titties.
Then he push his thing inside my pussy.
When that hurt, I cry. He start to choke
me, saying You better shut up and git
used to it. (Walker, The Color Purple 1)
Celie was being treated like an
animal which had to be obedient. She
could not find relief and understanding
in African American men. In fact, the
only distinction between the former
white masters and black men is racial.
What is more, Celie’s situation is more
aggravating as the man who was
supposed to protect her from danger is
actually a physical and psychological
threat to her.
In Race, Gender, and Desire, (1989)
Elliott Butler-Evans finds that Walker
uses a defamiliarizing strategy by
presenting the family as a place where
such violent episodes take place. Later
on in the novel, Celie experiences
abuse in her marriage as well. Her
husband is her stepfather’s double:
My mama die, I tell Shug. My sister
Nettie run away. Mr.??? come git me to
take care his rotten children. He never
ast me nothing bout myself. He clam on
top of me and fuck and fuck, even when
my head bandaged. Nobody ever love
me, I say. (Walker, The Color Purple
35)
Both Mr. and her stepfather are men
interested in having sex only to please
themselves while completely disregarding Celie. Neither of them cares
about her feelings or thoughts. ButlerEvans continues to specify that the
detailed description of these sexual
scenes contributes to an anti-erotic
novel as they are the signs of
pornography: “Rape, within or outside
marriage, is totally demystified and
seen as an instrument of oppression”
(Butler 167). The language used in the
novel helps emphasize “the dehumanizing aspects of the act” (Butler 167).
Celie’s rape stole her self-confidence.
There is no romance, no passionate
intense feelings, and no exchange of
lustful looks. There barely are any
THE REPRODUCTION OF VIOLENCE IN ALICE WALKER’S NOVELS …
relationships in which both people get
involved voluntarily without being
pressured into it, but threatened and
forced to participate in it. Through
rape, men succeed in controlling
women’s bodies and, consequently,
their lives. Moreover, by ignoring
women’s complexity, men are reducing
black women to subhuman creatures.
However, Shug Avery reminds Celie
that men’s rape is not only physical, but
also intellectual and spiritual:
Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He
on your box of grits, in your head, and
all over the radio. He try to make you
think he everywhere. Soon as you think
he everywhere, you think he God. But
he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray,
and man plop himself on the other end
of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug.
Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big
rock. (Walker, The Color Purple 62)
What could this constant fear of rape
do to a woman? To start with, she
would probably be afraid of being
herself or ashamed of her gender.
Furthermore, she might believe that
only men make the right decisions and
know what is normal. This may explain
Celie’s behavior towards Sophia, who
is stronger and more independent than
her mother-in-law. Sophia refuses to be
controlled by any man, including her
husband, which stirs quite a commotion
around the house when she arrives.
When Sophia’s husband asks Celie for
advice that could help him control his
wife who was making a fool out of him
by being manlier, Celie simply tells
him to beat her up. She has, thus,
successfully internalized the patriarchal
ideas regarding how a woman should
behave, and what should be done in
order to educate her into submission.
27
Celie described her feelings for Sofia as
positive, the only problem being that
“she don’t act like me [her] at all. If she
talking when Harpo and Mr. ____
come in the room, she keep right on. If
they ast her where something at, she
say she don’t know. Keep talking.”
(Walker, The Color Purple 36) This
conduct surprised Celie and, according
to her, should have been corrected.
Eventually, she realized she sinned
against Sofia’s spirit and became afraid
of this being discovered. When Sofia
confronted her, she explained she said
it because “I’m a fool, I say. I say it
cause I’m jealous of you. I say it cause
you do what I can’t […] Fight.”
(Walker, The Color Purple 40) Sofia’s
anger subsided as it was gradually
replaced by sadness. Fortunately, the
two women manage to overcome this
incident and bond is formed between
the two of mutual understanding.
Furthermore, Celie makes it clear
that she finds any sexual contact with
her husband a domestic chore from
which she derives no pleasure:
Naw, I say. Mr. can tell you, I don't like
it at all. What is it like? He git up on
you, heist your nightgown round your
waist, plunge in. Most times I pretend I
ain't there. He never know the
difference. Never ast me how I feel,
nothing. Just do his business, get off, go
to sleep. (Walker, The Color Purple 24)
Mr.’s entire attitude throughout
intercourse is off-putting. A blow-up
doll would not have been treated with
such violence and speed because it
might have burst. Not to mention that
its presence would have been
acknowledged more tenderly. This
failure in heterosexual relationships is
not only characteristic of Celie.
28
Adelina VARTOLOMEI
Susannah in Possessing the Secret of
Joy (1992) divorced her husband only
to find fulfillment in a relationship with
Pauline. In addition to two women,
Sophia, the woman who married
Harpo, Albert’s son, relates to this
sudden disgust in sexual relationships
later on in her marriage when she
confesses:
I don’t like to go to bed with him no
more, she say. Used to be when he touch
me I'd go all out my head. Now when he
touch me I just don't want to be
bothered. Once he git on top of me I
think bout how that's where he always
want to be. She sip her lemonade.
I use to love that part of it, she say. I use
to chase him home from the field. Git all
hot just watching him put the children to
bed. But no more. Now I feels tired all
the time. No interest. (Walker, The
Color Purple 21)
To be more exact, Sophia is no
longer head over heels because she was
physically abused. In both cases,
women have stopped connecting to
men after having been physically and
sexually abused. Sophia had actually
enjoyed being with Harpo but after he
was taught by his father and Celie that
men and women are not equal and that
wives should be beaten in order to
remember their place in the house,
Harpo drained all the energy out of
Sophia and killed her desire of
becoming intimate. Celie, on the other
hand, has not even experienced the
pleasure of sexual intercourse with a
man.
Martha J. Cutter examines the
relationship between the two sisters in
The Color Purple, Celie and Nettie, in
her article “Philomela Speaks: Alice
Walker’s Revisioning of Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple.”(2008) She
states that the story of Philomela has
had an impact on African American
women writers who have a “powerful
archetypal narrative explicitly connecting rape (a violent inscription of the
female body), silencing, and the
complete erasure of feminine subjecttivity” (Cutter 145). In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Philomela is raped by
Tereus, her sister’s husband, and has
her tongue removed so as to keep
silent. Celie is similarly raped by her
mother’s husband and is threatened to
keep quiet otherwise her mother would
die. These in fact are the first words of
the novel: “You better not never tell
nobody but God. It’d kill your
mammy” (Walker, The Color Purple
1). Celie is quiet especially because she
also wants to protect her sister’s
innocence. She attempts to do the same
thing when Mr. desires Nettie as more
than a sister-in-law. Towards the end of
the myth, Philomela and Procne yield
to violence, thus transforming into
oppressors in their own right: they
sacrifice Procne’s son, Itys, for the sake
of revenge. However, Celie is offered a
voice at the end of The Color Purple.
Unfortunately, in The Temple of My
Familiar, (1990) the sequel which
focuses on their grandchildren reveals a
violent side which emerges in Celie.
Olivia, Celie’s daughter, confesses that
“a more gentle, loving person it would
be hard to imagine,” referring to her
mother. On the other hand, the daughter
notices “about black people in the
South, when [she] returned home near
the end of the war, was the mistreatment – casual, vicious, unfeeling – of
animals.” (Walker, The Temple of My
Familiar 311) Celie is no exception.
She had a dog, Creighton, which loved
Celie and behaved like a complete
slave: “He had the most wounded,
pained,
saddened,
completely
expressive eyes […]” (Walker, The
Temple of My Familiar 311). Celie
never petted him but physically abused
him and even mocked him while the
dog constantly wanted to lick her hand.
This stopped one day after Shug Avery
took Creighton some place for a while.
When they both returned, the dog was
changed and no longer accepted Celie’s
behavior. It was as if he had gained
self-respect and knowledge of how to
defend himself. Like Philomela and
Procne, Celie has internalized the
violence she was subjected to, and
because she is the weakest in this
hierarchy of violence, she lashes out on
animals. Nevertheless, abusing animals
should not be considered less important
than abusing people. A further
similarity to the myth is that the sole
defense women have against rape and
abuse is annihilating their selves, souls
and bodies. Celie herself takes refuge
in such a way by abandoning her
personhood: “He beat me like he beat
the children. Cept he don’t never hardly
beat them. He say, Celie, git the belt.
The children be outside the room
peeking through the cracks. It all I can
do not to cry. I make myself wood. I
say to myself, Celie, you a tree”
(Walker, The Color Purple 22). Celie
prefers to identify with wood so as to
stay strong and not break down. She
rejects the idea of being a person with a
soul and body because that would
imply she also had emotions and she
fears having emotions which might be
too strong to handle. Coincidentally,
the marks left on Celie’s skin after the
beating are similar to the marks one can
29
find on the bark of a tree. What is also
specific to the Philomela myth is the
repeated rape pattern. Tereus rapes
Philomela, cuts out her tongue so as to
silence her, and rapes her again. The
same is, in fact, reflected in the texts
written by contemporary African
American women writers. In The Color
Purple, Celie is repeatedly raped by her
stepfather with whom she has two
children, Adam and Olivia. Albert, like
Tereus, wants to rape both sisters but
fails to abuse Nettie. That is why he
turns to discursive rape by forbidding
Celie and Nettie from communicating
with each other by hiding the letters
sent by Nettie. Men desire to be in
control of women so as to get the
feeling of being masters/gods and if
they cannot subdue their body, they
will be the ones who decide whether or
not women talk. What is more, they do
not want to hear them complaining
when adulation is better even if
presumed in silence. When Albert
prevents the two sisters from
communicating, one could think of the
times black slaves were not allowed to
talk to each other or be found in large
groups. This privilege of being part of a
community and identifying with others
might lead to a rebellion the moment a
wrong is discovered. Perhaps Albert
considered it was much simpler
dividing and conquering.
However, both Philomela and Celie
find other channels of expression
despite the patriarchal interdiction: “. . .
no power of speech/ To help her tell her
wrongs. . . . / She had a loom to work
with, and with purple/ On a white
background, wove her story in,/ Her
story in and out. …” (Cutter 152).
African American women have also
30
Adelina VARTOLOMEI
chosen quilts as a channel of
expression. When Alice Walker was in
search of her mother’s gardens, she
found quilts which, though they were
made by anonymous women, conveyed
a message. Sewing, in fact, helps
communication better than language:
Celie sews curtains to welcome Sofia,
and when Sofia is angry at Celie, she
cuts down these same curtains and
returns them. When they reconcile their
differences, Celie and Sofia use the
spoiled curtains as part of a quilt. (Cutter
154)
Celie and Sofia in fact succeed in
surpassing their differences. Whenever
they have something on their minds and
they do not know how to say it, they
sow it. This is how they can express
their disappointment, their anger, and,
finally, their love.
In “Rape, Racism and the Myth of
the Black Rapist,” (1983) Angela Davis
states that “in the United States and
other capitalist countries, rape laws as a
rule were framed originally for the
protection of men of the upper classes,
whose daughters and wives might be
assaulted” (Davis 172). The white
mistresses were protected from their
black slaves’ animal urges to possess
them. This, in fact, placed them in a
higher position and offered them the
ability to control the men and turn them
from potential rapists to sure victims.
The black slaves had to respond to their
mistress’ every need, even physical,
which in fact meant that they were the
ones raped, even though miscegenation
has more often been blamed on the
African Americans. The black women
slaves who were sexually abused by
their masters were also found guilty by
the mistresses for seducing their
husbands and bearing their children.
This only supports Davis’s point of
view: the laws are aimed to protect
those of the upper class, those who are
powerful, and who lead: the very lawmakers. Consequently, white women
were protected from black men though
not from white men while black women
were not protected from black or white
men.
The roles of the victim and the
oppressor have been overturned in the
twentieth century. “While the rapists
have seldom been brought to justice,
the rape charge has been indiscriminately aimed at Black men, the
guilty and innocent alike. Thus, of the
455 men executed between 1930 and
1967 on the basis of rape convictions,
405 of them were black” (Davis 172)
More black men were involved in cases
of rape, and African Americans
believed this was just a reiteration of
slavery. They did not believe the
majority of rapists could be black so
they viewed it as racism. They were
always wrongly accused during slavery
and history now repeated itself. Once
again they were the innocent ones, and
the law was not on their side. Angela
Davis believes that the myth of the
black rapist has been created using
historical oppression as an explanation.
This excuse has been invoked
repeatedly to account for the violent
behavior in black neighborhoods, for
instance. Susan Brownmiller herself
contributed to “the contemporary
literature on rape” (Brownmiller 178),
as Davis puts it. This has been so
commonly used to excuse past victims,
that people expect former slaves to
respond with hatred after having lived
in such horrid conditions.2 I believe that
when somebody is expected to be
violent or stupid, sometimes that person
lowers the standards he or she has of
himself or herself and acts accordingly.
They see themselves as others see them
and maybe they do not want to
disappoint. Or, perhaps, one pretends to
be stupid or acts violently out of spite.
In Walker’s novel, Meridian (2004),
the protagonist, Meridian Hill, was
raised to blame white women for the
white men’s aggression. The abuse of
black women was believed to occur
because
“white
women
were
considered sexless, contemptible and
ridiculous by all” (Walker, Meridian
109). Black women, by contrast, were
voluptuous beings with vast sexual
experience. While black women were
considered to be erotic, white women
were covered in clothes whose
2
This would also explain the fear
inhabiting white people’s souls after the
freeing of slaves. This is very well
represented in the film The Birth of a Nation,
directed by D. W. Griffith, which was
released in 1915. The movie focuses on the
Civil War and much more on the period
following the war when blacks and whites
alike were trying to adapt to the new world,
and Southerners and Northerners were
attempting to be united once more. It was a
time of anarchy and violence. Former slaves
(in the movie, white men wearing black faces
like in minstrel shows) were behaving like
animals and a bit too excited about the right
of holding guns. Blacks began a regime of
terrorism against the whites, driving them out
of their houses, beating them, shooting them,
and raping the women. It is no wonder that
the film was used as a propaganda instrument
to draft white people for the KKK. They were
depicted as superheroes were in comics.
31
symbolical meaning Yasmil Raymond
discusses, in Maladies of Power: A
Kara Walker Lexicon, (2009) in
connection with Kara Walker’s cutpaper silhouettes:
The hoop skirt, a symbol of morality and
the quintessential fashion statement of
Southern women before the Civil War,
is an ever-present motif in Walker’s
imagery; both mistresses and slave
women don such garments not to protect
their virtue but to disguise their own
repressed desires. (Yasmil 349)
Thus, white women were not as
sexless as it was commonly believed.
They had their own desires and
fantasies but society forced them to
hide them. This was considered a sign
of superiority. However, this did not
mean black women wanted to share
their sex life with the entire world. An
interesting parallel is drawn in the
novel Meridian between a black and a
white woman. Meridian meets a white
woman called Lynne, who marries
Truman Held, an old friend and love of
Meridian’s. The couple goes to the
South in order to contribute to the
struggle for equal rights. However,
Lynne is not generally accepted as an
ally as “they did not even see her as a
human being, but as some kind of
large, mysterious doll” (Walker,
Meridian 146). By “they” I mean both
black men and women. If she did not
wear a hoop skirt or hold a whip, her
purpose around them was blurry. She
was as useless as a doll. There is this
fascination with the Other, (italics
mine) and even if Truman and Lynne
are trying to bridge this gap between
the two races they are soon separated
by those surrounding them. They could
no longer stand the pressure of the
32
multitude of eyes around them, black
and white, forcing them to define their
relationship as something abnormal.
Miscegenation is yet to be
considered ordinary, especially in the
South, and the newlyweds begin seeing
themselves as the rest of the people do:
strange. What is more, the beginning of
their relationship is not a promising one
for lack of communication and
understanding of each other. The
burden of the past and the present
weighs hard on their shoulders, and
they cannot view themselves as
individuals but as two cultures coming
together. Lynne married Art, not a man,
and Truman married a doll, not a
woman. Lynne is fascinated with
everything connected to the African
American culture: music, dancing,
character and so on. Truman, though,
perceives her as a thing he can display
as a symbol of his conquest, a victory
against his oppressors. When Lynne is
raped by a black man, her husband tells
her that “one of [her] fantasies was
being raped by a black man. That was
what he reduced everything to”
(Walker, Meridian 164). He thought
she dreamt of being punished for the
past mistakes of her ancestors. She is
blamed for it and the black man faces
no accusations for the rape. She
seduced him and, like her white
ancestors on the plantation, desired a
strong and healthy black man while, at
the same time, preserving her purity
and honor. The loss of any one of them
would result in her screaming rape. I
believe this meant having your cake
and eating it too. The women wanted to
obey society and be virtuous but they
also desired a healthy sex life. If
anyone blamed them of having a
Adelina VARTOLOMEI
sexuality, they simply moved the blame
to somebody else. When she confesses
her ordeal to Meridian, the African
American woman refuses to listen to
this story. At this point, Lynne has an
epiphany: “I know you’re thinking
about lynchings and the way whites
have always lied about black men
raping them. Maybe this wasn’t rape. I
don’t know. I think it was. It felt like it
was” (Walker, Meridian 164). Is it
possible African Americans assume
that by every black person saved from
prison/punishment, one slave is
redeemed? There had been so many
false rapes and true lynching that it
required a reversed situation. But the
issue at stake was not whether or not
Meridian believed Lynne. She simply
and clearly stated that there were
certain things which she did not want to
know because it would make her
rearrange her view on life and perhaps
side with Lynne. This in turn would
lead to Meridian’s being considered an
enemy to her own race and cause they
were fighting for, i.e. equal rights
among races, was above women rights:
For of course it was Tommy Odds who
raped her. As he said, it wasn’t really
rape. She had not screamed once, or
even struggled very much. To her, it was
worse than rape because she felt
circumstances had not permitted her to
scream. (Walker, Meridian 171)
What could be more awful than the
feeling that you do not have the right to
defend yourself against others and that
you deserve to be hurt? It was guilt
which stopped Lynne from fighting
against the rape:
There was a moment when she knew she
could force him from her. But it was a
flash. She lay instead thinking of his
feelings, his hardships, of the way he
was black and belonged to people who
lived without hope; she thought about
the loss of his arm. She felt her own
guilt. And he entered her and she did not
any longer resist but tried instead to
think of Tommy Odds as he was when
he was her friend – and near the end her
arms stole around his neck, and before
he left she told him she forgave him and
she kissed his slick rounded stump that
was the color of baked liver, and he
smiled at her from far away, and she did
not know him. (Walker, Meridian 173)
Could it be Lynne thought rape is
nothing compared to what Tommy
suffered? Or did she want to identify
with his pain so that she could claim
she also had the experience of a victim?
Either way, she was allowing him to
feel like a man with rights for once in
his life. Afterwards, Tommy Odds
considered Lynne a conquered territory
and urged other black men to do the
same in the name of revenge. In fact, he
considered his approach kind as
compared to that of the white man who
had raped and thrown into the river a
nine year old black girl. Nevertheless,
his act of rape, though less violent from
his perspective, is still an act of war. He
believes he is kinder as he shows more
mercy to women who have to be their
weapons irrevocably. Men are marking
their territory through women as they
would do through land. It comes as no
surprise that America and Africa have
been described as women conquered by
Europeans and the two representatives
of the continents were Pocahontas and
Saartje Baartman. That was his
definition of rape. Lynne had done
nothing to claim she disliked their
sexual encounter. The rest of the black
men agreed with Tommy because all
33
their lives they associated rape with
death and since Lynne was alive, there
was no rape. Tommy ordered others to
follow him because “Crackers been
raping your mamas and sisters for
generations and here’s your chance to
get off on a piece of their goods”
(Walker, Meridian 175). If a child
plays with your toys, you have no
choice but to play with his toys and
perhaps even break them in order to
prove a point. Women have thus been
turned into weapons – or objects more
precisely – that men used in their race
war. The fact that women are used
implies that they are not in control of
their own lives and have lost their
prerogative of being agents/subjects.
Truman, though, eventually realized
that his wife did not willingly have sex
with Tommy: “She ain’t been fucking
you, she’s been atoning for her sins”
(Walker, Meridian 179). As a
consequence, Tommy did not make any
conquest. She simply gave herself
which takes some of the pleasure out of
the act seeing that black women did not
offer themselves to their masters to
atone for everything.
In Against Our Will: Men, Women
and Rape, (1992) Susan Brownmiller
reappraises the issue of rape and
concludes that men do no evaluate it
realistically. On the contrary, they
romanticize the image of the rapist and
believe it is what women desire in real
men:
The myth of the heroic rapist that
permeates false notions of masculinity,
from the successful seducer to the man
who takes “what he wants when he
wants it,” is inculcated in young boys
from the time they first become aware
that being a male means access to
certain mysterious rites and privileges,
34
Adelina VARTOLOMEI
including the right to buy a woman’s
body. (Brownmiller 72)
This is exactly what Tommy Odds
does with Lynne. He honestly believes
she is exaggerating the facts and lying
by depicting them grimly. He tries to
demonstrate this to her and convince
her that she, in fact, enjoyed every
moment of it because of her
unambiguous gestures throughout:
‘Tell us, bitch, what did you do when it
started getting good to you?’
‘It was never good,” said Lynne. Then,
‘I kissed your arm.’
‘My stub,’ he corrected her. ‘You
hugged me and you kissed my stub. And
what else did you do?’
He was holding her neck in the crook of
his elbow, her chin was pointed at the
ceiling. He squeezed.
‘I forgave you,’ said Lynne. (Walker,
Meridian 174)
This description demonstrates that
women no longer seem to be in control
of their own bodies and sexuality. Men
know better when women feel pleasure
or pain. Nonetheless, when Lynne
forgave Tommy and even told him so,
she positioned herself above him as a
god forgiving of his/hers unknowing
children. Andrea Dworkin supports
Brownmiller’s point of view in her
work, Pornography: Men Possessing
Women (1992). According to her,
women’s
body
being
sexually
colonized is a material reality. The
reality of “male sexual domination is
that women are whores.” Therefore,
“neither rape nor prostitution is an
abuse of the female because in both the
female is fulfilling her natural function;
that is why rape is absurd and
incomprehensible as an abusive
phenomenon in the male system […]”
(Dworkin 89) Men take control of the
women’s reproductive and sexual uses
of their bodies. This is supported by the
fact that Celie’s father sells her
children. Her right as a mother stops
after she gives birth to them.
Afterwards she no longer has any say
in their future.
Seeing the predominant image Alice
Walker creates for black men, it is
understandable that other African
American writers may disagree. But
this is the point of a global,
multicultural world. No one person can
be credited with holding the Truth.
(italics mine) Everyone is merely
presenting their version of reality of
which they have a limited amount of
knowledge. If understanding and
empathy prevailed, then the pieces of
the puzzle could fall together and offer
answers regarding the present. Drawing
on Gerda Lerner, Davis reminds
readers of the consequences of
stereotyping and generalizations:
The myth of the black rapist of white
women is the twin of the myth of the
bad black woman – both designed to
apologize for and facilitate the continued
exploitation of black men and women.
Black women perceived this connection
very clearly and were early in the
forefront of the fight against lynching.
(Gerda in Davis 174)
These stereotypes were also
connected to the fertility statues
discovered by the Europeans in Africa
on the basis of which they drew the
conclusion of excessive sexuality. In
the case of the men, this sexuality is
associated with aggression as well
while the women remain temptresses.
Besides Brownmiller, Davis also refers
to Jean MacKellar while referring to
the perpetuation of the image of the
black man as the rapist:
Blacks raised in the hard life of the
ghetto learn that they can get what they
want only by seizing it. Violence is the
rule in the game for survival. Women
are fair pray: to obtain a woman one
subdues her. (MacKellar in Davis 179)
If one is raised in an environment
which promotes violence, one has no
choice but to turn to violence as a
solution to most problems. Perhaps this
thirst for aggression is another way in
which black men are said to imitate
white men’s behavior in order to have
the same power and control over
others. Whatever masters wanted, they
obtained by taking advantage of their
black slaves without having to ask for
permission. Black men want to
experience this role of the dominating
male as they are already familiar with
that of the dominated.
In Walker’s novel, The Third Life of
Grange Copeland (1970), the focus is
entirely on the black men’s search for
atonement. Grange Copeland desires to
escape the pressure of racism, poverty,
and despair, by abandoning Georgia for
the North. Unfortunately, he also
abandons his wife and his son,
Brownfield. When he returns, his wife
is dead, and his son appears to have
issues when prioritizing his values
because of his father’s abandonment.
Yet Copeland does attempt to undo his
mistakes. The writer confessed that it
was a very difficult novel for her to
write because she had to discuss the
violence which exists among black
people in the Southern black
community at that time, which was
mostly due to the fact that they also had
to endure a lot of psychological and
35
physical violence. Fortunately for
Walker, “people involved in the
liberation of black people in the South
almost never spoke of expediency, but
always of justice, of telling the truth, of
standing up and being counted, of
fighting for one’s rights, of not letting
nobody turn you round.” (Walker,
Third Life of 249) In The Third Life of
Grange Copeland, Walker tries to
explain Grange Copeland’s mistreatment of his family by referring to the
hardship
he
has
experienced.
Brownfield notices as a little boy the
toll the white oppression has on his
father. Unable to understand it at that
time, after growing up, the son not only
deciphers Grange’s behavior but he
also emulates it:
Brownfield was afraid of his father’s
silence, and his fear reached its peak
when the truck came. For when the truck
came his father’s face froze into an
unnaturally bland mask, curious and
unsettling to see. It was as if his father
became a stone or a robot. A grim
stillness settled over his eyes and he
became an object, a cipher, something
that moved in tense jerks if it moved at
all. (Walker, The Third Life 8)
Brownfield was afraid of this mask
because he felt he was losing his father.
Moreover, he began fearing white
people thinking that one day he would
be forced to act like a robot in front of
them as well. It is ironic how the writer
used these words exactly. Grange
behaves like an object as if he has
internalized the view whites have of
blacks and now only responds to
expectations. Nevertheless, Grange
seems more likely to create a barrier for
the sake of self-preservation by wearing
“the mask [which] was as tight and still
36
as if [Brownfield’s] father had coated
himself with wax” (Walker, The Third
Life 9). After a few years, “Brownfield
slid down from the truck knowing his
face was the mask his father’s had
been” (Walker, The Third Life 22). He
finally turned into his father and, what
is sadder, he probably did not realize it.
Furthermore, not only does the son
create a wall between himself and the
rest of the world like his father, but he
also assimilates the same approach to
women. People said Grange, on top of
cheating and never having loved his
wife, attempted to convince his wife to
sell herself so as to help him escape his
debt. Thus, seeing that Brownfield
perceived his father as a role model of
masculinity, the objectification of
women is reproduced and passed down
from generation to generation.
However, Brownfield does not see
the way his father treats Josie, his
secret lover, humanely. He only
observes his disrespectful and distant
father
around
his
mother.
Consequently, Brownfield beats up his
wife regularly to make himself feel
good: “Every Saturday night he beat
her, trying to pin the blame for his
failure on her by imprinting it on her
face” (Walker, The Third Life 55).
However, it would be a reminder of his
guilt no matter how hard he tried to
lash it out on her. It also bothered him
that his wife was intellectually superior
to him. Brownfield transforms into a
different type of Pygmalion as instead
of creating perfect beauty, he is
destroying it, more precisely “beat[ing]
the ugly” into it. He tortures his wife
hoping to beat the knowledge out of her
by forcing her to stop speaking
standard English: “Only way to treat a
Adelina VARTOLOMEI
nigger woman!” (Walker, The Third
Life 56). Brownfield is not only aware
of the image black men have in the
world, which undoubtedly hates, but he
also knows how black women are
described. Thus, if he responds to
expectations, he expects his wife to do
the same and resents her for wanting to
overstep her boundaries. That is why,
like a sculptor with his chisel, he uses
his fists to shape the “desired” black
woman in a horror Pygmalion version.
The son assimilates the identity of his
male ancestors, the men who rape and
beat their sisters, mothers, wives, and
daughters, while others idly stand by
and watch evil being done unto the
innocent without doing anything about
it. Violence is then passed down from
one generation to another in a neverending cycle. Perhaps they, African
American men, are reminded of times
when white men could rape black
women in broad daylight and all black
men could do was run faster than the
women. If they had tried to lift one
finger in their defense, they would have
definitely been murdered. They did not
have the freedom to be aggressive even
in self-defense. It was something which
they had to repress and after the
Proclamation of Emancipation, the
repression had been so great, violence
spilt everywhere like a volcano.
Brownfield cannot relate to any woman
in his life. He simply becomes an
oppressor of his own family. A painful
scene in the novel is when he
grudgingly tells his wife: “I ought to
make you call me Mister” (Walker, The
Third Life 77); the line anticipates
Albert in The Color Purple. Black men
lose their individuality and simply
become “mister,” transforming into
their former masters. This is a sad fact
as, apparently, black men’s idols in life
are their former white masters and they
now dream of owning slaves even if it
means losing wives. As a consequence,
Brownfield’s three daughters begin
fantasizing about their father’s death.
After their mother’s death, they are
offered to other male relatives so as to
be taken care of. The older ones,
Ornette and Daphne, are taken North by
Mem’s father, while the youngest one,
Ruth, is in Copeland’s care and thus
offers Grange his second chance for
atonement. This can also account for
the title of the novel. Grange Copeland
has the opportunity of living three
lives. His first life was by his wife’s
side; yet he considers Margaret his
possession: “If I can never own
anything, he had told her, I will have
women.” (Walker, The Third Life 177).
Then what are women but objects to be
possessed and signs of a man’s fortune?
No wonder that in Islam god rewards
men with 72 virgins after they die. He
opted for a second life in the North and,
according to him, “he was on his third
or fourth and final” (Walker, The Third
Life 176). Grange believed he had
gathered enough wisdom in his
lifetimes so as to understand life itself
and share it with his loved ones. He
now considered himself a wise old
man. Eventually, Daphne ends up in a
mental institution in the North and,
most interestingly, Ornette becomes a
“lady of pleasure”. (Walker, The Third
Life 218) That is to say Ornette became
a slave who had to satisfy men’s sexual
pleasures. Ironically she was called a
lady. Ruth blames her father for this:
“You were the one who said Ornette
would be a woman of pleasure, a
37
tramp! That’s all you used to call her.
Just ‘tramp.’ ‘Come here, tramp,’ you
used to say” (Walker, The Third Life
218). Just like black men were
expected to be violent, she was
expected by her father to become a
whore. She defined herself through his
words and did not fail to rise up to the
expectations. Grange’s approach to his
youngest granddaughter, Ruth, is not in
her best interest. She finds herself
drawn between two extremes: because
of her father, she has been exposed to
violence; in order to protect her from
that, her grandfather isolates her from
the world. Grange fears that a man may
abuse her, beat her, or rape her. He
wants to ensure her situation and create
a heritage for her, which will offer her a
better life. However, even if Copeland
is trying to help his granddaughter, he
is still controlling her body and mind
and forcing her to do what he thinks is
best for her. She is still a slave, the only
difference being that she is obeying a
master who does not abuse her
physically, but just psychologically.
To conclude, Walker writes in the
afterword of The Third Life of Grange
Copeland that African Americans have
become more and more like their
oppressors despite the fact that they do
not want to admit this. She believes that
the blame should no longer fall on past
events, and that people should take
responsibility for their own deeds. “The
white man’s oppression of me will
never excuse my oppression of you,
whether you are a man, woman, child,
animal or tree, because the self that I
prize refuses to be owned by him. Or
by anyone” (Walker, The Third Life
252). However, in The Color Purple
and The Third Life of Grange Copeland
38
Adelina VARTOLOMEI
the black men prefer to reproduce the
violence they witnessed during slavery
or in ghettos. Albert, Grange, and
Brownfield understand that by being
powerful one is no longer abused and
can raise their heads proudly. However,
this power is demonstrated through
violence and oppression of those who
can be oppressed, those who are
weaker, in this case, Celie, Ruth, Lynne
and other black women. These men
choose to be in control of women’s
bodies and minds, as Dworkin and
Brownmiller affirmed, thus, being in
control of their own lives.
WORKS CITED
Brownmiller, Susan. "Against Our Will: Men,
Women and Rape." Feminism(s) A Reader.
UK: London, 1992. 70-74. Print.
Butler-Evans, Elliott. “Rewriting and Revising In
The 1980s: Tar Baby, The Color Purple, and
The Salt Eaters”. Race, Gender, and Desire –
Narrative Strategies In The Fiction Of Toni
Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Alice
Walker. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1989. 151187. Print.
Cutter, Martha J. "Philomela Speaks: Alice
Walker’s Revisioning Of Rape Archetypes In
The Color Purple”. Bloom’s Modern Critical
Interpretations: Alice Walker’s The Color
Purple. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York:
Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2008. 145-60.
Print.
Davis, Angela. “Rape, Racism and The Myth Of
The Black Rapist”. Women, Race and Class.
New York: Vintage Books, 1983. 172-201.
Print.
Dworkin, Andrea. “Pornography: Men Possessing
Women”. Feminism(s) A Reader. UK:
London, 1992. 82-86. Print.
Hernton, Calvin C. “Who’s Afraid of Alice
Walker?”. The Sexual Mountain and Black
Women Writers. Adventures In Sex, Literature,
and Real Life. New York: Anchor Press, 1987.
1-34. Print.
Raymond, Yasmil. "Maladies Of Power: A Kara
Walker
Lexicon".
2009.
web.
<http://timothyquigley.net/vcs/walkerlexicon_raymond.pdf>.
The Birth Of A Nation. 1915. film. David W.
Griffith Corp, David W. Griffith, 3 March
1915. (Perf. Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, and
Henry Walthall)
Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’
Gardens. Nevada: Mariner Books, 1984.
---. Meridian. London: Phoenix, 2004. Print.
---. Possessing the Secret of Joy. NY: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1992. Print.
---. The Color Purple. NY: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovitch, 1982. Print.
---. The Temple of My Familiar. NY: Pocket
Books/ Washington Square Press, 1990. Print.
---. The Third Life of Grange Copeland. NY:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Print.
Short bio
Adelina VARTOLOMEI has graduated
from American Studies and has an M.A. in
Anglo-American Studies. She is currently
working on her Ph.D. thesis which focuses on
constructions of females identity in Alice
Walker’s fiction. Her M.A. paper drew a
parallel between Alice Walker and Kara
Walker in terms of the issues approached by
them.
THE GAME OF DOUBLE MEANINGS
IN ANDREA LEVY’S SMALL ISLAND
AND THE LONG SONG
Cristina CHIFANE*
Abstract: Double-edged phrases, apparent contradictions and subsequent
discoveries make up the intricate narrative web of Andrea Levy’s novels Small
Island (2004) and The Long Song (2010). This paper aims at identifying some of the
narrative techniques meant to generate multiple interpretations of the characters’
actions in their search of an identity in a multicultural society. If the story in Small
Island is told from the viewpoints of four different characters, each of them
representative of a different mentality, the single narrator in The Long Song is
aware of her own position and willing to offer a vivid account of a changing world.
Keywords: monologue, language, point of view, self-discovery, multiple perspective.
1. Introduction
Foregrounding1 questions of cultural
difference and diversity, Andrea Levy’s
postcolonial novels Small Island (2004)
and The Long Song (2010) display a
complex narrative structure meant to
create the image of a multicultural
society defined by a plurality of voices
more or less represented in literary
texts. In the two novels, Andrea Levy
has employed various narrative
techniques in order to make sure that
she achieved her writing objective she
herself had acknowledged: “Writing
fiction is a way of putting back the
voices that were left out” (Levy The
Long Song 410).
Featuring
different
historical
moments, both novels reflect hybridity
and cultural polyvalency. On the one
1*
“Constantin Brâncoveanu” University,
Brăila, România
hand, Small Island has been rightfully
considered “a multi-perspectival and
polyphonic novel that bounces between
different points of view in order to recreate the complex dynamics of fear,
desire, suspicion and mutual incomeprehension that characterized crosscultural relations” (Greaney 92) during
World War II and its aftermath. On the
other hand, The Long Song is a story
told from the perspective of a single
character, a black woman who
struggles to survive in Jamaica during
the last turbulent years of slavery and
the early years of freedom that
followed. Andrea Levy has resorted to
intricately woven narrative techniques
in order to reveal the hidden reasons
behind a character’s behavior, his
social, cultural or political beliefs. This
strategy is extremely challenging for
the reader who constantly reconsiders
his opinions and feelings with respect
40
to the actions of a certain character in
the story.
2. Multiperspectivism Reflecting
Post-War Multiculturalism
in Andrea Levy’s
Small Island (2004)
The story of Small Island is told
from the viewpoints of four different
characters: the working-class Londoners Bernard and Queenie Bligh and
the Jamaican immigrants Gilbert and
Hortense Joseph. At first each of these
characters has a strong set of ideas,
assumptions and prejudices. Throughout the novel their attitude towards
the world and the others changes to the
point of learning from each other.
The style of storytellying relies on
the Before/After structure moving
alternatively forward and backwards
from the present of 1948 to the
childhood and future development of
the main characters. Told by Queenie in
a first person narration, the prologue
placed shortly after World War I is
revelatory of her future attitude in life.
While still at school she goes to the
British Empire Exhibition where she
sees an African man for the first time.
The paradox the child innocently
remarks is that the African man
manages to embarrass a white young
man with false pretences to civilization.
He proves far more civilized than
Graham, the boyfriend of Queenie’s
servant Emily. Accordingly, the
African man speaks in clear English
asking Queenie to shake hands with
him, following all the rules of
politeness, bowing his head and using
politeness formulas such as “It’s nice to
Cristian CHIFANE
meet you” (Levy Small Island 6). The
very important lesson Queenie learns is
to make the difference between
appearance and essence.
The first two chapters are set in
1948 London and parallel both
Gilbert’s and Hortense’s disappointment with each other. They are narrated
in the first person for the readers to
identify with the characters’ feelings
and thoughts. The story is simple:
Hortense leaves Jamaica to follow her
husband Gilbert Joseph to England. Her
dreams about having a big house with a
bell at the front door are soon shattered
by the cruel reality of the one room
where Gilbert lives due to Queenie’s
benevolence. Hortense’s mourning
lament leads Gilbert to pure exasperation since she always seems to revolve
around the question “Is this the way the
English live?” (Levy Small Island 22).
Her utopian image of England in
general and of London in particular
contrasts Gilbert’s much more realistic
perspective upon life. Their present
reactions are a consequence of their
experiences in the past. Levy considers
that analepsis (retrospection or flashback) represents the appropriate way of
understanding their attitude since this
narrative technique “enables a storyteller to fill in background information
about characters and events” (Baldick
9). By means of analepsis, chapters 3-8
are narrated from Hortense’s point of
view and are dedicated to her life
before her arrival to England whereas
chapters 11-19 are narrated from
Gilbert’s perspective following his
evolution in time. In the case of such a
narrative technique, one should keep in
mind that characters who are the
protagonists of the stories they are
THE GAME OF DOUBLE MEANINGS IN ANDREA LEVY’S SMALL ISLAND AND … 41
telling are more or less reliable
narrators. In spite of the fact that they
are recounting what they felt or lived at
a certain moment of their life they
cannot be totally trusted because of
their subjectivity. The greatest advantage of this technique is that the readers
have a chance of widening their
perspective upon the way different
people perceive themselves and the
world around them: “[…] the language
of the novel is not a language, but a
medley of styles and voices, and it is
this which makes it a supremely
democratic, anti-totalitarian literary
form, in which no ideological or moral
position is immune from challenge and
contradiction” (Lodge 129).
Hortense’s story is a story of
contradictions indeed. Born out of an
illegitimate
relationship
between
Alberta, a Jamaican country girl and
Lovell Roberts, a white man, Hortense
was brought up in the family of her
father’s cousin with her maternal
grandmother Miss Jewell as a servant
and her supervisor. Meanwhile, her
mother Alberta was to leave Jamaica
and take up work in Cuba. The first
contradiction is that Hortense is not
aware of her unfair position in the
Roberts family and the racial prejudices
surrounding her life; she is quite happy
even if her cousin Michael is allowed
to do whatever he pleases while she
receives a lot of household responsebilities. Another contradiction arises
when Hortense leaves her government
upper school and continues improving
herself by assisting with the education
of young children at a private school
run by Mr. and Mrs. Ryder, a married
couple who had sold everything they
had in America to set up the school. In
spite of their claim to help the poor
people, they are not aware that “their
school took only the wealthiest, fairest
and highest-class children from the
district” (Levy Small Island 44).
Besides, Mr. Ryder is suspected of
“spreading more than just his love of
learning” (Levy Small Island 45)
especially when a pretty young woman
gives birth to a child looking exactly
like him. The most important contradiction is perhaps the one which shatters
Hortense’s illusionary universe. Her
love for her cousin Michael generates a
gap between her perception of reality
and the truth lying behind Michael and
Mrs. Ryder’s love affair. Finally
understanding the true nature of their
relationship, Hortense reveals the
profoundness of this contradiction: “It
should have been I that was in need of
a chaperone … and escape into the
embrace of the dependable hurricane”
(Levy Small Island 55).
A very interesting device skillfully
employed by Andrea Levy is the one of
narratological hints exquisitely scattered throughout Hortense’s story and
alluding to something that will happen
later on in the story. For example,
Hortense’s remark that there were
plenty of young men who would “rush”
(Levy Small Island 46) to Mrs. Ryder’s
assistance is in fact an allusion to a
future situation in the story when she
will discover Michael’s love affair with
Mrs. Ryder. Their disagreement regarding the place they first met as well as
Mrs. Ryder’s embarrassment in
Michael’s presence are again indications of their forbidden relationship.
As a student at the teacher-training
college in Kingston, Hortense watches
men going to war and she wonders
42
about the purpose of war. Celia’s
explanation that fighting into this war
means stopping Hitler to bring back
slavery is not satisfactory for Hortense
because she senses yet another
contradiction: “ ‘You must understand,
if this Hitler man wins this war he will
bring back slavery. We will all be in
chains again. We will work for no pay.’
‘Celia, I work for no pay now,’ I said,
thinking of my worthless class” (Levy
Small Island 71).
Once again, the pompous style of
the letter announcing Hortense that
Michael is officially missing in action
is in contradiction with the grief that
his parents should feel and with her
despair and her need to believe that
he will be all right and he will finally
turn up.
Last but not least, Hortense’s hasty
marriage to Gilbert goes against her
moral attitude in life and against
everything that the readers were
convinced into believing about her. The
fact that she offers to lend him the
necessary money to sail to England on
condition that he married her and sent
for her when he was settled is an
unexpected gesture and a result of the
lack of opportunity Jamaicans had at
the time.
Through time-shift, chapter 9
becomes a brief intermezzo in the story
acquiring the function of portraying the
post-war multicultural society of
London by means of Queenie’s interior
monologue. Drawn by their racial
prejudices,
Queenie’s
neighbours
behave as if blacks are their inferiors.
For instance, Blanche Smith runs
histerically into her house when Gilbert
raises his hat to say her hello whereas
Mr. Todd’s sister is outraged when she
Cristian CHIFANE
has to step off the pavement to let two
black women pass by her.
In chapter 10 readers will empathize
with Hortense’s panic and disgust at the
thought of the horrible room Gilbert
forced her to live in. The subsequent
chapters will reveal Gilbert’s struggle
in a world dominated by gratuitous
absurdity, hatred and lack of
understanding. Brought up in a family
with nine children, Gilbert is still not
prepared for what war has in store for
him. A black man whose father was
born a Jew, Gilbert is the first to pass
through racial prejudices. On the verge
of joining the British Royal Air Force,
Gilbert’s brother Lester utters a
memorable phrase: “But when the
British Royal Air Force asked him the
question, ‘Are you of pure English
descent?’ Lester replied, ‘Come take
my blood and see’ ” (Levy Small Island
131). Engaged in an open dialogue with
his readers, Gilbert asks them to
imagine living far from a beloved
relation whom they have never met but
who is so dear a kin that she is known
and cherished as Mother. The
oxymoronic contradiction is between
the initial picture of this “beautiful
woman – refined, mannerly and
cultured” (Levy Small Island 139) and
your first encounter with her in the
position of a “twisted-crooked weary
woman”, “a stinking cantankerous hag”
(Levy Small Island 133) who refuses to
recognize you. Gilbert admits that he is
talking about England, the Mother
Country of which he is so disappointed.
His ultimate disillusion is that he and
other Jamaican RAF volunteers know
everything about England whereas an
English soldier would not even know
where Jamaica is situated. The message
of the novel is that Gilbert’s situation is
not unique: “Many migrants had
previously identified with Britain, and
confidently expected a warm welcome
to the ‘Motherland’. Instead they
experienced culture shock resulting
from the discrepancy between their
expectations and the realities of
immigrant life that for many included
poverty, poor housing and racism”
(Schaefer 120).
In addition, Americans have opted
for segregation on the battlefield even
if blacks and whites are fighting on the
same side. Gilbert’s friendship with
Queenie gives birth to picturesque
scenes like the ones at the tea-shop or
at the cinema. Gilbert refuses to sit in
the back rows with the other colored
people and generates a real inferno
ending up with Arthur Bligh being
accidentally shot to death. After
demobilization, he is disappointed both
by his life in Jamaica and his life in
England. His illusionary vision of
England is portrayed by his mistake of
taking a host of flies for a brooch.
Both Hortense and Gilbert are
representatives of individuals belonging simultaneously to more than one
culture. They oscillate between the
culture of the colonizer and that of the
colonized. Consequently, they can no
longer have a place to be called home
and they constantly struggle to adapt to
new circumstances. Once misled into
believing they hold a privileged
position they painfully realize that
“Local patriotism could be used as a
way of strengthening the empire by
constructing a British Jamaica, rather
than a Jamaica chafing under the
pressures of colonialism, and straining
to break the hold of a domineering
mother” (Moore and Johnson 308).
As the director of a major orchestra,
Andrea Levy knows when to silence a
narrative voice and allow another one
to take the major lead with the purpose
of proving the relativity of truth and the
high degree of subjectivity inherent in
the way people perceive things in
general. Preserving symmetry and
equilibrium, chapters 20-22 as well as
chapters 30-34 follow Hortense and
Gilbert in 1948 London, chapters 23-29
keep track of Queenie’s story and
chapters 35-45 describe what happened
to Bernard Bligh during his time on the
battlefield.
Tired of her life as a butcher’s
daughter, Queenie sees Bernard Bligh’s
marriage proposal as an opportunity to
start a new life in London. Her proud
and indifferent attitude towards the
others radically changes during the war
and she ends up working at a rest centre
and helping people who lost their
homes. Unfortunately, she despises her
husband who is unable to show his
feelings for her. In order to impress her
Bernard takes the decision to volunteer
for RAF, a decision that will change
both of their lives. Bernard’s insecurity
is accentuated by the war experiences
he passes through hence his determination to evacuate the black tenants his
wife has allowed to stay in their house
during his prolonged absence. At this
stage in the story the war changes her
for the better while his transformation
is for the worse.
With a much more mature perspective upon the world, the characters in
Small Island take turns in providing an
ending to their story. Chapters 46-59
disclose Queenie’s affair with Michael
44
Roberts and her secret pregnancy.
Bernard is the character who proves
that he has changed the most because
he is willing to accept the baby and
raise him as his own. On the other
hand, Queenie is far more realistic and
understands that the child would be an
outcast all his life therefore she asks
Hortense and Gilbert to take the baby
and raise him as if he were their own.
The colonized teach the colonizers a
lesson they will never forget: cultural
boundaries and racial prejudices fade
away in front of love, courage and
humanity.
In search of a home and of their own
identity, the narrators in Small Island
gradually unravel the meanings of the
title of this wonderful novel. Gilbert’s
initial view of Jamaica is that it is “one
of the largest” islands in the Carribean
and Jamaicans are “sophisticated men
of the world” (Levy Small Island 131),
but the post-war experience teaches
him that “we Jamaicans are all small
islanders too” (Levy Small Island 196).
After the war, Bernard himself changes
his perception about his own country:
“England had shrunk. It was smaller
than the place I’d left” (Levy Small
Island 424). In one of the novel’s
double-edged phrases, Hortense mentions her renewed opinion about
England: “I have found that this is a
very cold country” (Levy Small
Country 466). At the end of the novel,
Hortense admits the fact that she would
have never dreamed “England would be
like this” and she would have never
imagined “something so preposterous
of this Mother Country” as “a white
Englishwoman kneeling before me
yearning for me to take her black child”
(Levy Small Island 523).
Cristian CHIFANE
3. The (Un)Reliability of the
Narrator in Andrea Levy’s
The Long Song (2010)
The narrative structure of Andrea
Levy’s more recent novel The Long
Song preserves relativization as a
narrative technique meant to question
the supremacy of a single perspective
upon the world. The novel’s foreword
and afterword ensure its circularity and
provide the narrative frame for the
story told by Thomas Kinsman’s
mother. A publisher and editor,
Thomas Kinsman addresses his future
readers directly warning them that the
story they are going to hear is the story
of his mother, a story which “was born
of a craving” (Levy The Long Song 1)
to make it known to his son and to the
rest of the world. He admits that his
mother’s story would be a “lasting
legacy” (Levy The long Song 4) and he
denies responsibility for some of the
scenes she refuses to change. Here
Levy employs the traditional narrative
motif of the found manuscript which a
character other than its author decides it
is worth publishing. The story itself
seems to acquire an independent will
since it has been initially planned “to
be accommodated within the limited
size and pages of a pamphlet or
chapbook” (Levy The Long Song 4)
and has grown to become a lot more.
Organized upon five parts with
unevenly distributed chapters, Andrea
Levy’s novel has an elaborate narrative
structure. Chapter 1 is at first
misleading because it starts in medias
res with a short paragraph told in the
third person and referring to Tam
Dewar’s abuse upon Kitty. The rest of
the chapter borrows the voice of
Thomas’s mother who speaks in the
first person and tells her readers about
her son’s warning that the previous
paragraph would be “too indelicate a
commencement of a tale” (Levy The
Long Song 7). In Small Island there are
multiple
intradiegetic-homodiegetic
narrators or narrators in the second
degree who tell their own stories
(Genette 248). In The Long Song things
are more complicated since there is
only one narrator in the second degree
who tells her own story. Apparently she
is absent from her story because she
tells it in the third person as if the firstperson narrator identifying herself as
Thomas’s mother would not be one and
the same with July, the protagonist of
the third-person narration. The readers
understand the fact that Thomas’s
mother is in fact July in the story even
if she avoids identifying herself with
July under the pretext that her
sufferings would be too much for her to
bear.
The question of the narrator’s
(un)reliability arises at every step in the
novel. Thomas’s mother belongs to the
category of “self-conscious narrators,
aware of themselves as writers” (Booth
316). In spite of the fact that she is
aware of the artifices of fiction his son
urges her to resort to, sometimes she
acts as a narrator who is “confused by
the story he is telling and the reader is
obliged to treat his narrative with
caution” (Milligan 101). For example,
chapter 2 is entirely dedicated to July’s
birth. The narration is in the third
person with a brief interlude in the first
person belonging to Thomas’s mother.
The first part of the chapter relates how
July is born upon a cane piece in the
middle of the fields without Kitty even
being aware that she has delivered a
baby. Moreover, when she realizes
what has happened she takes the baby
on her back and continues working.
The image is picturesque and majestic
suggesting a complete abandon of the
self and a unity with nature. The first
person paragraph denies the previous
version of July’s birth and assures the
reader that what will happen next is the
true story thus shattering the narrator’s
credibility. Resuming as a third person
narrative, the story provides the details
of July’s birth in her mother’s dwelling
hut. Kitty is helped by Rose, another
slave on the plantation, to deliver the
baby into the world. What is more,
Rose protects her from the fury of Tom
Dewar, the child’s father who comes in
a rage into the hut, screams at Kitty and
wants to strike her because she has
made so much noise that he and his
sister cannot have dinner. His gestures
are an illustration of the colonizers’
attitude towards the colonized.
The voice of Thomas’s mother is
again heard in chapter 4 when she
understands that words may have much
more power than a fist or a whip. She
notifies her readers that she is going to
change the scene in her story and “fly
this tale a few years hence” (Levy The
Long Song 26). The definite ellipsis in
the text covers a period of time of nine
years during which July has grown by
the side of her mother. Once again, the
first-person narrator intervenes in
chapter 8 apologizing to the reader for
insisting too much upon the description
of the whites’ actions on Amity
plantation in 1831. The change of focus
on what happens to the Black servants
in the kitchen reflects Levy’s
46
determination to endow slaves with a
voice of their own.
In the same way, in chapter 9
Thomas’s mother complains that her
son scolds her for not providing more
historical details about the firing of
plantations or about Sam Sharpe, the
leader of the rebellion. Dismissing his
son’s pretenses, his mother informs the
reader she will only account the things
she has witnessed in a generous plea
for authenticity.
In the middle of her story, in chapter
17 Thomas’s mother is ready to give up
her story because it has become too
painful. However her son wants to
know what happened to the son whom
she abandoned at the door of a Baptist
minister’s manse. Consequently, she
tells him that she has taken the decision
to abandon Nimrod’s son with the hope
that the English preacher would take
good care of him. A chapter later,
Thomas convinces his mother to
continue her story. Leaving the readers
wondering about her reliability, she
admits that July is not actually present
during the scene with the symbolic
burial of slavery as she has previously
claimed in chapter 16.
Finally, part 5 portrays the
indecision of Thomas’s mother who
feels she has a writer’s power to change
the ending of the novel. In chapter 34
she wants to provide a happy ending
for July’s story but Thomas demands
her to write the truth. As a result, in
chapter 35 the readers follow a nearly
starved July into a courtroom where her
first encounter with her son Thomas
takes place. Even now, Thomas’s
mother resents describing all her
suffering and prefers to think of the
happy moments she has spent with her
Cristian CHIFANE
son and her family. Throughout the
entire novel, Thomas acts as an implied
reader constantly giving feedback
regarding the effects of the story upon
its potential readers.
Looking at the story from a different
angle, the third person narrative
revolves not only around July’s life but
also around the life of the twenty-threeyear-old Caroline Mortimer, the sister
of Mr. John Howarth, the master of
Amity plantation. The circumstances of
the lives of the two women could not
be more different yet their situation
becomes similar by the end of the novel
when Caroline takes revenge upon July
for her love affair with her husband.
In a novel about slavery, Andrea
Levy manages to bring nineteenthcentury Jamaica to life evoking the
scene and atmosphere of the time both
through the eyes of a slave woman and
of a white woman who is from the very
beginning fascinated by the life of her
slaves. For example, her sister-in-law
Agnes teaches her that she should be
tough in her relationship with the slaves
and she gives the example of a young
slave called Molly whom she punches
in her face for tying her shoe too tight.
What is more, it is due to Caroline’s
whim that July is taken from her
mother in order to become her
companion.
In chapter 5 the reader follows Kitty
peering through a window of the great
house with the hope of seeing her
daughter. Double-edged phrases ironically pinpoint to the landlady’s cruelty
since she has forcefully snatched a
baby from her mother’s arms: “she
would wait-staring in upon a room so
sublime that she dared not take a breath
for fear the air would prove too noble
for her” (Levy The Long Song 49).
July leaves on the plantation
together with other slaves: Godfrey, the
headman; Hannah, the cook; two other
chamber girls, Molly and Patience or
Byron, one of Godfrey’s houseboys.
She serves Caroline as her maid and is
never actually whipped for her
mistakes as it happens on other plantations. The fact that she has not been
whipped does not mean that she is not
punished in a number of other ways
such as being struck sharply upon the
top of the head with a shoe or being
slapped about her face. July remembers
her first days with Caroline when she is
desperately longing and crying for her
mother and is forced to lie still in her
mistress’s room and learn how to sew.
In spite of her repeated attempts to run
away, she is never sent back home to
her mother.
Levy tracks down the slaves’ subtle
means of mocking their masters’ falsity
and prejudices. Tired of all the fuss
over the Christmas dinner, Godfrey
brings July a bed sheet to lay on the
table instead of a fine quality linen as
Caroline requested. July is at first
surprised that he would not know the
difference between the two, but soon
she realizes it is his means of revenge
against their mistress: “[…] she began
to smile, for she scented Godfrey’s
mischief. ‘Miss July, is that a bed sheet
you be holding?’ he asked once more.
‘No, Mr. Godfrey, it be a fine
tablecloth’, July replied. ‘Then go put it
’pon the table’, Godfrey told her […]”
(Levy The Long Song 82).
On the same wavelength, in chapter
10 readers see July apparently trying to
calm down Caroline Mortimer left
alone in the great house with only her
company of house servants. Implicitly,
July’s words are meant to scare her
mistress even more: “‘No be frettin’,
missus,’ July replied, ‘for you is alone
with no white people near to calm you
– no massa, no friend, no bakkra – for
no nigger gon’ come near, missus,
when me two fists is raised so’ ” (Levy
The Long Song 106). Caroline’s despair
raises by the minute and a nigger’s
arrival is not meant to reassure her.
Pretending she wants to protect her,
July offers to go find out the news the
nigger has brought and meanwhile
locks her missus into the room. The
implication is that for once Caroline
would feel as trapped as July always
feels with the amendment that July
promises: “Then me soon come
back and set you free” (Levy The Long
Song 107).
Unfortunately, the slaves on the
plantation are denied the freedom July
promises to Caroline. Nimrod’s sad
story is an example in this respect. He
is a Negro who has bought his freedom
and is now insisting on being called
Nimrod Freeman. He deserves his
freedom but freedom is only temporary
for him. Nimrod masters the art of
storytelling and has the necessary skills
to increase the suspense of the story of
the slaves’ rebellion he is recounting to
the curious house servants gathered
around him. He owes Caroline Mortimer his tragic end. Afraid of losing
everything she possesses if it were
proved that her brother has taken his
own life, Caroline falsely swears that
she saw Nimrod shooting her brother.
In a frenzy of violent actions, Tam
48
Dewar kills innocent Nimrod to cover
the whites’ cowardice and misbehavior.
The novelty of Levy’s story is that
she depicts the beginning of the slaves’
reactions against their masters’
oppressive acts. These reactions range
from verbal irony to physical outbursts
of violence. To Nimrod’s suggestion
that the mutinous slaves might attack
their mistress, Godfrey replies: “If they
come for the missus, they can have her”
(Levy The Long Song 116). Moreover,
he defies her and makes her kneel in
front of him when she wants to strike
him, he forces her to repeat July’s real
name and he refuses to take July with
them. The parody July and Nimrod
play in the mistress’s absence is meant
to highlight the mistreatment July has
to put up with daily from the part of her
mistress. In response to the colonizers’
brutality, single-handed Kitty protects
her daughter by killing her oppressor
who is in fact July’s own father.
Under the circumstances, the colonizers themselves start feeling insecure.
The narrator reveals the atrocities John
Howarth has witnessed since he left his
plantation and implies that these must
be the reasons behind his decision to
take his own life. Disgusted by the nine
white men dressed in women clothes
who torture a Baptist priest in front of
his wife and children, John Howarth
has started questioning God and
everything he has ever known. Besides
being symbolic for the death of many
other innocent slaves, Kitty’s hanging
represents another illustration of the
colonizers’ attempt to intimidate the
colonized whose fury they have started
experiencing more and more.
There are two more interesting
characters in the novel: the English
Cristian CHIFANE
preacher James Kinsman and the
overseer Robert Goodwin. The Baptist
minister does not love Thomas as his
son although he treats him well; what
he actually intends is to prove that
education can have a remarkable effect
upon a Negro. When he leaves Jamaica
for England, he takes Thomas with him
as an exponent of the success of his
Christian mission. Even if hypocrisy
guides Kinsman’s actions, he manages
to help Thomas become a successful
man.
On the other hand, chapter 20
follows the arrival of the overseer
Robert Goodwin at the great house at
Amity. Apparently, he is happy that
slavery has ended. The son of a
clergyman, he intends to show kindness
to the Negroes on the plantation. In his
opinion they will work harder for their
masters now that they are free because
this is their free will, nobody forces
them anymore. He even delivers a
speech telling the former slaves that the
houses they live in and the land they
work do not belong to them but to their
mistress. If they choose to stay on the
plantation they will keep their houses
and even receive some payment for
their work. His speech stirs the
Negroes’ anger once more. In fact a
coward who is afraid of his father as
well as of the cockroaches and the
former slaves on the plantation, he
misleads July into believing that he
loves her. Accordingly, chapter 24
consists of a short paragraph addressing
the reader who has to be aware that Mr.
Goodwin’s behavior “is not the way
white men usually behaved upon this
Caribbean island” (Levy The Long
Song 265). When he asks Caroline to
marry him in order to be closer to July
his true nature is revealed. His sordid
love affair with Miss July going on
under Caroline’s eyes in the damp little
room under the house is another proof
of his mischievous behavior. The image
of Mr. Goodwin in chapter 31
resembles the one of a Negro (for
whom Caroline mistakes) because of
the blackness of his heart. Deserted by
his Negroes, Goodwin rejects July as
well. The fact that he finally takes away
Emily, his daughter with July and goes
to England with Caroline is yet another
example of his lack of humanity.
4. Conclusions
Both Small Island and The Long
Song reflect voices which have
previously not been or they have been
too transiently present in literary texts.
The cultural clash is accurately
described no matter if the story unfolds
during World War II and its aftermath
or in nineteenth-century Jamaica.
The intricately woven narrative
techniques are part of a carefully
planned writing strategy whose purpose
is either to reveal the consequences of
post-war multiculturalism or to
denounce the atrocities of slavery and
to retrieve the Caribbean their cultural
heritage.
According to Murdoch, “Small
Island is clearly located in a West
Indian literary tradition that examines
the consequences of Caribbean
migration to the Mother Country and
that encompasses such works as Jean
Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark and Samuel
Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners” (80).
Multiperspectivism helps the readers of
Small Island not only to understand the
characters’ reactions but also to grasp
the meaning of their future evolution:
“while Levy’s novel leaves us in no
doubt about the racism and ignorant
hostility that greeted West Indian
immigrants in many quarters of postwar Britain, Small Island also has a
strain of positive and even utopian
thinking about the possibility of a
multicultural society that might rise
from the rubble of a blitzed wartime
nation” (Greaney 93). From this point
of view, Small Island is comparable to
White Teeth (2000), a novel belonging
to Zadie Smith, another writer of
Jamaican origins who has dealt with
issues of gender, race, religion or
identity in a post-war heterogeneous
London society.
The Before/After structure of the
novel moves the story alternatively
forward and backwards in time and is
based on a set of contradictions which
are part of the narrative strategy and
offer the characters and the readers the
necessary data to distinguish between
appearance and essence. In spite of
their subjectivity, the four narrators
create the image of a plausible fictional
world reconstructing war and post-war
experience. The difficulty of Levy’s
enterprise is that she has two different
geographical spaces to deal with: “not
only a different (yet still hostile
London), but also the absent, yet
paradoxically always-present country
of their parents’ origin” (203).
Despite its circularity and the
narrative frame provided by the novel’s
foreword and afterword, The Long
Song displays an elaborate narrative
structure with a first person narrator
disguising herself under a third person
narrative. In fact, Levy alludes to the
50
Cristian CHIFANE
Caribbean tradition of the Taino
people, the original inhabitants of
Jamaica. They used to pass on their oral
history through cyclical songs that end
up where they began and then just start
again. Self-conscious of the artistic act
that she performs, the narrator in this
novel masters the art of storytelling in a
way which is similar to that of the old
bards whose words could skillfully
maintain and increase their listeners’
attention.
WORKS CITED
Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of
Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992. Print.
Booth, Wayne C. “Types of Narration”. Theories:
A Reader. Ed. Sean Matthews and Aura Taras
Sibişan. Bucureşti: Editura Paralela 45, 2003:
310-325. Print.
Fischer, Susan Alice. “Andrea Levy’s London
Novels”. The Swarming Streets: Twentieth
Century Literary Representations of London.
Ed. Lawrence Phillips. Amsterdam - New
York: Rodopi. B.V., 2004: 199-214. Print.
Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane
E. Lewin. New York: Cornell University
Press, 1980. Print.
Greaney, Michael. “Case Studies in Reading
Literary Texts”. The Post-War British
Literature Handbook. Ed. Katharine Cockin
and Jago Morrison. London: MPG Books
Group, 2010: 81-93. Print.
Levy, Andrea. Small Island. London: Headline
Publishing Group, 2004. Print.
---. The Long Song. London: Headline Publishing
Group, 2010. Print.
Lodge, David. The Art of Fiction. New York:
Penguin Books, 1992. Print.
Milligan, Ian. The English Novel. Harlow:
Longman York Press, 1987. Print.
Moore, Brian L. and Michele A. Johnson. Neither
Led nor Driven. Contesting British Cultural
Imperialism in Jamaica, 1865-1920. Kingston:
The University of the West Indies Press, 2004.
Print.
Murdoch, H.Adlai. Creolizing the Metropole:
Migrant Carribean Identities in Literature and
Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2012. Print.
Schaefer, Nancy A. “American-led Urban
Revivals as Ethnic Identity Arenas in Britain”.
Religion, Identity and Change: Perspectives
on Global Transformations. Ed. Simon
Coleman and Peter Collins. Burlington:
Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004: 119-135.
Print.
Short bio
Cristina CHIFANE is Assistant Professor
at “Constantin Brâncoveanu” University of
Brăila. Her Ph.D. thesis aims at offering new
insights into Translating Literature for
Children. She has a Master Degree in
Translation and Interpretation at “Dunărea de
Jos” University of Galaţi. Her research
interests include: Translation and Cultural
studies, Linguistics as well as English and
American literature. She has participated in
national and international conferences and
has written a number of articles related to
English language and literature.
ROMANIAN LITERATURE IN THE CONTEXT
OF THE RROMA INTEGRATION DECADE:
ION BUDAI-DELEANU’S ŢIGANIADA
– CANTOS I AND II –
Sorina GEORGESCU*
Abstract: A comic-heroic poem, Ţiganiada (The Gypsiad) was written by
Transylvanian Ioan Budai-Deleanu first in 1800, then in 1812, but published only in
1875. Quite a complex work, it was interpreted in many different ways, from the
standardized version of Gypsy caricature to a mixture of Greek and Roman
literature, Italian and Spanish Renaissance (Romanian Don Quijote), Deism,
comedy of literary works, harsh satire of all world vices, to didactic literature,
Romanian folklore, and Enlightenment ideas of liberty and equality.
The present study will see the poem as allegory and as a parody of war and will try
to define ‘literary blackness’ or ‘literary Gypsyness’ as opposed to ‘literary
whiteness’ or ‘literary Romanianness’ in the first two Cantos of the poem, by
applying Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark (1992), as well as Louise Anne
Keating’s and Martin Favor’s definitions from “Interrogating Whiteness”,
(De)Constructing Race” and Authentic Blackness:: The Folk in The New Negro
Renaissance, respectively. The two Cantos will also be compared with some famous
American movies/TV series: M*A*S*H, Love and Death and Forest Gump.
My thesis is that Ion Budai-Deleanu does not moke Gypsies as such, he rather sees
them as funny human beings, and uses them to laugh at Romanians and, mostly, I
would argue, at those people fond of making war.
Key-words: Ţiganiada, Gypsy, literary whiteness, literary blackness, parody, war,
Romanianness
Cultural and Political Context:
“Şcoala Ardeleană”
(“The Transylvanian School”)
For* any student of Romanian
(literary) history, modernization in the
Romanian Principalities usually means
France’s powerful influence on Ţara
Românească and Moldavia, during the
*
Hyperion University, Bucharest
19th century. Much less analyzed by
critics, the previous influence of the
Catholic Austrian Enlightenment in
Transylvania, in the 18th century, gave
birth to an intellectual manifestation
called ‘Şcoala Ardeleană’ (“The
Transylvanian School”).
According to Ioan Chindriş, the
leading researcher in this area, in his
2001 and 2007 books, respectively,
Cultură şi societate în contextul Şcolii
52
Sorina GEORGESCU
Ardelene (Culture and Society in the
Context of the “Transylvanian School)
and Unirea cu Roma şi Şcoala
Ardeleană (The Union with Rome and
the Transylvanian School), 17th century
meant superstition and illiteracy for the
Orthodox Romanians dominated by
Calvinist Hungarians and Lutheran
Saxons, turning this “School” into a
political, religios, educational and
cultural movement.
Thus, politically speaking, we have
Supplex Libellum Valachorum (The
Petition of Transylvanian Wallachians
– 1791), which argued for Romanians’
Latinity and continuity in Transylvania,
emphasized the important political
personalities and educated figures they
had produced, blamed the Calvinist
Reform and the imposed Hungarization
for their current decline, and, as a
conclusion, asked for equality with the
other nations in the Austrian-Hungarian
Empire. Their petition was, unfortunately, rejected.
Religiously speaking, the Union
with Rome meant the modernization of
the Church and its allignment with the
“European civilized religions” (Chindriş Cultură 230), and the maintainance
of the Oriental Church1 rituals plus a
whole series of religious books and the
publication of the Catechism paid by
the Cardinal. This leads us to the
educational side of this “School”,
which was offered to all religions and
ethnicities. It began with twelve
students, three of whom were then sent
to Rome with scholarships, like in a
sort of American-type of expansion in
1
They were and are called today ‘GreekCatholics’
Nicolae Iorga’s view2, or like a friendly
dialogue instead of subjection, in Ioan
Chindriş’s view.
As a mandatory curriculum, they
studied Languages, Sciences, and
Theology, in Transylvania, and Philosophy, Politics, Natural History,
Mathematics, History, Geography,
Aesthetics, Philology and how to argue
and criticize, at the Propaganda Fide
College in Rome and the two Austrian
Pázmáneum University and the St.
Barbara College.
Catholic influence, as Caius
Dobrescu3 argues, also meant Jesuit
influence, which in its turn opposed
Protestantism in two different ways: by
austerity and rigor, promoting the
renaissance of ascetic practices, while
on the other hand, it offered the
possibility of living a complete and
happy earthly life, without compromiseing the salvation of your soul, the
program adopted by the Transylvanian
School and which will be reflected in
its major poem: Ţiganiada4.
2
Sate şi preoţi din Ardeal (1902): “Catholics made Romanians see the beginning of an
era of freedom and light” (qtd in Chindriş
Cultură 230)
3
Caius Dobrescu: “Ion Budai-Deleanu şi
proiectul european” (2009-2011)
4
Full title: Ţiganiada sau tabăra ţiganilor. Poem eroi cómico-satiríc alcătuit în
doaosprăzece cântece. De Leonáchi Dianéu.
Îmbogăţit cu multe însămnări şi luări aminte
critece, filosofice, istorice, filologhice şi
gramatece, de cătră Mitru Perea ş-alţii mai
mulţi, în anul 1800 (= Gypsiad or the
Gypsy’s Camp. A Heroic-Comic-Satirical
Poem Made by Twelve Cantos. By Leonáchi
Dianéu. Enriched with Lots of Notings and
Critical, Philosophical, Historical, Philological and Grammatical Observations, by
Mitru Perea and Several Others, in the Year
1800).
ROMANIAN LITERATURE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE RROMA INTEGRATION … 53
Ioan Budai-Deleanu:
Life and Work
Romanian for the Romanians and
Roma for the Roma5, Ioan BudaiDeleanu was born on January 6, 1760,
in Cigmău6 in the family of a GreekCatholic archbishop Solomon Budai
and died at Lemberg in 1820. His
primary school was in his native
village, then he went to Blaj to study at
the Greek-Catholic seminary. From
5
Current debate: Romanians have always
seen Ioan Budai-Deleanu as a Romanian,
which is also my own view, they have never
even thought of any different possibility,
while today’s Roma intellectuals see him as a
Roma writer, grounding their arguments on
his “Epistolie închinătoare: cătră Mitru Perea,
vestit cântăreţ!” (“Letter to Bow: to Mitru
Perea, Famous Singer”) (where he defines
himself and Mitru Perea – the anagrammed
name of Petru Maior – as Gypsies) instead of
historical facts. Romanian critics, on the
other hand, consider this “Letter” a mere
figure of speech (Ioan Chindriş, Niculina
Iacob), an invented biography, copied from
Cervantes: soldier, hostage, mutilated and
himself a master in references to manuscripts
and his own work – the Renaissance idea of
attributing the narrated facts to alleged real
and historical sources, its end parodies the
projects of the Transylvanian School of
evoking the national past faithfully (Nicolae
Manolescu), a less solemn attitude, a more
humane one, than was the case with the
classic norm, imaginary letter to Mitru Perea,
inspired by Tassoni (Cornel Regman), a fake
map, commentators mistook the narrator for
the author, there is no proof that the
introductory texts were written before the
verses (Marius Chivu); Budai-Deleanu
invents an imaginary biography (Şerban
Cioculescu) etc
6
Cigmău: a village from Transylvania
where the Gypsies – serfs – lived at the
outskirts
this, he was sent to Vienna, to the
Faculty of Philosophy – from which he
also received his PHD, – and to the St.
Barbara College, also in Austria, to
study Theology. He was interested in
Philology, Magic, Medicine, Law,
History,
Philosophy,
Politics,
Theology, Chemistry, Mathematics. He
loved arts and was a man of letters. He
spoke French, German, Italian, Latin,
Hungarian, Polish. He loved music. He
saw the Bible as both historical source
and literary work and he went deeply
into the study of classical languages.
He became a psalm singer at the GreekCatholic Church St. Barbara on the 1st
of February, 1785. Then he received a
job at the Official Court in Lemberg
(Lvov) in Galitia in 1787, where he
worked intensely as a translator of
juridical documents. He wrote both
history and poetry. He finished the first
version of Ţiganiada in 1800, and its
second version in 1812, but did not
publish any of them. The first version
was edited by Theodor Codrescu in
Buciumul Român only in 1876-1877.
The second, by Gheorghe Cardaş in
1925 and 1928.
As we can notice, Ioan BudaiDeleanu was contemporary with some
exceptional events, which are reflected
in Ţiganiada, the European Declaration of Human Rights (1785) among
them, according to Valeriu Rusu.
As a writer, critics notice, he was
influenced by Homer, Virgil, Tasso,
Tassoni, Ariosto, Cervantes, the French
Enlightenment (Voltaire). As a scholar,
he argued for secularization and ‘decharming’ and supported the Enlightenment, defined as reason, cosmopolitan federalism, and legitimacy for
all ethnicities, in a word, Josephinism.
54
Sorina GEORGESCU
He perceived the emperor as lawfully
elected by his people, instead of the
Lord’s anointed. Thus, for him, society
had to be ruled through laws, as a
contract: “The mutual agreement
between the people who makes this
country and the lawful prince who
enforces the law” (Chindriş & Iacob
35). He was an expert in law and
politics and “the only one from
the Transylvanian School who put
religion on the same footing with all
the other themes treated in comic key,
or even in a biting aqua fortis”
(Chindriş & Iacob 35).
Synopsis of the Poem
Briefly speaking, we have two
parallel plans: Vlad the Impaler’s
request for the Gypsies to organize
themselves in an army and help
Romanians fight the Turks, with the
promise that he will reward them with
freedom (as opposed to slavery), lands
and houses, so they turn into normal
peasants
just
like
Romanians.
Gypsies’fight among them and their
journey from one village to another, all
with symbolic names, as well as their
imagined fight against the Turks, will
be parallel with Romanians’ real fight
and will be full of comic adventures
and stories in the story; the final defeat
of Romanians and Gypsies will also be
parallelled.
Previous Interpretations
and Current Methodological
Approach
Most of the critics see this poem
as a meditation on the human condiHyperCultura, nr. 2(11), 2012
tion7, as a political pamphlet where
Gypsies stand for the Romanians8, and
as a comedy, a comedy of literature
mostly9.
The present study analyzes only the
first two Cantos of Ţiganiada as an
allegory of the Romanian people and of
people in general, following the
7
See Dumitru Vlăduţ, Georgeta Antonescu, Ion Istrate, Ioana Em. Petrescu, Cornel
Regman, Daniela Filip, Daniela Petroşel,
Mariana Istrate, Eugen Simion - the effort of
building and organizing a society; critique of
the major human faults; history as an ocean
of blood from which Gypsies are trying to
escape; the failed ambitions towards social
harmony; life is a journey; being ironic with
the hole world; allegory
8
See Dumitru Vlăduţ, Ioan Chindriş &
Niculina Iacob, Marta Petreu, D. Popovici,
Cornel Regman, Marius Chivu, Daniela Filip,
Mariana Istrate, Ion Pop-Curşeu, George
Călinescu, Romul Munteanu, Elvira Soronan,
Mircea Cărtărescu,Ovidiu Pecican – argue
about choosing the form of government
according to the specifics of one’s own
people and historical level of development;
cosmpolitanism; the natural rights doctrine;
the Parliament; question Enlightenment and
write a ‘Romanianda’; sarcastic book about
Romanians; attack the problems of the time
and the medieval institutions; Romanians and
Gypsies have a similar mythology; satire
hidden under the name of an exotic people;
patriotic pamphlet disguised in a fable
10
See Nicolae Manolescu, Ion Urcan,
Iulian Boldea, D. Popovici, Cornel Regman,
Daniela Petroşel, Ion Pop-Curşeu, Lucian
Blaga, Clara Mărgineanu, Ovidiu Pecican,
Adrian Popescu – combine fiction and its
own critique; turn the chivalrous universe upside-down; ridicule the clergy, the nobility,
the scientific technique and the honesty of the
Enlightened writings; moke magic, witchcraft
and the supernatural; moke the bookish, the
intertextuality and the scholarly subject,
carnivalesque fantasy; parody of the divine
intervention.
definition from the Dictionary of the
History of Ideas, quoting Isidore of
Seville in the 17th century: “in saying
one thing a person conveys or
understands something else” (Fletcher
42) and as a parody of war.
Therefore, I will mainly follow
African American Toni Morisson’s
concepts of ‘literary whiteness’ and
‘literary blackness’ as they are defined
in her famous Playing in the Dark:
Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
(1992), and as later developed by Anne
Louise Keating in “Interrogating
Whiteness”, (De)Constructing Race
(1995) and Martin Favor’s 1999
Authentic Blackness:: The Folk in The
New Negro Renaissance.
Analysis
As I have just mentioned, one of the
main purposes of this study is to try and
define ‘literary blackness’ or, perhaps,
‘literary Gypsyness’, as opposed to, or,
as a parralel to, ‘literary whiteness’, or,
perhaps, ‘literary Romanianess’, in
Ioan Budai-Deleanu’s first two Cantos.
Besides the already discussed
context of the Transylvanian School,
we still have to talk about the image
Gypsies had in the Romanian and the
Western
and
Eastern-European
imaginary, from the Middle Ages to the
end of the 18th century, when the poem
was written.
From the Romanian perspective, all
we can talk about before, or during the
poet’s time is not literature, but
folklore, which he also declares as his
main Romanian source of inspiration.
So, which was Gypsies’ image in the
Romanian mind? They were stupid,
thieves, lazy and hungry10, a perfect
match for a black in Ann Louise
Keating’s view, for instance. They were
muzicians11, fortune-tellers, cowards12,
cooks, they “killed twelve dragons”13,
they “hammered well”, they “killed a
sow with [his] sledge” and they were
poets by inclination14. And there are
examples of proverbs with Gypsies: “to
get drawned as the Gypsy when/before
reaching the shore” (or “to lose by a
neck”); “He doesn’t know what the
suffron is/ as the Gypsy doesn’t know
what the sofa is”; “From a Gypsy mare,
(you cannot make) a noble horse!”15.
Negative was their image in Europe,
since the Middle Ages. Their skin was
considered anti-Christian, their culture
and life-style were unnaceptable. Thus,
even if not enslaved there, they were
rejected by the Church, restricted to
their tents by trade guilds, or they were
extra-charged. Laws were given against
them in England, Sweden, Finland,
France, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, where “Gypsy hunts” were
fashionable in the 16th century, in
Hungary, Moravia, Bohemia, Spain and
10
Gh. D. Speranzia: Anecdote populare
(1892); Gheorghe I Tăzlănanu: Comoarea
neamului. Snoave şi basme (1943); Dr. M.
Gaster Literatura populară (1883)
11
Ion Cazan: Literatura populara (1947);
Grigore Tocilescu: Materialuri folcloristice
(1981)
12
Ion Cazan: Literatura populara (1947)
13
Mihai Eminescu: Opere complete – I –
Literatura populară (1902)
14
Grigore Tocilescu şi Christea Tapu:
Materialuri folcloristice (1981); Grigore
Tocilescu: Materialuri folcloristice
15
“Te îneci ca ţiganul la mal”, “Nu ştie ce
e şofranu/ ca ţiganu divanu”, “Din iapă
ţigănească, cal boieresc!”
56
Sorina GEORGESCU
Norway, where they also had one ear
cut and were sterilized16.
In this national and international
cultural, legislative and folkloric
context, Ioan Budai-Deleanu starts by
defining ‘literary Gypsiness’ with a
rather negative, stereotypical image, an
‘acting Gypsy’, or ‘acting black’, as
Ann Louise Keating or Martin Favor
would have it. They are “brave”
(Deleanu 44), but they “quarrel”
(Deleanu 44), they cannot stand
working together. They are “bastard
crowds” (Deleanu 46) and look like
“crows” (Deleanu 46), an association
also explainable through the Romanian
folklore. According to Simeon Florea
Marian, in his 1883 book Ornitologia
populară română17:
Romanians often call the black people
‘crow’….But they mostly call Gypsies
by this name, because the pellicle on
their cheek is as dark as the feathers of
the raven, then because, as the crows are
very brazen and bold, that you drive
them away on the left and they come
back from the right side, Gypsies do the
same, no matter how far you drive them
away from your home, and no matter
how much you would try to get rid of
them, they still jump down your throat
and ask you for the moon (my
translation) (Marian 32).
And:
Romanians have also invented a lot of
anecdots, a lot of funny stories, where
they say Gypsies don’t even want to say
the name of these birds so as not to call
themselves names and make fun of
themselves (my translation) (Marian 33).
16
See Gypsies: A Persecuted Race,
William A Duna - 1985
17
Romanian Folkloric Ornithology
In Ţiganiada, they are also
“scoundrel” (Deleanu 48), but they are
holding a council, they are deliberating
“in pleasant ways” (Deleanu 48) how to
give up their traditional life-style,
perceived, as we have seen, as contrary
to the established norm in both
mainstream Romania and Europe, and
turn into organized people, just like
Romanians (although the poet is
Transylvanian, the action takes place in
15th century Ţara Românească). That is,
they are ‘acting white’, or Romanianlike, in response to RomanianMuntenian ruler Vlad the Impaller’s
decision to make them help him fight
the Turks, as soldiers, and to his
promise-reward to free them from
slavery and give them lands. ‘Acting
white/Romanian’ or aspiring to become
white/Romanian is probably why they
start their journey to the battlefront
from Alba, i.e “The White”, which is,
at least theoretically speaking, not their
skin color, but that of Romanians.
Stereotypically speaking, they are
“impatient” (Deleanu 56), like “any
stupid people” (Deleanu 56) and, even
if they express their opinions each at
his turn, nothing can actually be
decided. They sleep like “frogs in a
pool” (Deleanu 61), one above the
other, in “small black tents” (Deleanu
61). This unpleasant image is actually
meant to support a first piece of advice
given by the poet to the Romanian
people:
…whose grandsons are now covered
with disgrace
in our country; and we will share their
fate in others’view,
if we do not care for our own country
(my translation) (Deleanu 63).
They are nomads, they are the
lowest of the low, they are mostly
naked, they beg and steal. They are
thus, from the first Canto, the prototype
of the anti-hero in this heroic poem.
Still, Vlad Vodă, the ‘true’ hero, needs
them, or at least he pretends to, to help
his army in a battle. This might be seen,
in my view, as a literary subvertion of a
typical eroic poem; or as the need of
the white/master of his servant/slave in
order to define himself as the better
character, just like in the American
literature. And/or, as a third option, as a
parody to a war in general, an aspect I
will further analyze. Thus, he calls
them
“brave-Egyptian
remains”
(Deleanu 71), pharaoes, heroes, “proud
Gypsy colony” (Deleanu 71) and
advices them to advance to the status of
Romanian peasants, a clear echo of
Maria Tereza’s policies of sedentarizing Gypsies and, of course, again,
the accepted standard of whiteness
/Romanianness/ civilization.
From now on, Gypsies are divided
into groups, according to their skills
and crafts. The stereotypical division
and description are enriched by the
original idea of turning groups into
‘regiments’, with weapons, flags and
musical instruments and make them
parade in front of Vlad Vodă, a
complete caricature of real armies. It is
also a kind of catalogue of name and
descriptions in the spirit of the
traditional epic poems.
They are sieve makers and house
servants, led by Goleman, with pitch
forks and tent poles with iron at their
top, with a “white – taled foal leather
caught on a pole” (my translation)
(Deleanu 62) plus red spots on the
leather and the wooden circle of the
sieve upward, as the flag, and they are
“playing a goat bellows bagpipe,
beating the drum in unpierced sieves”
(my translation) (Deleanu 62). They are
silversmiths, part of them well-armed
and organized, led by young Parpangel,
part of them naked, their skin
“glittering black like a crow” (my
translation) (Deleanu 63), with copper
maces and long knives, they are tall and
thick-boned, their hair a mess, their
beards tousled; they wear large or
short, striping clothes, with no sleeves
and broken aback; their flag, a silver
crow with spreading feathers and
golden wings, their music, jew’s harps
and bronze bells. They are boilermakers, led by the wise Drăghici, with
caps, smoked beards, riding; their arms,
hammers, their flag, a copper tray; their
music, a roaring clarion and a boiler.
They are blacksmiths with sledges and
heymakings, and they are 300, a
selected infantry; they sell scythes,
knives, scissors, hanbecks, they have
no money; their flag, a steel sparkling
pie pan hanging on a large spit; their
music, bells and cymballs. They are
spoon makers, led by Neagul, with
axes, well-dressed, with shaved beards;
they mean business, they whistle and
have a shovel as their flag. They are
goldsmiths, led by Tandaler, the most
select group, a group who doesn’t care
a bit about Vlad Vodă; they are strong,
their arms, long spears, their flag, a
golden spear with silver butterflies;
their music, a well-organized orchestra
with lutes. Finally, the last group, the
wandering Gypsies, the most detested
by Romanians, and by some of the
other groups, too. These make thick,
dezorganized lines, eat in vane, eat
corpses; their women are naked or halfHyperCultura, nr. 2(11), 2012
58
naked, their arms, clubs and mallets;
their flag, a rag hanging on a pole, their
music, rearing horns and loud
screamings. They are the group who
will finally destroy all the others, under
their own leader, Corcodel.
As we can see, it is actually a lifestyle turned into a charicaturized army,
with no black flag, the crows are white
or yellowish, the rest of the colors are
brown and red, even if Gypsy signs are
everywhere. A unique way of picturing
Gypsies in Romania literature before
and since then, and a complete mokery
of armies in general at the same time.
Let us just think for a moment at
comtemporary movie-parodies or bookparodies on war, and, for the time
being, at such characters as Capt.
Hawkeye Pierce and Capt. Trapper
McIntyre from the famous MASH 4077
(1970), coming for the morning
military ceremony dressed in night
gowns, while Caporal Maxwell
Klinger, from the same movie, dressed
like a woman.
Although Gypsies seem prepared
and willing to go to war, their antiheroism means their only motivation is
food and rest, until the apparently
absurd requests to Vlad Vodă: to rest
three times each time and to receive a
shortened distance between the start
and the finish localities plus guards to
protect them. A sign of total absurdity
and cowardness, in total agreement
with the Gypsy stereotype. And yet, at
the same time, a sign of fear, only
natural in a war, and an absurdity as
absurd as the idea of the war itself.
Let us now think at Woody Allen’s
own character in Love and Death – his
1985 movie about the Napoleonic Wars
in Russia – the shorterst and most
Sorina GEORGESCU
unprepared Russian soldier, the only
one who finds no motivation in fight
and no courage therefore:
Sonja: Boris, you can't be serious, you're
talking about Mother Russia.
Boris: She's not my mother. My
mother's standing right here, and she's
not gonna let her youngest baby get
shrapnel in his gums.
Mother: He'll go and he'll fight, and I
hope they will put him in the front lines.
Boris: Thanks a lot, Mom. My mother,
folks.
…..
Drill Sergeant: You want a dishonorable
discharge?
Boris: Yes sir, either that or a furlough.
And:
Sergeant: If they kill more Russians,
they win. If we kill more Frenchmen, we
win.
Boris: What do we win?
Sergeant: Imagine your loved ones
conquered by Napoleon and forced to
live under French rule. Do you want
them to eat that rich food and those
heavy sauces?
Soldiers: No...!
Sergeant: Do you want them to have
soufflé every meal and croissant?
The poet deals, apparently, with a
patriotic war, but, let us remember that
he is also writing the poem during the
Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), and he
might not have loved these wars at all.
Thus, Gypsies choose to place the food
in front of them so they have a reason
to go further. They decide to arm
themselves properly and/or … rather
run away if attacked. Another apparent
proof of cowardice, which, however,
reminds us of a Romanian famous
saying “Running away is shameful but
healthy”, or of one piece of advice from
Forest Gump: Forest Gump’s girlfriend
to Forest – “Run, Forest, run!” Or,
again, about Love and Death:
Sonja: Boris, you're a coward!
Boris: Yes, but I'm a militant coward.
Sonja: What are you suggesting, passive
resistance?
Boris: No, I'm suggesting active fleeing.
The Gypsy anti-heroic vision of war
continues with, one might argue, the
most coward idea of all the poem, that
of benting and begging for mercy from
the stronger enemy if the runaway fails,
and fight only with the weaker enemy
if previous solutions fail. Of course,
both benting and begging for mercy
perfectly fit Gypsiness in its negative
stereotype. Still, at a closer look, one
may find that it is a natural human
instinct to try and avoid and make
peace with a taller, bigger, therefore
stronger ‘enemy’ and to feel much
more prepared to quarell if not exaclty
fight, a smaller, shorter, thinner,
therefore, weaker “enemy”, as “The
Alpha Male” experiment, broadcast on
the National Geographic on 26 of April
2013, shows. Then, one should
consider these ‘Gypsy’ thoughts as
meant to introduce Ioan BudaiDeleanu’s real, in my view, opinion of
wars and the lives thus wasted:
That is, we should to the stronger
Bent and beg for mercy
(If we cannot escape running away)
And when fiercely attacked
By a weaker crowd
Then we should fight them
But only if it was impossible for us
To escape and make good peace with
them….
Because, on my fair [judgment],
We only have one life,
That if you lose it once with no purpose,
You can’t find it again, if you go round
the world (my translation) (Deleanu 83)
[….]
….but who,
Is such a crazy man,
To throw himself into the fire alive, and
In his right mind to really want to die!
Therefore he is crazy who
Wakes up and prepares to make war
On those miles way,
Whom he has never seen before,
Then he kills and destroys
Those who have never harmed him.
(my translation) (Deleanu 84)
Therefore, as we can see, war is
insanity and to fight-attack those whom
you don’t even know is the biggest
injustice of all. Let us now see how
some real soldiers saw the wars they
were sent to fight as both parody and
tragedy in Ruth A.W Lahiti’s article
“Gesturing Beyond the Frame:
Transnational Trauma and US War
Fiction” (2012) and in Graham Seal’s
book The Soldiers’Press: Trench
Journalis in the First World War
(2013).
For Ruth Lahiti, the book under
scrutiny is a book about the American
War in Vietnam, called The Things
They Carried, for whose analysis she
uses the concepts of American trauma,
American guilt, parody, imitation and
mimicry.
Quoting
from
Kurt
Vonnegut’s famous SlaughterhouseFive, she gives quite a tragic definition
of war: “a duty-dance with death”
(Lahiti 8). What she sees as both
parody and “American anxiety about
the war” (Lahiti 8) at the same time, in
The Things They Carried is, I think, a
good parallel to our unenthusiatic and
60
fearful Gypsy ‘soldiers’: “The American soldiers of the Alpha Company,
young men unprepared for the action of
war, keep fear at bay in the field by
acting like the movie stars that they
have seen in war films and westerns”.
Analyzing their gestures, Lahiti
concludes that they “stage scenes where
the authority of the American military
discourse comes into friction with
those material realities that it cannot
contain” (8).
Real war tragism is softened and
moked in the trench press, by soldiers,
Graham Seal argues, in order to
“endure the palpable insanity to which
they were consigned by forces beyond
their control” (ix). Humor was, as he
argues quoting Martin Taylor, “one of
the few means of imposing order on an
otherwise
disordered
existence,
especially after faith in glory and
patriotism had disappeared” (Seal ix),
humour that is, “in the face of official
deception, petty regulations, physical
discomfort, mental exhaustion and the
ever-present threat of death” (Seal ix).
Satire and cynicism were soldiers’
prevailing mood, accompanied by
comradership, complaint, rumour and
superstition, all of them expressed in
stereotypes, verses, cartoons and
stories. The enemy was seen both as
“intent on imposing ‘kultur’ on the rest
of Europe” (Seal x) and/or, as in the
case of our Gypsies, “as common
soldiers suffering the same privations
as the Tommy, the Digger and the
Poilu” (Seal x). Just the same, trench
soldiers’only wish was to “survive to
see their loved ones again and return to
the normality of civilian peaceful life”
(Seal x), and “held much of the
mainstream press and their often
Sorina GEORGESCU
blatant propagandist intentions” (Seal
x) in “profound contempt”18 (Seal xi).
Let us now see how Ioan BudaiDeleanu’s Gypsies are holding council
again to decide the best way to fight or
to… “keep fear at bay in the field”, as
Ruth Lahiti would put it, by imitating
and/or deconstructing famous military
techniques valid at the time time of
writing the poem.
According to young Boroşmândru,
what they first need are good weapons,
and each of them should be all dressed
in iron, from head to feet, so that none
of them will fear being cut or shoot, or
killed, but will be able to behave
bravely, as armor-clad warriors do. But,
they should not fight with only one
hand, they should all have a good
sword in the right hand and a spear in
the left hand, to sting the enemy with
the spear and cut him with the sword.
Then, they also need a rope chain to
drag the enemy to the Gypsy camp. A
legitimate objection to this solution
comes from one of the footnote
characters, “Cocon Erudiţian”19, who
recognizes in the Persian fights against
18
“We will continue to die. Not because
of the propaganda you feed us; not in
obedience to the orders our officers are need
to give us and not because of the nonsense
about death and glory penned by the press.
We will suffer as a comradeship only through
a negotiated transaction in which our
sacrifice is carried out on our terms, and in
our terms, as presented in the pages of these
public communications. You will tolerate
these expressions of the way things are for us
and as we wish to present them – to
ourselves, to you and to all we hold dear – in
return for our willingness to serve until you,
holders of the power, find a way to stop this
insanity and return us to our homes” (Seal x)
19
“Mr. Learned”
the Greeks some elements like the
chains, but he says about the armors: “it
wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but it
would only mean trouble for the
soldier, because people dressed like
that wouldn’t be able even to move”
(my translation) (Deleanu 89).
According to Dondul, the spoon
maker, what they need is to dig deep
holes for the Turks to fall in like
wolves going to hunt. They should
cover the holes with leafage, straws and
twigs, a Tartarian way of defending
themselves this time, according to the
same Erudiţian, and a very Romanian
one later, I would argue, if we think of
famous Capra cu trei iezi20 (The Goat
and Her Three Kids) story and the shegoat’s way of catching/punishing the
bad wolf.
Of course, as the leit-motif of this
poem, the council breaks when another
Gypsy announces them that Parpangel’s girlfriend, Romica, has been
kidnapped, a fight starts because of her
and Parpangel, devastated, goes to find
and rescue her, just like in romance
stories. An opportunity for the author to
open a parenthesis, that is, to start
another story in this story and to show
the absurdity of quarrels, besides that
of the War as such.
Conclusion
Gypsies are only natural human
beings, even if, apparently, only negatively stereotyped, by our Transylvanian poet. They are defined by antiheroic and at the same time, I would
argue, by logic, rational, even just
20
Ion Creangă, 1875
attitudes when it comes down to go to
war. War, on the other hand, is nothing
but absurdity. Whether we define it as
the battlefield or as a domestic quarrel.
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Short bio
Sorina GEORGESCU graduated from the
Spanish-English Department of the Faculty of
Foreigh Languages, University of Bucharest
(2001). She is an M.A. in American Studies
(University of Bucharest -2002) and a Ph.D.
student at the same university, the “Literary
and Cultural Studies” Doctoral School (final
year), with a thesis on slavery and
abolitionism in America and Romania. She is
a Lecturer at the Faculty of Journalism at the
Hyperion University, where she teaches
English classes. She also teaches English for
the Faculties of Physics and Mathematics at
the same University. She published 16
papers, in English and Romanian, on themes
related to multiculturalism, American and
Romanian literature and culture, history,
national myths, racism, Ethnic Studies. She is
a member of the “Romanian American
Studies Association” (RAAS), of the
“European American Studies Association”
(EAAS), and of the “Society for Romanian
Studies” (SRS). She is editoria-assistant at
Hypercultura.
2
Sorina GEORGESCU
LINGVISTICĂ ŞI DIDACTICĂ LINGUISTICS AND TEACHING HyperCultura, nr. 2(11), 2012
2
DIGITAL MULTIMODALITY IN PEDAGOGICAL TOOLS: A SEMIOTIC …
3
DIGITAL MULTIMODALITY IN PEDAGOGICAL
TOOLS: A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF THE
HYPERMEDIA NOVEL INANIMATE ALICE
Ana ABRIL HERNÁNDEZ*
Abstract: The aim of this research paper is to analyze the amount – or lack – of
engaging elements present in one of the first digital tools used for educational aims:
Inanimate Alice <http://www.inanimatealice.com/>. The characteristic that makes
this novel an outstanding one in its field is that it was one of the pioneer digital
works of literature to be used at schools worldwide. This study will follow a sociosemiotic perspective applied to the multimodal load of this digital piece as well as a
study of the affordances of this novel for education. Reception will also be studied in
an attempt to provide a global view of this work, which uses a combination of modes
within the digital realm. The audience is a key element in this case, since the piece is
addressed to children and teenagers as an educational resource.
Keywords: Inanimate Alice, digital novel, multimedia literature, pedagogical tool,
viewer’s engagement.
1. Introduction:
the evolution of literature
towards the digital media
Inanimate Alice has1 been labeled a
digital novel, but it is more than a novel
in the traditional sense. It combines
characteristics of different digital
genres and belongs to the so-called
“born-digital” literature (see Hayles,
2002), in the sense that it was created
to be digitally displayed, unlike other
novels that originate in the printed
format and are remediated (for this
notion, see Bolter and Grusin, 1999).
As a hypermedia novel, it combines a
1*
Complutense University of Madrid,
Spain.
hypertextual narrative pattern and a
multimodal design. Talking of digital
literature is referring to a group of texts
which have just emerged into the
sphere of the literary realm (Borràs);
this has occurred after traditional book
formats have led to what is known as
“interactive multimedia.” In these
formats, the reader takes on an
undeniably active role as a participant,
receiving and producing new material,
text, images, sound files or video,
which can be incorporated to digital
works by means of software programs,
the keyboard and the Webcam. The
user’s input becomes crucial in
interactive digital literature because
now “the text is not only a readable
68
text, but also a text to manipulate”
(Bouchardon and López-Varela 2).
The term multimedia alludes to the
on-going process of mixing data which
is addressed to different senses, and
where the stimulus received by the
user/participant
is
turned
into
manipulative acts that transform the
digital piece. Not only the digital
medium includes more images, it
allows the possibility of greater
mobility of semiotic units because it is
programmed by means of algorithmic
code that breaks the continuous and
linear data characteristic of analogue
media. Digital data units (pixels,
polygons, voxels, characters, scripts)
maintain their separate identities and
independence while being combined
into even larger objects, explains Lev
Manovich (The Language of New
Media 30). The modular structure also
facilitates the incorporation of other
non-textual units, such as image, video,
or sound.
Besides ‘modularity’,
Manovich identifies the principles of
‘numerical representation’, ‘automation’, ‘variability’ and ‘transcoding’ in
new media. Whereas old media
involved a manual assembly of visual/
verbal elements into a composition or
sequence, new media is able to generate
many different versions and variations,
often accomplished with automation
(36).
Certain digital hypertexts, like some
forms of concrete poetry, a genre that
became popular in the 1950s, resist
“telling’ and narratology. In other
cases, the complex networked structure
of links complicates reading paths. In
such cases, Aarseth (1997) has used the
term ergodic to explain the reading
process as a work (ergon) of selection
of paths (hodos):
[Cybertext] is seen as a machine--not
metaphorically but as a mechanical
device for the production and
consumption of verbal signs. […] The
machine, of course, is not complete
without a third party, the (human)
operator, and it is within this triad that
the text takes place. The boundaries
between these three elements are not
clear but fluid and transgressive, and
each part can be defined only in terms of
the other two (Aarseth 21).
In
the
analysis
of
Serge
Bouchardon’s creation Loss of Grasp,
which won the New Media Writing
Prize in 2011, we encounter at least two
modalities of enunciation which
correspond to multimodal narration
(text) and description (text, image,
sound). In description the object offers
itself to the gaze/ear in the simple
coexisting present of its parts. In
narrative we can image the gaze of a
traveller covering a time span and
occupying areas which might offer new
vantage points (or points of view).
Location, embodiment, and distance
enter an intricate set of relations and
associations to help ‘sense’ the loss of
grasp by means of several perceptual
modes. Bouchardon and LópezVarela’s discussion shows the dominance of certain sensorial modes –
vision, sound, and touch- in electronic
texts. In a printed text the gaze moves
the narrative forward, at least until the
reader turns the page. In digital formats
the tactile experience creates the
experience of narrative motion,
together with eye-tracking movements,
introducing information from the
outside by means of the tracking
movements of the keyboard, the cursor,
and the webcam that captures the image
of the user. Transition reading cues that
organize information and indicate if a
previous proposition will be expanded,
supported, or qualified in some way
following causality rules (consequential/reversed), likeness/contrast, amplification or metonymy/example, are
more difficult to identify in intermedial
configurations with multiple links that
can be anchored within images, audio
or video files.
Inanimate Alice consists of a series
of on-going episodes –the first one was
released in 2005 and narrates Alice’s
adventures as she travels the world with
her parents. The creators of this hybrid
novel-game are Canadian novelist Kate
Pullinger and digital artist Chris
Joseph. Both artists are currently
working together on another digital
collaborative project: Flight Paths: A
Networked Novel (2007–) (<www.
flightpaths.net>). It consists of brief
‘sketches’ in the shape of Inanimate
Alice’s episodes, with the difference
that this new project is developed by
collaborators in different parts of the
world, a feature that makes this creation
considerably more interactive and
engaging, since the reader now can, in
fact, become a writer.
Before the first episode of Inanimate
Alice was released in 2005, Pullinger
and Joshep had designed another digital
novel together with Stefan Schemat:
The Breathing Wall (2004) (<www.
thebreathingwall.com>). This work
does require actual input from the
69
audience, although it measures the
breathing rate of the participant so that
its software acts accordingly to produce
the strongest possible impact. This is an
instance where the crucial output of the
participant-audience (its breathing rate)
activates and determines the input of
the novel, allowing for a quasi-human
inter-relation between the player and
the computer as both rely on the other’s
output.
The Italian semiotician Umberto
Eco refers to images that represent the
physical world as “the reflection of a
reflection” (205). Those images have
the same task as the digitally projected
representations that appear in the
computer, attempting to resemble the
outer world. In most digital works of
fiction, the first visible image on the
screen attracts the viewer’s attention
and is used to create a kind of brief
introduction to the atmosphere and plot.
The following two sections deal with
the interaction of the two perceptual
modes in the first episode of Inanimate
Alice: the linguistic (text) and the
iconic (image), and my analysis draws
from several crucial works in the study
of digital narratology.
2. The visual and the written
modes in terms of multimodal
interaction
In Episode 1 of Alice’s digital series
the black background with a few white
letters in the middle suggests that the
digital pieces uses both linguistic
elements but also the visual mode. The
opening sentence “My name is Alice.
70
I’m 8 years old” is an example of a
relational-identifying process (it is a
self-introduction), with a token (“My
name”), an unaccented relationalprocess verb (“is”) and a value
(“Alice”). The second sentence conveys
a relational-attributive process with a
carrier (“I”), an unaccented relationalprocess verb (to be: “am”) and an
attribute (“8 years old”). Relation
processes operate also at the level of
images. In Scene 13, for example, we
read: “The jeep has giant wheels, and a
big satellite transmitter on the roof
[…]”, where the participant is the jeep.
This is another example of relational
process with no real vectors; an
inanimate carrier, a relational-attributive verb (“has”) and an attribute. Here
the image is an essential element
because it helps visualize the information conveyed in the written mode.
Images are capital in multimodal
texts. The Italian semiotician Umberto
Eco refers to images that represent the
physical world as “the reflection of a
reflection” (205). In her 2010 volume,
Intermediality and Storytelling, Marina
Grishakova includes a useful distinction between “metaverbal,” an attribute
of verbal texts that evoke images- and
“metavisual,” an attribute of images
that reflect on the incomplete nature of
visual representation. Thus, images
may complement textual descriptions
providing a quick capture of attention
and offering a brief introduction to its
overall atmosphere and plot of the
digital piece.
In The Language of New Media, Lev
Manovich uses “the theory and history
of cinema as the key conceptual lens
through which I look at new media.”
(9) His exploration goes in both
directions, seeing also how digital
media and their capabilities transform
cinema, a deep study on how the
history of cinema informs and helps us
understand new media work. However,
its focus falls more on characteristics of
new media, imagery and visual
narrative rather than on written
language and its signifying potential
when placed in motion. John Cayley’s
essay “Bass Resonance,” explores the
cinematic history of words in motion,
focusing on the work of Saul Bass –
well known for his animated title
sequences at the beginning of films
such as Anatomy of a Murder (1959),
North by Northwest (1959) and
Goodfellas (1990). Cayley’s contribution describes some of the effects of
Bass’ dancing words, aligning his
practice with ‘concrete’ poetics and
kinetic texts. Reflecting upon the
particular environment and ecology of
digital texts, Leonardo Flores’ “Digital
Textuality and its Behaviors” expands
these previous studies that do not
completely trace the complexities of
textuality in motion. The author argues
that the programmed characteristics of
digital texts might include codes that
enable the continuation at a different
statement (jump), the executing of a set
of statements only if some condition is
met (choice), the executing of a set of
statements repeatedly (loop), the
executing of a set of distant statements,
after which the flow of control returns
(subroutine), or the stopping of the
program, preventing any further
execution (halt). His essay presents and
discusses a typology of textual behaviours for electronic poetry (e-poetry)
as a model of the potential of digital
textuality and he distinguishes among
the following types of e-texts:
- Static texts are the default we’re
used to in print – they are texts
that do not move or change on
the screen.
- Scheduled texts may reveal
themselves over time, which
may be linear or looped; they
may force a rate of reading by
disappearing or scrolling; they
may also trigger events over a
programmed or random schedule.
- Kinetic texts move on the
screen: this motion may be
71
looped or linear, random,
programmed, or responding to
cues from the reader.
- Responsive texts take advantage
of the computers’ interface
devices (most commonly the
mouse and keyboard) to create a
feedback loop between the
reader and the text.
- Mutable texts involve programmmed or random changes or
may be generated on the fly.
- Aural texts have a sound component: verbal, musical, or simply
noise.
Digital textuality in Inanimate Alice
does not include elements of kinesis or
motion, but it includes ‘responsive’ and
‘aural’ aspects, as well a paced
dialogue between text and images
which move at regular reading intervals
on the screen. Just to give another
example from Scene 16 where Alice
claims, “then I mail the photos to my
Dad so he will know that we are on our
way, even if he doesn’t answer.” Here,
the image of a video-player is shown,
and the action of mailing photos
becomes the main process of the
sentence, where the affected (“the
photos”), the agent (“I”) and the
material verb in present tense (“mail”)
are both present in the image and in the
textual mode. This is supposed to be a
narrative representation of two
participants but as there is no agent
depicted in the images, there are no
vectors relating it to the goal and the
narratological structure is only present
in the written mode:
72
Many communicative processes
within the episode are linguistically
expressed in present simple tense, such
as in “We drive for a long time” (Scene
17). It represents another performative
action where we do not visualize the act
of driving a vehicle but rather the
“result” of the action (i.e. the road
before the car). For this reason there are
no vectors and no agent depicted in the
visual mode although there is a
linguistically implied affected (the
vehicle that she is driving).
Such examples of material processes
are significant in that they concern the
degree of empathy that the audience is
expected to reach. In all of these, the
agent is always absent in the visual
mode. Thus, due to the lack of any
image of the narrator of the story, one
can claim that there should be a broader
use of the affordance of the two main
modes present in the novel. If the novel
showed a more exhaustive exploitation
of the visual and linguistic modes, the
potential meaning conveyed in each
example would be exploited ad
maximum so that the participant would
engage empathically at a deeper level.
Considering mental processes, the
most numerous category since Alice
informs continually on what she sees,
feels and thinks, a clear instance
appears in Scene 31, where the narrator
states: “And we see my Dad.” It
describes a mental-perceptive process
where again, we have neither the
experiencer (Alice) that could be seen
in the visual mode nor the phenomenon
or in this case, what should be
visualized (her dad). The reason is that
what the image presents is only a
setting and brown land symbolizing the
place of the encounter. And the other
way around, there are also cases in
which the main mode is the visual one
and the written mode only accompanies
the image (Scene 28). Here Alice says:
“So I look out of the window, though
there is nothing to see” and behind the
text there is the frame of a window and
a landscape within it (the resource of
framing will be analyzed in the next
section as a key element of images’
composition). It is a mental-perceptive
process without any experiencer in the
visual mode; therefore, there are no
vectors either, only the phenomenon,
the outer setting:
3. The viewer as interpreter
and the images’ disengaging
composition
This research has already discussed
the total lack of active agents present in
the visual mode in Inanimate Alice.
The paper has argued that this lack
leads to a close inter-relation of the
images with the observer in the first
episode. Because of these lack agent,
there is also no gaze resource used,
which diminishes the level of empathy.
It becomes then very difficult to
determine the degree of social distance
existing between the protagonist of the
novel and the viewer. In general,
frames sizes are medium-shots or longshots, a fact that does not facilitate an
intimate distance with the events
narrated and their participants. Apart
from this, the speech acts that
predominate are declarative sentences,
fitting with the overall feeling of
73
disengagement enhanced by the
images, as declarative sentences do not
require the hearer (viewer of the novel)
to produce any response or to feel the
need to actively engage in the story.
Regarding the interrelation of the
components of images, as shown
above, the vast majority of the images
contain some kind of framing pictorial
device for the purpose of achieving a
balance of the former unequal elements
that make it. The most common semiotic resources for dividing the elements
of the compositions are the frame-lines.
They are present not only to separate
the object that is being discussed from
the place-setting, but also to separate
the two from the written mode.
Other semiotic resources for visual
disconnections are white lines (or
empty spaces) to separate the text-space
from the image-space, although they
still maintain the color synchrony, as in
Scene 18:
74
In some other cases, there are no
defined boundaries disconnecting the
image form the text and colors work as
Some other framing resources are a
bit more complex. This is the case of
iconic representations of objects which
work as frames themselves because
they carry within them the written part.
Scene 19 is a good example. Here,
Alice’s player (an iconic representation) is the frame for the textual
mode:
a resource to distinguish them, as there
are white letters over a dark background. We can see this in Scene 26:
75
It is also interesting to analyze the
amount of salient elements that can be
found on the screens. As this is a very
subjective kind of perception, each
viewer will focus or perceive first one
element over the rest, but because the
main audiences are basically young
children, it will be slightly easier to
determine what features will be more
prominent. To start with, the dark color
that dominates the episode is some-
times broken by images in colorful
tones. Thus, the contrast of color works
here as a cognitive-perceptual semiotic
resource to provide saliency to some
elements at the expense of the less
visible ones. In episode 1, it is the
protagonist’s player that calls the
viewer’s attention (especially if it is
located over a white setting) as it is
colored in bright pink:
Another cognitive-perceptual resource used for saliency is overlapping
elements in the images. Actually, the
written mode is clearly given preference over the visual mode throughout
the episode. And another evidence of
this is that whenever there is a text on
the screen it is always placed
overlapping the image so the viewers
are forced to read before they perceive
the images (see all the photographs
above for a graphical illustration of this
point). Other type of cognitiveperceptual resources can be what Frank
Nack calls “narranotations”, which are:
“annotation[s] to the image[s]” (Nack
slide 68). This visual aid to the main
image “provide[s] information about
how an expression can be used as an
element within a story.” (Nack slide
68) They are used in Inanimate Alice as
overlapping images which serve the
purpose of providing extra information
while they attract the observer’s
attention. They are especially used to
give information about city spaces and
geographical locations (which also
connects to the iconic and analytical
value of the image). The image below
contains a narranotation: a geographical
representation of the location of the
setting of the story. It provides extra
information which is actually present in
the text but still helps very much to
understand the main image (the
overlapped one).
76
Although it is true that there are no
human figures as such, the novel does
contain drawings of a human figure: the
character of Brad. Brad’s role in the
stories is of great importance for the
protagonist since he seems to be an
extension of her own being –sometimes
even mind– advising her to do what an
adult or her own conscience would
recommend at difficult moments. He
can be regarded as an almost-human
extension of Alice’s physical and
mental being; in McLuhan’s words:
“our human senses of which all media
are extensions are also fixed on our
personal energies” (McLuhan 9). When
he appears on the screen he catches the
participant’s attention because he is the
only human-like figure present in the
whole
episode.
It
relates
to
psychological resources for perceiving
first human images and faces rather
than inanimate elements. In the
following photo the participant-reader
can see Brad and s/he notices that he
can be perceived first and from there
the reader-participant moves his/her
focus of attention to the white letters.
This tonal resource is indirectly making
the viewer pay more attention to this
character and to see it as a main link
between all the episodes of the series.
The white letters are thus an
overlapping element because they
establish a tonal contrast with the
darker setting:
The setting of traditional novels is
commonly established by the use of
certain adjectives, rhetorical devices,
etc. When it comes to analyzing
multimodal literature, the question of
the setting becomes even more relevant. In the specific case of Inanimate
Alice, there is a regular nightmare-like
atmosphere with numerous dark
settings, which in a way facilitate the
viewer’s focusing on the brighter
(white) written mode. This “form of
structuring events in the guise of a
dream or dream-like vision” (Bakhtin
154) is very used in multimodal digital
domains thanks to its potential for
conveying many sensorial modes in a
single (literary) work. In terms of
pedagogical material, this abundance of
dark images and the background effect
of tension throughout the whole game
may result in a less engaging
experience for some young participants.
4. An applied overview
of the affordances of this
novel-game for education
Inanimate Alice is widely used in
many countries in primary and
secondary education as a pedagogical
tool to teach e-literacy (also called
digital literacy). This new discipline
has given rise to a renewed interest in
the special needs of young children and
their learning techniques. Approaching
any subject in a more interactive and
engaging way is always a key method
in teaching at any level, but it is
especially important when dealing with
children. Besides, the almost daily use
77
of new technologies that people have
nowadays is triggering a response in
the educational systems, which have
acknowledged the relevance of
e-literacy. E-literacy has therefore,
become a main element in bridging the
gaps between members of different
cultures (for instance the use of social
networks as culture-bridging elements)
and in getting people who are at a great
distance in touch. But the scope of the
use of e-literacy at classrooms goes
much further than its use as material for
cross-cultural exchanges; it is also
aimed at providing information on how
to work with digital technologies.
Discovering new software programs
and preparing future specialists in the
field of the latest technological devices
are some of the goals of teaching
e-literacy from an early age.
In order to develop a complete
e-literacy program, certain knowledge
of multimodal semiotics should
undeniably be included in the curricula.
Any textual artifact that combines
images and written text is a piece of
multimodal literature (among many
other combinations of media), the great
innovation introduced by the Internet
are the facilities it brings in engaging
the reader into its message. In this
sense, the hypermedia novel Inanimate
Alice should exploit more in depth the
quality of engaging the reader-agent
and demand more active input from the
viewer. Presenting more human-like
figures and depicting the speaking
agent of the written mode may as well
improve the interactive load and
engaging side of the novel.
An inclusion of the activities within
the episodes, for instance, would result
in a deeper development of the
78
electronic skills of the child because
they would appear in context: that of
the novel. This is closely related to the
input-process-outcome model described
by Garris, Ahlers and Driskell (2002).
In this model, the first step in approaching the pedagogic material is the
introduction of both the instructions
and the novel-game characteristics’ at
the same time in order to increase the
appealing qualities for the user.
Another example of the deficiencies
that I find in Inanimate Alice as a
pedagogical tool is the lack of human
figures in the story. Some authors (e.g.
Fitch) have highlighted the positive
aspects of an online education, where
students feel free to express themselves
and to communicate with their peers.
However, one of the aspects lacking in
online environments is the absence, for
example, of eye contact, present in
face-to-face communication (Fitch
438). The lack of the physical figure of
a professor-guide can be extended to
the perceptible lack of human faces in
this digital novel with whom the viewer
may identify. Again, this absence is an
unexploited device for viewerengagement, resulting in a loss of
connection between the young audience
and the main protagonist of the story.
Another weak point is the fact that
the
hyper-narrative
experiences
presented in this novel are significantly
simple and maintain a conservative
pattern. Viewers notice this when the
story moves on from one screen to
another without any chance to avoid a
linear path of storytelling. As a result,
the reader follows the traditional
narratological Aristotelian plot shape,
disregarding many of the possibilities
of forking paths that more ambitious
hypertext structures might offer. The
use of forking paths structures (i.e.
more complex hypertexts) aimed at
education has a number of advantages.
Some of the benefits of hyertextual
patterns relate to the availability of
multimodal material and the rise of the
learners’ self-awareness of their own
reading and processing skills when
reading a piece of literature (for a more
extensive study of the aims and
reception of hypertexts and hypermedia
at education, see López-Varela, 2007).
This study has also proved the
capacity for active engagement very
limited in the series. The hybrid nature
of Inanimate Alice as novel-game
should imply a deeper immersion in the
story, but, as shown, the input required
is noticeably low, and the narrative
does not move very far from the
traditional linear paths of storytelling.
Moreover, studies (Rieber, Smith, and
Noah, 1998) have shown the benefits of
using PC games for educational
purposes as they immerse users in
virtual and simulated worlds where
they may become avatars and exploit
their creative skills. However, in this
novel the actual input required from the
participant does not make the story
modify its end. This input consists on
the little integrated games (such as the
one in the first episode where the user
has to take a photo of some flowers so
Alice sends them to her father) as an
instance of participant action. But as
seen, the rest of the performative
actions required in the story simply
consist on clicking on arrows that mark
the path to read.
5. Conclusion
Finally, this research paper has
aimed at providing a technical sociosemiotic approach to one of the pioneer
digital tools employed in education
worldwide, the hybrid novel-game
Inanimate Alice. I have shown how the
story, used to teach digital literacy,
maintains a considerably conservative
style at the level of participant engagement. In the examples shown, the poor
connection between the information
conveyed in the written mode and the
one in the visual mode could be seen
resulting in impoverished empathic
engagements with the story. The fact
that the only possible perspective (the
protagonist’s) is even absent from the
story, and the lack of hypertextual
resources that would encourage further
interaction with the story may, thus be
considered as narratological and technical elements that should be corrected in
future versions of the series.
WORKS CITED
Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on
Ergodic Literature. Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1997. Print.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination:
Four Essays. Trans. C. Emerson and M.
Holquist; ed. M. Holquist. Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press, 1981 [1935]. Print.
Bolter, Jay David and Grusin, Richard. Remediation:
Understanding
New
Media.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999. Print.
Borràs Castanyer, Laura. “Digital Literatur and
Theoretical Approaches.” Dichtung Digital.
Ed. Publicacions del grup Hermeneia a l’
entorn dels estudis literaris i les tecnologies
digitals, 2004. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.dichtungdigital.org/2004/3/Casta
nyer/index.htm>.
Bouchardon, Serge and López-Varela, Asunción.
“Making Sense of the Digital as Embodied
Experience.”
CLCWeb:
Comparative
Literature and Culture, 13.3 (2011): 1-8. Web.
79
5 Nov. 2012. <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/
clcweb/ vol13/iss3/>.
Cayley, John. “Bass Resonance.” Electronic Book
Review. 11 May 2005.
Eco, Umberto. Semiotics and the Philosophy of
Language. London: The Macmillan Press
LTD, 1984. Print.
Fitch, Nancy. “History after the web: Teaching
with Hypermedia.” The History Teacher, 30.4
(1997): 427-441. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/494138>.
Flores, Leonardo. “Digital Textuality and its
Behaviors” On Intermedial Aesthetics and
World Literatures. Guest Editor Asunción
López-Varela. Journal of Comparative
Literature and Aesthetics, 36 (2013): 123-139
Garris, Rosemary, Ahlers, Robert and Driskell,
James E. “Games, motivation, and learning: A
research and practice model.” Simulation &
Gaming, 33.4 (2002): 441-467.
Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Machines.
Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press,
2002. Print.
López-Varela Azcárate, Asunción. “Didactic
patterns for electronic materials in the teaching
of interculturalism through literature: the
experience of the research group LEETHi.”
ReCALL, 19.2 (2007): 121-136.
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media.
MIT press, 2002. Print.
McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium is the
Message”. Understanding Media: The
Extensions of Man. New York: Signet, 1964:
23-35, 63-7. Web. 5 Dec. 2012.
Nack, Frank. Semiotics in Media. ISLA-UvA, n.d.
Web. 21 Dec. 2012. <ssms10.project. cwi. nl/
presentations/nack/SSMS-Nack.pdf>.
Pullinger, Kate and Joseph, Chris. Flight Paths: A
Networked Novel. Web. 3 Nov. 2012.
<www.flightpaths.net>.
Pullinger, Kate and Joseph, Chris. Inanimate
Alice. Web. 3 Nov. 2012. <http://www.
inanimatealice.com/>.
Pullinger, K., Joseph, C. and Schemat, S. The
Breathing Wall. Web. 3 Nov. 2012. <www.
thebreathingwall.com>.
Rieber, L. P., Smith, L., and Noah, D. “The value
of serious play.” Educational Technology, 38.6
(1998): 29-37.
WORKS CONSULTED
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Tr. Annette Lavers.
London: J. Cape, 1972 [1957]. Print.
80
Van Leeuwen, Theo. Introducing Social Semiotics.
London: Routledge, 2005. Print.
Short bio
Ana ABRIL HERNÁNDEZ <https://
www.ucm.es/siim/ana-abril-hernandez> holds
a Degree in English Studies from Complutense
University of Madrid, Spain. She works in
the English Literature Department of her
university as a collaborator. Ana is also
Associate Editor of JACLR: Journal of
Artistic Creation and Literary Research
<https://www.ucm.es/siim/journal-of-artisticcreation-and-literary-research>. During her
academic years, she was awarded two
Scholarships of Excellency for her academic
results. She also collaborates with national
and international projects, such as the
Victorian Web or SIIM: Studies on
Intermediality and Intercultural Mediation.
Her research interests and her publications in
different journals include literature and
multimodal semiotics as cross-cultural
mediators.
FROM SELF-AWARENESS
TO CULTURAL AWARENESS
Fabiola POPA*
Abstract: To be culturally aware is, undoubtedly, a prerequisite for professional
and personal success in the globalized world we live in. If our students are to
develop into competent professionals, able to grasp the complexity of any
communication act, then they need more than the technical and the language skills
which they acquire during their studies. Cultural awareness has been on foreign
language teachers’ agenda for many years now. This article looks into how this skill
can be enhanced in the foreign language class, and, moreover, it argues that, before
being culturally aware (aware of other people’s cultural similarities and
differences), one needs to be self-aware (aware of one’s own patterns of thinking,
speaking and relating to the others, be they simply others or significant Others).
Keywords: globalized, difference, inability, communication, Others.
I. Self-Awareness and Alterity
The process1 of raising one’s own
cultural awareness should start from
taking a hard look at one’s family,
social, financial, and educational
context. The inability to understand the
others’ right to difference is just the tip
of the iceberg; its underlying causes are
the countless forces that have been
shaping one’s identity into being from
an early age. Awareness of others’
alterity comes very early in life. It is
only in the first stage of life that a
child, still a baby, is unable to make a
difference between his own body and
his mother’s. Once this stage is over,
one finds oneself alone and different
from whatever else is out there, and
negotiation skills become fundamental
1*
skills that one needs to acquire, to
internalize, and to refine constantly, if
one is to survive and live decently.
Of course, the family will have the
most important role in building the
child’s self-awareness and in providing
the yet unstructured identity with tools
for dealing with Otherness; many
psychology theories agree upon the fact
that the first three years of life are often
seen as fundamental for the way in
which the individual will see
himself/herself in relationship with the
world around. Later on, the playground
will teach the child the lesson of the
survival of the fittest, a lesson which
will be painful for those who happen to
be different, in one way or the other.
Physical, ethnic, financial, or any other
kind of visible differences will be
pointed at from this early stage; bullies
will thus try to solve their own personal
Politehnica University of Bucharest
82
Fabiola POPA
issues, by resorting precisely to an
emphasis of whatever/whoever does
not comply with the standards of
‘normality’.
The educational system and society
at large will complete the image that
the child turning into an adult has about
himself/herself and the others. By the
time s/he is eighteen, s/he will have a
well-established frame of thinking and
view upon the world. S/he will have
grown up surrounded by certain ways
of perceiving and doing things, and will
carry around a certain way of being
which will often prove as hard to
discard as genetic inheritance does.
II. Heading Towards
a Postmodernism of Trust
In the Western world, the last
decades have witnessed the rise of a
cultural paradigm focused on (self)awareness, a paradigm manifested at
multiple levels of the private and public
life. Countless books and personal
development courses deal with the
process of raising awareness as the
basic, fundamental step one needs to
take before actually changing something. Cultural studies have taken ‘an
ethical turn’, in which respect for
difference and openness to the Other
(in whatever form s/he may come), are
key elements of intellectual debates.
The concept of ‘political correctness’
has been promoted more and more at a
political and social level, in an attempt
to mitigate the effects of clashes whose
underlying cause is the rejection of
difference. Multiculturalism, pluriculturalism, and interculturalism are terms
which are extremely used in the media
and in the academia, and they all entail
the idea of interconnectivity, mutual
exchange, and negotiation. Social
events and artistic productions which
celebrate ethnic, racial, and other kinds
of diversities occupy our pastimes more
than ever before. Cultural acceptance
and integration seem to be on the
agenda of the Western contemporary
society, just to prove Samuel Huntington was wrong when he predicted that
after 1989 there will be: “great
divisions among humankind and the
dominating conflict will be cultural”
(Huntington 22). On the contrary, in the
face of it, Ihab Hassan’s hopeful vision
about the current shift of paradigm,
which he calls ‘the postmodernism of
trust’, seems to gain concrete ground:
“[…] we need to discover new relations
between selves and others, margins and
centers, fragments and wholes –
indeed, new relations between selves
and selves, margins and margins,
centers and centers – discover what I
call a new, pragmatic and planetary
civility” (Hassan 204). I read the term
‘civility’ precisely as openness and
acceptance, as curiosity towards a
different way of being and of doing
things. However, to shed one’s old,
life-long skin and to develop new
habits often turns to be a difficult
endeavor. In spite of the terrible
memory of the genocides which tainted
the last century, in spite of the terrible
feelings of guilt which still loom large
in the back of our minds, we still
haven’t learned the lesson of
acceptance; we still witness scenes of
terror and death on grounds of cultural
difference.
With respect to the issue of
alteration, Emanuel Levinas speaks
FROM SELF-AWARENESS TO CULTURAL AWARENESS
about the “shock of the encounter of
the same with the other” (Levinas 42),
a theory presented in his book Totality
and Infinity: An essay on Exteriority.
This shock comes in as a result of the
ego’s tendency to reduce all otherness
to itself, and the confusion it faces the
moment when this is no longer
possible. Meeting the Other proves to
be difficult because one cannot make
sense of it with the set of mental
instruments available in one’s inner
world. The ethical stance that Levinas
advocates entails the acknowledgement
of and the respect for the Other’s
irreducibility to oneself: “The strangeness of the Other, his irreducibility to
the I, to my thoughts and possessions,
is precisely accomplished as a calling
into question of my spontaneity, as
ethics” (Levinas 42). I read the phrase:
“calling into question of my
spontaneity” as an instance of becoming self-aware, the moment when I
become aware of the fact that I am not
alone in the world, and that the Other is
not me, and s/he will probably never
be; therefore I should try to find a way
to cope with this incongruity and make
the best of our encounter.
III. Teaching Cultural
Awareness –
An Interdisciplinary Approach
Such
problematic
encounters
between I and the Other, between
people and peoples, between centers
and margins, are more and more
frequent, given the major and rapid
political, social, and technological
changes the world has underwent over
83
the last decades. The open markets, the
increased social mobility, and the
overall blurring of traditional borders
have made it obvious that new rules of
co-habitation need to come in force, in
order to accommodate the numberless
cultural spaces which are obliged to
share one and the same geophysical
space. To be culturally aware is,
undoubtedly, a prerequisite for professional and personal success in the
globalized world we live in. This is
because, as Altay puts it: “Cultural
awareness increases a person’s intentional and purposive decision making
ability by accounting for the many
ways that culture influences different
perceptions of the same situation”
(Altay 171-172). To put it bluntly and
simplistically, to be culturally aware is
to be aware of the existence of other
cultures. S/he who is aware of the
Otherness of others in general (be they
strangers, foreigners, or intimates)
stands a greater chance of being aware
of other cultures as well.
But Otherness is perceived in
relationship with oneself, therefore
awareness of others should start with
awareness of oneself, awareness of
one’s attitude, frame of thinking, core
values, and prejudices. Only after one
has focused on oneself, can s/he
decenter, namely leave one’s position
as the Center of the world, take one
step back and look at things and people
from a more detached, objective
perspective. Hence, the Ancient Greek
aphorism ‘know thyself” comes in as a
powerful slogan to be promoted by
teachers of foreign languages among
their students:
If language learners are to communicate
at a personal level with individuals from
84
Fabiola POPA
other cultural backgrounds, they will
need not only to understand the cultural
influences at work in the behavior of
others, but also to recognize the
profound influence patterns of their own
culture exert over their thoughts, their
activities, and their forms of linguistic
expression(Cakir 156).
Thus, the teacher’s mission becomes
as difficult as a psychologist’s, as they
both have to proceed to an exercise of
maieutics in order to bring to the
surface the knowledge hidden within
the students’ mind.
The Council of Europe has put forth
the book Developing the Cultural
Dimension in Language Teaching;
according to it, the components of
intercultural competence are knowledge
(savoirs), skills (savoir comprendre),
and attitudes (savoir etre); the last one
is of great interest to us. Savoir etre is
defined as: “curiosity and openness,
readiness to suspend disbelief about
other cultures and belief about one’s
own …willingness to relativise one’s
own values, beliefs and behaviors”
(Bryam 12). Therefore, apart from
signaling to the students the fact that
the Others may be doing things
differently, the foreign language
teacher should also strive to teach them
how to deal with, accept, and benefit
from this difference. At this point, the
concept of “vantage point” comes in as
a useful term to be taken into consideration. According to Bonder et al.:
vantage refers to the fact that any
observing mind has a specific point of
view, and that point of view has
physical, psychological, and cultural
dimensions that restrict how much can be
observed at any moment. Vantage is a
concept infrequently talked about, but
always present and relevant (Bonder et
al. 87).
It is the vantage point that nurtures
ignorance, rejection, and, in its most
terrible forms, hate. Becoming aware of
the existence of one’s vantage point is
the first step one takes towards the
process of decentering; hopefully,
curiosity, openness, and finally
acceptance of Otherness will come
afterwards.
Savoir etre is perhaps the most
difficult skill to enhance since it also
entails feelings and emotions, not only
reason and knowledge; it is about being
(in a certain way), not only about
having (certain knowledge); it entails a
certain kind of emotional and social
intelligence whose mechanisms are
rather slippery and difficult to grasp.
Therefore, it is not necessarily true that
positive feelings and emotions will
come with the knowledge and the
awareness that the Others are different
and they have the right to be so. While
keeping in mind this sad aspect,
teachers of foreign languages can still
strive to enhance savoir etre by the
means they have: at the didactic level,
by those tasks and activities meant to
promote awareness and self-awareness
(role-plays, discussions about critical
incidents caused by cultural differrences etc., generally the kind of
activities that test and teach the ability
to compare, interpret, and deal successfully with various events), and at a
more personal level, by using the
power of example and constantly
having an open attitude towards the
idea of Otherness.
As I was pointing out earlier, the
teachers’ role clearly goes beyond that
85
FROM SELF-AWARENESS TO CULTURAL AWARENESS
of a mere possessor of knowledge
about one culture or another, especially
when it comes to the sensitive issue of
raising awareness of and fostering
respect for difference. Therefore, it is
clear that an interdisciplinary approach
to this matter would suit better the
purposes of the teaching process.
Elements from the domain of acting
have already been in use for quite some
time now and drama exercises are
believed to be an important trigger of
awareness. Another domain of interest
may be the domain of personal
development, which is so fashionable
nowadays. Neuro-Linguistic Programming may be one such communication theory whose principles could be
adapted to the purpose of raising
awareness of one’s own perception of
the world. Some of its famous
principles worth taken in consideration
are: ‘the map is not the territory’ (that
is, we each have a perceptual map
which we constantly need to adapt to
the others’ maps and to the ‘real’
world, if we are to live harmoniously);
‘matching and mirroring’ (people who
are in good rapport tend to copy each
other’s body language; one can use this
in order to teach cues about personal
space, proxemics etc, and to draw
attention on how different cultures
have different approaches to these);
‘pacing and leading’ (adjusting one’s
frame of thinking and behavior in order
to meet the other person halfway and
bridge the personal and the cultural
gap).
Cultural awareness seems to be an
important step towards the mitigation
of the problems raised by the issue of
difference and a fundamental way of
enhancing acceptance among people
and peoples. It remains to be seen
whether the efforts which are made
worldwide will finally pay off and
result in a better world in which race,
religion,
and
culturally-induced
behavior will no longer give rise to
disputes. Teachers of foreign languages
need to play their small, but significant
part in this global endeavor, in the hope
of a more harmonious future.
WORKS CITED
Altay, İsmail Fırat. "Developing Cultural
Awareness." Journal of Language and
Linguistic Studies 1.2 (2005): 170-82. Print.
Bonder, B., L. Martin & A. Miracle. Culture in
Clinical Care. Thorofare, NJ: Slack
Incorporated, 2001. Print.
Byram, M., B. Gribkova & H. Starkey. Developing
the Intercultural Dimension in Language
Teaching: A Practical Introduction for
Teachers. The Council of Europe, 2002. Print.
Cakir, Ismail. “Developing Cultural Awareness in
Foreign Language Teaching”. Turkish Online
Journal of Distance Education [TOJDE] 1.3
(2006):154-161. Print.
Hassan, Ihab. "Beyond Postmodernism: Toward
and Aesthetic of Trust." Beyond Postmodernism: Reassessments in Literary Theory
and Culture. Ed. Stierstorfer, Klaus. Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2003. Print.
Huntington, Samuel. “The Clash of Civilizations”.
Foreign Affairs. 72.3 (1993): 22-49. Print.
Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An
Essay on Exteriority. 1969. Trans. Lingis,
Alphonso. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1974.
Print.
Short bio
Fabiola POPA holds a Ph.D. in Philology
and she teaches English for Professional
Communication at Politechnica University of
Bucharest.
2
Fabiola POPA
UNIVERSALS IN THE SYNTAX OF CARDINAL –
NOUN CONSTRUCTIONS*
Mihaela TǍNASE-DOGARU**
Abstract: The present paper analyzes cardinal numerals in a number of unrelated
languages, i.e. Semitic, Bantu, Formosan, Romance, Slavic with a view to showing
that there is crosslinguistic variation between the syntactic behavior of lower
numerals and the syntactic behavior of higher numerals. In Romanian, lower
numerals are those with values between 1 and 19, while higher numerals are those
with values from 19 onwards. In this respect, the paper can be considered a revival
of Corbett’s universals (1978) and a refutation of uniform treatments of cardinals.
The paper shows that lower and higher numerals cross-linguistically are best
analyzed in terms of different syntactic structures. The syntactic structure for lower
numerals is that of specifier-head while the syntactic structure for higher numerals
is that of head-complement. The arguments in favor of this analysis come from the
domains of case-assignment. In this respect, ‘de’- ‘of’ with higher cardinals in
Romanian is seen as a Genitive case-assigner while morpho-syntactic plurality is
present on the quantified noun.
Key-words: cardinals, linguistic universals, English, Romance, Slavic, Bantu,
Hebrew.
0. Introduction
The paper1 sets out to analyze
syntactic differences between lower
cardinals in Romanian, i.e. those
cardinals with numerical values
between 1 and 19 and higher cardinals
in Romanian, i.e. those cardinals with
numerical values from 19 onwards.
A second major aim of the paper is
to show that the prepositional construction with cardinals in Romanian is a
type of prepositional-genitive construc-
tion. In this respect, the paper is a
revival of Corbett (1978) and his
‘universals’.
1. Lower vs. Higher Cardinals
Across (Unrelated) Languages
An2 observation that holds across
many languages is that there are
syntactic differences between lower
and higher cardinals (see Corbett 1978,
Franks 1994, Hurford 2003, Zweig
2006, Danon 2011 a.o.).
1*
2
This work was supported by the strategic grant POSDRU/89/1.5/S/62259,
Project “Applied
social, human and political sciences. Postdoctoral training and postdoctoral fellowships in social,
human and political sciences” cofinanced by the European Social Fund within the Sectorial
Operational Program Human Resources Development 2007-2013.
1**
University of Bucharest
88
While lower cardinals behave
‘adjectivally’, higher cardinals seem to
behave ‘nominally’, which entails
different syntactic structures for lower
and higher cardinals.
Corbett (1978) proposes two universals accounting for the crosslinguistic
behavior of cardinals:
♦ simple cardinal numerals fall
between adjectives and nouns
♦ if they vary in behavior it is the
higher which will be more nounlike (1978:368)
Though there have been recent
challenges to the idea that the syntax of
cardinals is a matter of degrees of
nouniness (see, for example, von
Mengden 2010), I intend to argue that
Corbett’s universals still stand.
In what follows we will take a
cursory look at data from various
unrelated languages, which will enable
us to see Corbett’s universals at work.
1.1. In Slavic languages, cardinals
above ‘five’ assign plural genitive case
to the nominals they quantify (see
Franks 2004, Bošković 2005), while
the cardinal ‘one’ assigns accusative
and paucal cardinals assign genitive
singular:
(1) a. pjat’ mašin pod” exalo k
vokzalu (Russian)
five cars.gen drove-up.nsg
to station.
‘Five cars drove up to the
train station’
b. Deset žena je kupilo ovu
haljinu. (Serbo-Croatian)
ten women-Gen aux.3sg
bought this dress.
‘Ten women bought this
dress’
c. Těch pět hezkych dívek
upeklo dort. (Czech)
Mihaela TĂNASE-DOGARU
these-Gen five beautiful.Gen
girls.Gen baked cake
‘These five beautiful girls
baked a cake’.
d. Tych pięć kobiet poszło do
domu. (Polish)
these.Gen five women.Gen
went to home
‘These five women went
home’
However, in oblique case positions,
the cardinal shows case agreement with
the quantified noun and, as such, it
behaves as an adjective:
(2) a. Ivan vladeet odnoj fabrikoj.
(Russian, Franks 1994)
Ivan
owns
one-Inst.sg
factory-Inst.sg
‘Ivan owns one factory’
b. Ivan vladeet tremja fabrickami.
Ivan owns three-Inst factories-Inst.pl
‘Ivan owns three factories’
c. Ivan vladeet pjat’ju fabrikami.
Ivan owns five-Inst factories-Inst.pl
‘Ivan owns five factories’.
What research on Slavic languages
has generally emphasized is the
difference between the adjectival status
of cardinals that show case-agreement
with the quantified noun (3b) and the
nominal status of the cardinals that,
irrespective of their case feature, assign
genitive case on the quantified noun
(3a): (see Franks 1994, Bošković 2005,
Rutkowski & Maliszewska 2007)
(3) a. čitat pjat’ interesny knig
(Russian, Franks 1994)
UNIVERSALS IN THE SYNTAX OF CARDINAL – NOUN CONSTRUCTIONS …
to read five.Acc interestingGen.pl books-Gen.pl
b. vladet’ pjat’ju starymi fabrickami
to own five-Inst old-Inst.pl
factories-Inst.pl
1.2. In Modern Hebrew, cardinals up
to 19 agree in gender with the head
noun (4b), but higher cardinals do not
(4a):
(4) a. šlošim yeladim/yeladot
thirty boys/girls
‘thirty boys/girls
b. šloša yeladim / *yeladot
three-masc boys/*girls
‘three boys’
These data are also interesting for
the relation between cardinals and
genitive case. In Modern Hebrew,
cardinals can occur either in a free form
or a bound one, the latter giving rise to
the ‘construct state’ (5b), which is also
used to express genitive relations in
MH (5c) (see Danon 1996, 1998,
2011):
(5) a. šlošà (sfarim)
three(free) books
‘three books’
b. šlòšet *(ha-sfarim)
three (bound) the-books
‘the three books’
c. minharà/minhèret *(ha-zman)
tunnel(free) / tunnel(bound)
the-time
‘tunnel / the time tunnel’
(Danon 2011:3, examples 1-2)
Therefore, Modern Hebrew lower
cardinals behave adjectivally while
higher cardinals behave nominally.
89
1.3. In many Bantu languages, cardinals lower than 5 or 10 agree with the
noun they modify, featuring adjectival
or enumerative agreement prefixes, as
in example (5) from Luganda. Higher
cardinals do not agree, instead featuring
their own nominal class prefixes (6)
(see Zweig 2006):
(5) a.
emi-dumu e-biri
mi-jug AGRmi-two
‘two jugs’
(6) b.
emi-dumu mu-sanvu
mi-jug mu-seven
‘seven jugs’
1.4. In Formosan languages (see Li
2006) numerals can function as nouns
when they occur head-initial in the
nominal construction (7). On the other
hand, when numerals occur in predicate
position, they function as verbs (7b):
(7) a. tata wa furaz p<in>aŋqa
ƟiƟu, antu ∫i-sa-wazaqan
one LIG month PRF-rest he
not PST-go-lake
‘He rested for a month,
without going to the lake’
b. ya s<m>uqum pun-tuza-an
min-tata wa qali.
If AF-check pun-eel-LF INCone LIG day
‘When they went checking
the pipes to catch eels, it
took a whole day’.
Following Heine (1997), Li (2006)
formulates the generalization that
higher numerals that tend to act as
nouns are less likely to behave as verbs.
1.5. In Romanian, cardinals above
‘twenty’ select a de-complement as in
90
(8a), while lower cardinals are seen as
‘adjectival’ (see GALR 2005), in the
sense that morphosyntactic agreement
in gender is visible on the cardinal (8b);
even though cardinals higher than ‘two’
and lower than ‘twenty’ do not display
morphosyntactic agreement, they can
still be seen as directly merged in the
specifier of NP:
(8) a. douăzeci de studenţi
twenty of students
‘twenty students’
b. două studente / doi studenţi
two.fem students.fem /
two.masc students.masc
‘two female students / two
male students’
c. trei studente
three students.
Lower cardinals in Romanian can
profitably be analyzed as a type of
invariable adjectives; moreover, Romanian is the only Romance language
making a gender distinction with the
cardinal for 3 in the forms for ‘all
three’ (see Price 1992:450)
(9) a. toate trele
all.fem three.fem
‘all three’
b. tustrele/tustrei
all-three.fem / all-three.masc
‘all three’
c. câteşitrele / câteşitrei
each-three.fem / each-three.
masc
‘the three of them’
Summing up, across unrelated
languages, cardinals display ‘dual’
behavior; they are either adjectival (and
can be profitably analyzed as specifiers
of the noun phrase) or nominal (and
engaging in a head-complement
relation with the noun phrase).
The next section will take a look at
available analyses of Romanian lower
and higher cardinals, with the aim of
determining the most economical way
of addressing the issue of their
syntactic structures.
2. Previous Analyses
of the Lower/Adjectival
and Higher/Nominal Cardinals
in Romanian
2.1. Romanian grammars treat the
construction in (10a) as [[Num(eral) +
de] NP] sequences, where the [Num +
de] is a ‘functional unit’ behaving as a
determiner of the NP (GALR 2005:
296).
The agreement facts in (10a,b) are
interpreted as indicating that NP is the
head 1 of the [[Num(eral) + de] NP],
while [Num + de] is a
determiner/adjunct:
(10) a. douăzeci şi doi de elevi
twenty and two.masc of
pupils.masc
‘twenty-two pupils’
b. douăzeci şi două de eleve
twenty and two.fem of
pupils.fem
‘twenty-two pupils’
3
31
This is still a problem my analysis
offers no (clear) answer to. A possible
explanation accounting for the agreement
facts is the existence of different derivational
steps (Larisa Avram p.c.). An alternative
would be to think of the second conjunct of
the complex cardinal şi două ‘and two.fem’
as grafted (see van Riemsdijk 2001, 2006)
onto the cardinal-noun sequence douăzeci de
studente ‘twenty of students’. Further
research will hopefully clarify this issue.
Cardinals below ‘twenty’ are also
treated as adjuncts. The lack of the
preposition de and the presence of
(gender) agreement between the cardinal and the noun are taken as an
indication of these cardinals behaving
as adjectives:
(11) a. doi studenţi
two-masc students-masc
b. două cărţi
two-fem books-fem
Therefore, in this analysis, the
[Num+de] sequence is taken to occupy
the specifier position of the cardinal;
there is no distinction between the
syntactic treatment of lower and higher
cardinals.
2.2. Stan (2010) is one of the first
researchers to make the distinction
between adjectival lower cardinals and
higher nominal cardinals in Romanian.
Stan (2010) suggests that this
distinction indicates that the selection
of the preposition de with higher
cardinals is a parametric property of
Romanian.
The cardinals in the series 1-19 have
adjectival status; case-agreement is
marked only for the cardinal unu, the
only one displaying case inflections:
(12) a. o fată, unei fete
a/one girl to a-Gen/Dat girl
For the other cardinals in the series,
the case is prepositional:
(13) a. mama a două fete, răspund
la două fete
‘mother of two girls’,‘I
answer to two girls’
91
Cardinals above 20 are clearly stated
to have nominal status; de is seen as a
grammaticalized preposition, a functionnal head. The quantified nominal
always has an inflectionally unmarked
case form (treated as an Accusative
form by the grammatical tradition),
which is taken to have an intensional
interpretation, indicating the referent
from the extension class quantified by
the cardinal.
To briefly conclude this section,
cardinals in Romanian can be safely
assumed to have either an adjectival or
nominal behavior.
The next section will tackle the
different syntactic structures for
nominal and adjectival cardinals in
Romanian.
3. Lower vs. Higher Cardinals
in Romanian – the Syntactic
Structure
In the current generative frameworks, researchers generally assume
one structure for higher, i.e. nominal
and lower, i.e. adjectival cardinals.
Cardinal + noun constructions are taken
to display a uniform structure, both
language-internally
and
crosslinguistically. Following the line of
investigation initiated by Danon
(2012), the present paper shows that
there are two types of syntactic
structures available for Romanian
cardinals. In this respect, Corbett’s
universals are treated as valid, despite
several attempts at refuting them.
Researchers assume that:
either a projection of the
cardinal is the specifier of an
XP in an extended projection of
92

the noun (see Corver & Zwarts
2006, Giusti 1997);
or the cardinal is a head that
takes as its complement an
extended projection of the noun
(see Borer 2005, Cardinaletti &
Giusti 1991, Giusti 1997, Ionin
& Matushansky 2006).
Building on previous work (see
Tănase-Dogaru 2011), the paper
proposes that Romanian cardinals
evince two different types of syntactic
structures.
The first type of structure is one in
which a projection of the numeral
occupies a specifier position, this being
the case of Romanian cardinals from 1
to 19 (14):
(14) zece cărţi
ten books
The second type of structure is one
in which the cardinal heads a recursive
DP structure, this being the case of
Romanian cardinals from 19 onwards
(15):
(15) douăzeci de cărţi
twenty of books
twenty books
The two types of numeral-noun
constructions become manifest both
cross-linguistically
and
languageinternally (see Danon 2009, 2011).
Irrelevant details aside, the (simplified) syntactic structure for (14) will
look like (16), while the structure of
(15) will be that in (17):
(16) [NP [CardP zece] cărţi]]
(17) [CardP douăzeci [PP de [NP
cărţi]]]
Danon (2011) suggests that the
choice between these two structures is
constrained by the presence of morphological number on the numeral. Data
from Romanian corroborate his
assumption; morphosyntactic plurality
on the numeral has an effect on the type
of syntactic structure (cf. Kayne 2005,
2010):
(18) a.
b.
c.
zece caiete
ten notebooks
treizeci de caiete
three-tens of notebooks
‘thirty notebooks’
zeci de caiete
tens of notebooks.
In (18b) the presence of plural
morphology on the multiplicative
cardinal forces, the use of a
prepositional structure, in contrast with
(18a), where the cardinal has no plural
morphology.
To conclude, the section has shown
that there is intralinguistic variation
between the specifier-head and the
head-complement constructions.
The next section will analyze the
relation between cardinal numerals in
Romanian and the genitive case.
3.2. Cardinals and Genitives
Perlmutter & Orešnik (1973) and
Corbett (1978) are the first to assume
that the underlying structures of cardinal-noun constructions and pseudopartitive constructions are similar.
Following their assumptions, I argue
that the structure of Romanian prepositional cardinal-noun constructions is
similar to the structure of pseudopartitive constructions and the de
surfacing in both structures is a
prepositional genitive marker 2.
Romanian disposes of an inflecttional genitive, while in other Romance
languages the genitive is prepositional,
marked by de ‘of’ (Grosu 1988,
Cornilescu 2004 a. o.). If the genitive
DP is a bare NP, the assigner is the
preposition de (19):
4
(19) acordarea de burse studenţilor
giving-the of scholarships
students-the-Gen (Cornilescu
2004)
‘the giving of scholarships to
the students’.
If we interpret Case as abstract
case, i.e. syntactic case, which
subsumes morphological case, the
function of the abstract case is to
license an argument of a predicate (see
Cornilescu 2010) then the role of the
genitive is to license an argument
within the noun phrase. Romanian
developed an inflectional Gen and the
prepositional Gen, based on the same
preposition DE as in all Romance,
became very limited and specialized
(see Cornilescu 2004 and TănaseDogaru 2011a,b: 241-251 for details).
In Old Romanian, partitive de was
used with any type of DP/NP, as in all
other Romance languages.
In
particular, partitive de was used with
personal pronouns, which are category
D (Cornilescu 2006):
42
Corbett (1978) accounts for the presence of the preposition of in a sack of
potatoes or hundreds of books in terms of a
‘genitive insertion rule’.
93
(20) a. Neceuria de [DP voi] păru din
capu nu-i va cădea 3.
none.Gen of you hair-the
from head-the not-Cl will fall
‘Nothing at all will befall
any of you’
b. Unu de [DP noi] trebe să
merem în târg.
one of us must to go into
town
‘One of us must go to town’.
5
In Modern Romanian, de is no
longer partitive but pseudopartitive;
this de is a realization of abstract
Genitive case (see Tănase-Dogaru
2009, 2010, 2011 a,b). The embedded
nominal in cardinal prepositional
constructions, i.e. head-complement
structures, needs case and the caseassigner in Romanian is de, which
assigns (abstract) genitive case.
In conclusion, the prepositional
construction with higher cardinals in
Romanian is a realization of abstract
genitive case.
4. Conclusions
The paper has shown that Romanian
evinces both a head-complement and
spec-head syntactic structures for
cardinal-noun
sequences.
Despite
current generative frameworks, which
assume a uniform syntax for both lower
and higher cardinals, the paper shows
that Corbett’s 1978 universals are still
universal. Lower cardinals are treated
53
Modern Romanian partitive prepositions are din and dintre, so the MR translation
of (27a) would be niciunuia dintre voi / none
of you.
94
as adjectival and are, therefore, generated in the specifier position of the
quantified nominal. Higher cardinals
are shown to behave nominally and to
be involved in a head-complement
relation with the quantified nominal.
The paper has also corroborated
Danon’s (2012) assumption, according
to which the main factor in determining
the type of syntax is presence of
number morphology on the cardinal in
conjunction with case-assignment.
WORKS CITEY
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of Quantification in Russian”. Agreement
Systems. Ed. C. Boeckxs. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2006. Print.
Cardinaletti, A. & G. Giusti. “Partitive NE and the
QP-Hypothesis. A Case Study”. Proceedings
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Trieste, Feb. 22-24 1991. Ed. E. Fava. Turin:
Rosenberg and Sellier, 1992. Print.
Corbett, G. “Universals in the Syntax of Cardinal
Numerals”. Lingua 46.4 (Dec. 1978): 355-368.
Print.
Cornilescu, A. “Romanian Genitives Revisited”.
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Cornilescu, A. “The Modal Quantificational
Nature of Nominal Peripheries”. Ms. University of Bucharest, 2010
Corver, N. and J. Zwarts. “Prepositional Numerals”. Lingua 116.4 (Dec. 2006):811-835.
Print.
Danon, G. “Grammatical Numner in NumeralNoun Constructions”. Paper presented at CGG
19, April 1-3, 2009.
Danon, G. “Two Structures for Numeral-Noun
Constructions”. Lingua 122.12 (Dec. 2012):
1282-1307. Print
Giusti, G. “The Categorial Status of Quantified
Nominals”. Linguistische Berichte 136 (1991):
438-452. Print.
Guţ-Romalo, Valeria, ed. Gramatica limbii
române. Vol. I-II. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Române, 2005. Print.
Hurford, J.R. “The Interaction Between Numerals
and Nouns”. Noun Phrase Structure in the
Languages of Europe. Ed. F. Plank. Vol. 20-7.
Berlin: Walter de Gruyster, 2003. Print.
Ionin, T. & O. Matushansky. “The Composition of
Complex Cardinals”. Journal of Semantics 23
(2006): 315-369. Print.
Franks, S. “Parametric Properties of Numeral
Phrases in Slavic”. Natural Language and
Linguistic Theory. 12.4 (1994):599-677. Print.
Franks, S. “The Slavic Languages” . The Oxford
Handbook of Comparative Syntax. Eds. G. &
R. Kayne. Cinque: OUP, 2003. Print.
Kayne, R. “A Note in the Syntax of Numerical
Bases”. Ms. NYU, 2005.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. “Adnominal Possession”.
Language Typology and Language Universals.
Eds. M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher & W. Raible. vol 2. 960-970. Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2001. 960-970. Print.
Li, P. J-K. (2006). “Numerals in Formosan
Languages”. Oceanic Linguistics 45.1 (2006):
133-152. Print.
Miechowicz-Mathiasen, K. “The Syntax of Polish
Cardinal Numerals”. Ms., Adam Mickiewicz
University, 2011.
Pană-Dindelegan, G. “Tipuri de gramaticalizare.
Pe marginea utilizărilor gramaticalizate ale
prepoziţiilor de şi la”. Limba româna.
Dinamica limbii, dinamica interpretării. Ed.
G. Pană-Dindelegan. Bucureşti: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2008. 227-239. Print.
Perlmutter, D M &J. Orešnik (1973). “LanguageParticular Rules and Explanation in Syntax”. A
Festschrift for Morris Halle. Eds. S.R.
Anderson & P. Kiparsky. New York: Holt
Rinehart, 1973. 419-459. Print.
Price, G. “Romance”. Indo-European Numerals.
Ed. J. Gvozdanovic. Berlin/New York:
Mouton de Gruyter, 1992. 447-496. Print.
Rutkowski, P. and H. Maliszewska. “On Prepositional Phrases Inside Numeral Expressions in
Polish”. Lingua 117 (2007):784-813. Print.
Stan, C. “On the Grammaticality Status of
Numerals in Romanian”. Revue Roumaine de
Linguistique. LV. 3 (2010):237-246. Print.
Tănase-Dogaru, M. “Pseudo-Partitives and (Silent)
Classifiers in Romanian”. Proceedings of
ConSOLE XV. Eds. S. Blaho, C. Constantinescu & E. Schoorlemmer. Bruselles, 2008.
295-320. Print.
Tănase-Dogaru, M. (2009). The Category of
Number. Bucharest: Bucharest University
Press, 2009. Print.
Tănase-Dogaru, M. (2011a). “Partitive ‘de’ and
Genitive ‘de’ in Romanian”. Proceedings of
the Cultural Texts and Contexts in the English
Speaking World Conference. Oradea, March
17-19 2010. Print.
Tănase-Dogaru, M. (2011b). “A Prepositional
‘Genitive of Quantification’ in Romanian”.
Conference on British and American Studies.
Braşov: Transilvania University Press, 2011.
241-251. Print.
van Riemsdijk, H. “A Far From Simple Matter:
Syntactic Reflexes of Syntax-Pragmatics
Misalignments”, Semantics, Pragmatics and
Discourse. Perspectives and Connections. A
Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer. Eds. I. Kenesei
& R.M. Harnish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins,
2001. 21-41. Print.
van Riemsdijk, H. “Grafts Follow from Merge”.
Phases of Interpretation. Ed. M. Frascarelli.
Phases of Interpretation. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter, 2006. 17-44. Print
von Mengden, F. Cardinal Numerals: Old English
From a Cross-Llinguistic Perspective. Berlin/
New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010. Print.
Zweig, E. “Nouns and Adjectives in Numeral
NPs”. Proceedings of NELS 35. University of
Connecticut Storrs, 2005. Print.
Short bio
*1998-1999 – M.A. Program “Applied
Linguistics”, Faculty of Foreign Languages,
University of Bucharest; title of M.A.
95
Dissertation Schema Activation and Metaphoricity in Advertising: Theoretical and
Pedagogical Perspectives
*2002-2007 – Ph.D. in Linguistics,
Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of
Bucharest. Ph.D. Thesis: The Category of
Number: Its Relevance for the Syntax and the
Semantic Typology of the Nominal Phrase;
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Alexandra Cornilescu
*June 18, 2007 – public defense of Ph.D.
Thesis; granting the title of doctor in
Linguistics (distinction summa cum laude)
*2010-present – Postdoctoral Research
Fellow, POSDRU/89/1.5/S/62259, Project
"Applied Social, Human and Political
Sciences. Postdoctoral Training and Postdoctoral fellowships in Social, Human and
Political Sciences"
*2000-2007 – Teaching Assistant,
English Department, Faculty of Foreign
Languages, University of Bucharest
*2007 – present – Lecturer, English
Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages,
University of Bucharest
2
TRANSCULTURALISM ON AN EVERYDAY BASIS
Slava TCHERPOKOVA*
Abstract: This paper presents a survey of the sources, mechanisms and instances of
“Transculturalism” in Foreign Language Teaching at the New Bulgarian University (NBU),
General Course of English (A2: CEFR). It looks into the impact of Web2.0 tools and
dilemmas (case studies) on learners of English while compiling a personal cultural
biography, claiming that it is likely to act as a source generating instances of
Transculturalism, along with improvement in the language performance of the learner. The
findings are based on a case study comprising a 20-hour pilot module incorporated in a
regular course of General English (Spring: 2012), developed so as to meet the requirement of
NBU for extensive application of ICT, along with promoting creativity and raising sensitivity
towards cultural issues.
Keywords: Transculturalism, Student-Centered Teaching, Web 2.0 tools, Creativity, Culture,
ELT, Dilemmas, FLT, Cultural Biography
Transculturalism
(Definitions and Implications)
Transculturalism1 has many faces:
Gounev (2007) defines it as an
“encounter of Multiculturalism with
Globalism’’, a mechanism generating
new forms, thus acknowledging hybrid
realities as a characteristic feature of
any culture. Giordano (2004) discriminates the personal choice of the
individual who arches over cultures and
national borders and allows for free
merge and transfusion of identities and
belonging, while Slimbach perceives it
as a quest
to define shared interests and common
values across cultural and national
borders in addressing global issues such
as personal prejudice, group violence,
environmental protection, and human
rights. ‘The ability to question
*
Centre for Foreign Languages, New
Bulgarian University, Bulgaria.
1
constantly the source of one’s cultural
assumptions and ethical judgments,
leading to the habit of seeing things
through the minds and hearts of others’
are believed to be the major skills that
one is to master in a world of intense
multicultural contacts, not last to
mention is foreign language proficiency
(Slimbach 206).
This brief review logically poses the
question of the relationship of the
Individual, FLT and Transculturalism
and the mechanisms at play in
acquiring new identity while studying a
foreign language.
Transculturalism
and the Individual
Todorov claims that “no man can
acquire a new identity unless he has
constructed a fully fledged one in
his Mother Culture (MC) and respecttively belonged to one culture first”
98
Slava TCHERPOKOVA
(100-105). On the contrary, Todorov
contends that “mastering one culture
benefits individual discovery and
inquisitiveness” (100-105) thus justifying the need to explore Mother Culture
against the Target Culture. Psychologists, like Wertsch (qtd. in Bhatia 304)
on the other hand, add a major insight
into the mechanisms that one applies in
constructing cultural identity, thus
linking closely verbal expression with
culture. Shweder (qtd. in Bhatia 304)
argues that cultural tools such as language, narrative and communication
shape human mental functioning and
account for ethnic divergences in mind,
self, and emotion – as codified by
social practices thus setting the agenda
for the dialogue of contacts.
Tools of Transculturalism
(Todorov’s concept)
Exploration of the personal narrative
is seen as an essential tool of constructing one’s cultural identity. It allows
one to identify with the collective
perception of the society and the
current state of the value system, which
impart meaning to events in one’s
personal history. At the same time
Todorov claims that human beings are
also characterized by their inborn drive
to diversity: they are willing to conquer
new territories and transform their own
culture. Moreover, being able to adapt,
they are likely to adopt a universal
stand to otherness, to differences,
without demeanishing the other
cultures / stereotypes which makes it
possible for one person to detach from
his own culture and to open to the
other. In some sources this process is
identified as taking a civilized stand to
culture. (cf. Brown, Todorov 105). “All
these multiple interactions transcend a
person’s life only to result in an
identity which is first and foremost an
expression of personal free choice”
(Todorov 92), thus setting the ground
for Transculturalism.
Framework for
Transculturalism in FLT
Todorov’s elaborate mechanism of
constructing one’s identity justifies the
application of personal narrative in
FLT since it is expected to generate
meaningful language input at level A2
(CEFR). Moreover, it operates with
culture elements that are both implicit
and explicit (e.g. the vocabulary of
value terms- a higher cultural cluster
[see Swartz value inventory] which
allows for further specialization of the
terms), thus promoting naturally
speaking in FL.
While constructing his/her own
personal narrative, the learner is required to produce descriptions and
definitions, classification and assessment which not only promote fluency in
FLT, but are believed to be essential
tools for conducting case studies/
dilemmas – the shortened version of the
tasks (Georgiev 107). If aided with an
appropriate support of IT tools of
expression, these two elements are
believed to yield highly individualized,
student-centered, holistic, emotionallyaffective, product-oriented (respectively creative) learning (Georgiev 107) [
I also claim of the target language]
through constructing a self-image and
validating one’s stand in a group. In
99
addition, they can enhance the development of speaking and writing skills
in FL.
Manipulation of cultural content in
FL classes is likely to generate a
working FLT framework for adapting
language materials and linking culture
and FLT along a new dimension of
Transculturalism, highlighting the
creative capacity of the learning
individual in creating cultural meaning
as pointed by Giordano and Gounev,
not necessarily linking the language to
any particular culture or swinging to its
own opposite: extracting culture from
its local roots by denying any link
between language and Culture as is the
case with English language as a Lingua
Franca.
The Case Study
To identify current teaching
practices in approaching cultural issues
in teaching FL, as well as to identify
the role of the teacher in the processes
of generating transcultural content, a
survey was carried among full time
language instructors (not only teachers
of English). This survey also highlighted areas that can be addressed by
IT tools and would benefit foreign
language acquisition. Survey Monkey
tool was used.
To test the proposed framework that
is to generate Transculralism in FLT
and to test the impact of the university
policy of strengthening the creativity
and the use of IT tools, while raising
students’ awareness of cultural issues
on FLT, a special module was
developed to be incorporated in a
regular course of general English based
on a textbook “New English File-Pre
Intermediate”(OUP). During the spring
term 2012/group 20/OOOK211 (course
signature) 15 students (7 males), aged
(19-28) from different specialties
(fashion, interior design, administration, graphic design, archeology)
took part in the experiment, trained in
using Moodle. No special benefits in
terms of marks were offered, thus
allowing room for free personal choice
in HW assignments and personal
involvement in the issues offered. This
was done so as to measure the impact
on the individual.
To test the validity of the findings,
the same module was implemented
with a group of adult learners following
the same course book, with the same
level of English A2 (CEFR), the only
difference being the lack of the element
of creating digital content/videos at
High Time Language Course (12
professionals aged 25-40) during the
same period (March-April, 2012).
Feedback, teaching data (Blackboard), writing tasks and reflections
were digitalized in pictures. Dvolver
movies are still available on Moodle,
the course. Part of the findings relevant
to the impact of value vocabulary on
learner’s fluency, and improvement of
speaking and writing skills, along with
some practical ideas of adapting texts
to case studies and their impact to
learning-teaching situation have been
reported at two seminars (NBU-May,
September 2012), and a conference
(Nish: 2012).
Module Content
The module comprises 2 elements:
language tasks and short movies
100
through user-friendly free programs
Dvolver, Bombay TV. The reading,
writing or speaking tasks were set on
exploring culture and stereotypes (a
framework provided by the textbook,
adaptation of culture specific activities
dealing with multicultural issues
[Johnson and Rinvolucri 21-57]
focused on manipulation of elements of
culture rather than description plus
“Alligator river story-Ethical dilemma”
– all discussed in the methodology of
case studies). These materials were to
provide room for reflection on value
issues, similarities and differences
between cultures. This element aimed
at constructing the narrative of the self
in relation to an intercultural development model where one progresses from
“ethnocentrism” to “ethno relativism”.
Cultural content was also explored
through a group movie made in class
and on-spot written and oral feedback
from students. In addition Moodle
virtual platform was used as a tool to
share digital content for Dvolver
movies (teachers and students both
uploaded movies).
FLT and Culture (Survey-NBU)
A survey on teaching culture in FL
classes has outlined areas of primary
concern in dealing with culture on a
daily basis. Nineteen respondents
provided data on the best practices and
FLT focus. The sample can be
considered representative since it
accounts for 43 % of full time language
instructors at the department. (All the
respondents with teaching experience
of over 10 years, 61 %- reaching 15
years.)
Slava TCHERPOKOVA
It is interesting to note that FLT
focuses on global citizenship issues
56%, and makes learners explore
ecological issues 64.75%, tolerance
64.7%, diversity (language and ethnic)
88.2%, mobility 41.2%. In terms of
contents, FLT focuses on core human
values 88.2% and similarities between
countries 70%. Only 52. 9% deal with
differences in language encoding.
Language instructors claim that they
make students explore meaning behind
rules and social practices 58%, while
icons and products get no attention.
Most popular activities are reported to
be discussions 100% and videos 61%.
Dialogues and role plays score the
lowest 20-21% which is strange since
all the flaws in communication are due
to breach of implicit cultural conventions or misunderstanding. Projects also
score low 21%.
The data highlight teacher’s impact
on FL learners by scaffolding the
experience on Universalist’s approach
with sporadic reference to global issues
primarily focusing on ecology, mobility
and equality, thus allowing for a wider
and more intense transfusion of
cultures. Interpretation of meaning
behind social practices and rules also
seems to possess potential for generating transcultural experiences, taking
into account the fact that there is a
wealth of implicit obsolete information
fossilized in the norms of each
community. The low percentage of
attention given to language encoding
suggests that English is taught as a
Lingua Franca rather than as a means of
encoding a message through a different
language code.
Findings indicate that there is a
trend for the description and critical
exploration of cultural issues not
limited only to TC but also to Culture
worldwide: the culture of neighbouring
and non- English speaking countries as
well. However, there is still room for
more practical manipulation of culture
constructs such as icons, products,
projects and dialogues- issues that can
be best addressed by IT tools.
Learners and Culture /
Transculturalism
Learners, on the other hand, seem to
be extremely fluent in operating with
images, icons, assumptions derived
from modern lifestyle and practices.
Pop culture in all its forms, from music
videos, movies, chat etiquette, social
networks practices, personal engagement with social issues, seem to be
shaping the Self of the modern learner
who is looking for a universal code to
embed his beliefs and messages, be
those in words or images, thus
undergoing the real process of Transculturalism on an everyday basis, as
informal discussions on favourite Youtube musical clips point out.
Instances of Transculturalism
in the Language Production
So the relationship between the
instructor in a FL class and the learner
is really yielding nowadays a
community where cultures dissolve and
bring about something like a goodoriented society where personal
messages and statements, along with
mother culture conventions, are to be
validated through the means of the
101
target language. Instances of such
transcultural occurrences are numerous
especially at the beginner levels where
learners resort to transfer of strategies
and models from mother culture while
completing tasks in a FL class. Most
prominent they become in role play
tasks in negotiating meaning strategies
employed by the learners or expressing
attitudes when dealing with disagreeing
or expressing criticism in dilemmas.
Appropriateness and register are other
areas that call for special attention.
(1) A: Good evening, my favourite! / B:
Hello honey! (Movie “Romance”)
(2) Role play: a customer at a shop in
Egypt wants to buy a relic (recorded D.
& St.)
A: How much is this?
B: 5000 dollars.
A: You must be kidding. That is too
much! Give me another price.
B: 5000 dollars. That is my final offer.
A: Bye. Nobody will buy that. That is
rubbish!
These short examples show the
inability of the learners to negotiate
actions, their tendency to directness and
rudeness by devaluing the worth of a
relic or inappropriateness of address.
Exposure to models through listening or examination of transcribed tasks
seemed to be disregarded by the
learners since no practical value of
different cultural conventions is
perceived or this could be due to a great
detachment from the situation.
Learners and Self- Made Movies
(Teaching Aspects)
The situation is different when you
have to comment on one’s own piece of
work and go through the process and
102
the relationship between expressing an
idea and the means through which you
can express it (as was the case with the
self-made short movie “A day in a life
of a prince”). The introduction of the
user-friendly
video
programme
(Bmovie-TV, dvolver movie maker)
exploring social situations extracts
from movies – fashion show, alien
encounter, talk between a mother and a
child-, aided by adding voice or
subtitles, allows the learner to create
and share products in a FL class, thus
dramatically changing the learning
situation.
With a very few resources one is
able to cover major linguistic areas,
such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling – use of present
perfect tense, phrases and register –,
while linking that with Mother Culture
stereotypes and personal narrative,
generating meaningful exchange of the
learner’s life stories, allowing for the
expression of some feelings and attitudes towards ‘the other- the different
culture.’ It is interesting to note that
such activities are characterized by a
deeply affective element which
shouldn’t be overlooked.
While offering a number of benefits
for FLT (namely: expanding the range
of topics, exploring real life experiences; promoting self-studying and
mastering different language skills,
such as refinement in terms of
pronunciation, elaboration of dialogue
and discourse strategies), such tasks are
definitely worth attention, particularly
now when the IT technology is an
essential part of one’s lifestyle
(teacher’s or student’s). Moreover, such
tasks do bring about serious improvement in the communication style of the
Slava TCHERPOKOVA
students, i.e compare the two movies of
a student “First Date” vs. “A Great
Movie”: there is a considerable
improvement only within two attempts.
While the first movie is built on several
exchanges with serious flaws in the
social formulae and logic of the
conversation – there are elements that
do not match the situation seen (pick
up-wait in this place), the second movie
develops in a fully-fledged conversation where interlocutors negotiate
actions, build on feelings, topics get
nominated, maintained and changed.
Contents and Preferences:
Self-Made Movies
Here are some numbers: 6 out of
15 students, 40% of the students in the
course, have uploaded their movies in
Moodle, some have uploaded more
than 3, the number of female and male
students being equal, which suggests
that there is need for creativity in FLL.
Topics in self-made movies vary
depending on personal agenda from
football to partying, or romance and
social responsibility to justification of
one’s need to vote, thus movies can be
treated as a personal statement of an
issue you feel strongly about. Movies
allow for a great freedom of setting and
characters from aliens to sex symbols,
Afro- Americans to people from the
Arab world, thus crossing borders and
stereotypes, creating a new reality that
one is really willing to share not only
through the virtual classroom Moodle
platform, but also with friends (see the
movie “First Date”: Facebook likes4064).
Students’ feedback can illuminate
the impact of self- made movies along
with the instances of Transculturalism
(see the second feedback). It is highly
unlikely that one was to discuss Indian
Culture in an English language class:
“Today we watched an Indian film
about a young mother and her child. I
wrote to this movie subtitles with the
help of my imagination. And the movie
became great and funny.” (A.)” Today
we talked about Indian culture and
the relationship of a mother and her
son” (M.)”
Speaking and Reading Tasks
Another area that gives rise to
Transculturalism are activities aimed at
exploring one’s own culture through
models set by speakers of other
languages, as was the case with activeties designed by Johnson and
Rinvolucri. Such activities scaffold
speaking experience in class along with
providing insight on social conventions
in the UK (see “Creating a Cultural
Biography [21], Culture Onion Ring
[53], Culture Words [40], and Gender
Words [57]). The impact on students
was amazing, not only awareness of
cultural issues was raised, but such
activities contributed to a greater
sensitivity to words and their meaning:
“British people have a type of speaking
which is kind of official; they don’t
speak bad things, directly. They try to
avoid bad words: for example, they say
‘difficult’ instead of ‘boring’”(A).
At the same time, there is evidence
of Transculturalism especially in
activities dealing with terms like
wealth, wisdom, directness, distance,
pleasure, ambition, joy, success.
103
Reading tasks and dilemmas aimed at
challenging stereotypes and inarticulating conventions of gender roles,
freedom, responsibility and living with
the choices one makes, are abundant in
New English File course book (see
Survival of Divorced Portuguese Men
[NEF WB: 34] or the classic fable
“The Fisherman and the Banker [NEF
WB: 36]).
Dilemmas were introduced through
a supplementary material entitled
“Abigail story”, which addressed
universal dilemmas about choices we
make and principles we live by.
Confronted with different geographical
locations and social roles, learners had
to reason about situations referring to
descriptions, justifications, taking sides,
again involved in Transculturalism
exploration on a smaller personal scale,
thus working on empathy, tolerance
and
acceptance
of
differences,
challenging personal prejudice and
allowing for a different perspective. In
fact, this experience was quite similar
to the experience with the sample of
movies that had to be subtitled. This
time learners had to master the skills of
assessing situations, justifying choices,
negotiating courses of actions through
means of FL.
Moreover, the focus on values was
reported to have contributed to the
memory retention, student involvement
and lesson satisfaction as reported by
the students. (82% of the students
qualified lessons as interesting, memorable, and cool: the data is based on a
questionnaire administered to both
groups at the end of the module). In
terms of language teaching benefits,
dilemmas have contributed to improved
104
Slava TCHERPOKOVA
writing skills and expansion
learners’ vocabulary as well.
of
Mechanisms and Agents
of Transculturalism
in Teaching FL at NBU
Mechanisms of Transculturalism in
teaching FL at NBU are instigated by a
number of actors and instruments.
Policymakers, teachers and learners, IT
developers, textbook authors-each
contributes and strengthens the element
of Transculturalism in the learningteaching situation. First, the university
policy, that is, the requirement for
extensive use of IT tools and creativity,
not only encourages the creation and
exchange of digital products both by
students and teachers, but also sets the
condition for voicing one’s stand on a
number of issues defined by the
individual himself, not pre-set by the
instructor. Free, strictly individual use
of tools and the language resources,
ultimately
generates
transcultural
content. This process is also aided by
the use of pre-packed visual generative
IT tools through which users construct
meaning (see Dvolver, Bombay TV),
aimed at the global user, not last to
mention disregarding the different
scripts that one would be willing to use,
as is the case with Cyrillic. The second
source is the teachers who admit to
focusing on global issues and application of universalism on a daily basis.
Textbooks with multicultural content
featuring target culture in combination
with other culture clusters, such as
Indian, Portuguese, Brazilian, German
(see the classification of Cortazzi and
Jin [Saluveer 50]), can also generate
instances of Transculturalism. Still, the
core generator of transcultural content
remains the learner of FL. Learners
who resort to universalism: free
transfer of cultural norms, values,
moral and ethical categories, social
experiences and interpretation, discourse organization, socio-cultural
roles, freely merging cultural icons,
human aliens, social roles, backgrounds, thus validating personal
agenda through Target language.
Topical areas vary from relationship,
lifestyle experiences to discussion of
political issues such as the right to vote.
Conclusion
Implicit manipulation of Culture
through dilemmas and self-made
movies in a FL class affects teaching
and learning dramatically, and is
capable of generating Transcultural
content, with creativity being the most
direct and powerful instrument to
account for hybrid cultural content.
Culture manipulating activities have
also a profound effect on the content
area, pace and engagement with the
topic and subject area, as well as the
learner’s activity.
While dilemmas allow for an
extensive use of linguistics along with
organizational, information processing,
time managing and socio-cultural
skills, they also allow learners to
address uncomfortable topics like
gender
roles,
poverty
relief,
stratification of the society, choice of
villains, minority rights, validation of
unorthodox personal truth through
activating frameworks of relationship
and ethical issues, eventually also
promoting holistic active citizenship
105
learning. Involvement in a higher order
cultural task, like the case studies, also
creates meaningful social experiences
and fosters social cohesion by
recognizing the right of the learner to
construct and validate one’s self
identity while exploiting fossilized
beliefs and icons, allows for critical
exploration of the meaning of
archetypes of the MC and the codes
and norms that we take for granted
such as turn taking, dealing with
compromise, which allows FL teachers
address yet another crucial point for an
adequate communication area.
Short self- made videos, on the other
hand, add an element of entertainment
and can serve as a commodity to be
shared through the virtual world, thus
promoting networking and boosting up
the level of satisfaction of the
individual and interest in cultural
involvement. In addition, they can stir
interest in ‘the other’, cultivate
empathy to differences and inconsistencies with personal perspective. They
are likely to bring about a better grasp
of the critical differences of cultural
codes and norms of expression and
discourse patterns that different cultures apply, not last to mention is their
capacity to provide context for opening
to other cultures and expanding
horizons.
Linguistic aspects of self-made short
videos are worth mentioning since IT
tools allow one exploit culture
holistically while most economically
outlining the situation, grammar
functions, discourse, pronunciation.
They can be materialized and referred
again and again, thus contrasting all the
cultures at play (Mother Culture, Target
Culture, Product Developer’s Culture)
thus promoting interest in culture as a
dynamic phenomenon where one
inevitably operates with a hybrid of his
own / forced choice of culture, while
creating meaning through transgressing
cultures and mastering a foreign
language.
WORK CITEY
A Day in the Life of a Prince.
<http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/m
ovie-en-57968a78db92b3705033a
3eb36739bef.html>
A Great Movie.
<http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies739500>
Alligator River Story
<http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/centerforhum
andevelopment/fulllives/pastconferences/
upload/ALLIGATOR-RIVERSTORY.pdf>
Bhatia, Sunil. “Rethinking Culture and
Identity in Psychology: Towards a
Transnational
Cultural
Psychology”
Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical
Psy. 27.2 (2007) & 28.1 (2007): 301-321.
Print.
Bombay Tv
< http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv
/play_uk.php>
Dvolver
<
http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/ma
ke.html>
First Date
<http://www.dvolver.com/live/ movies737294>
Georgiev, Lyudmil. Teaching Through Case
Studies. Sofia: NBU, 2011. Print.
Giordano, Christiano. “From the Crisis of
Anthropological Representations to the
Invasion of Prefixes”. Sofia: NBU, 2011.
< www.nbu.bg/PUBLIC/IMAGES/File
/...na.../9.pdf ->
Gounev, Sneza. “Being a Public Intellectual”.
Culture Issue Sept 21. 2007: 31.
106
< www.kultura.bg/bg/print_article/.../13302>.
Johnson, Gill and Mario Rinvolucri. Culture
in Our Classrooms: Teaching Language
Through Cultural Content. Surrey: Delta
Teacher Development Series, 2010. Print.
Moodle NBU/course platform/gr. 20
<http://e-edu.nbu.bg/ mod/forum/ discuss.
php? d=23725>
<http://e-edu.nbu.bg/mod/forum/discuss
.php? d =21795>
Oxenden, Clive and Christina LathamKoenig. New English File Pre-Intermediate. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006. Print.
Saluveer, Evi. Teaching Culture in English
Classes. University of Tartu, 2004.Print.
Slimbach, Richard. “The Transcultural
Journey”. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary
Journal of Study Abroad 11(2005):
205- 230. Print.
Tcherpokova, Slava. “Values in FLT. What
Do We Really Gain?”. Conference
Proceedings:
Language,
Literature,
Values 2011. Nish Faculty of Philosophy,
2011. Print.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fear of Barbarians:
Beyond the Clash of Civilizations. Trans.
Slava TCHERPOKOVA
V. Atanassov. Sofia: Iztok – Zapad, 2009.
Print.
Short bio
Slava TCHERPOKOVA is teacher of
English since 1995. She is a mentor and an
author of a coursebook for primary school
students. She presented at conferences in
Istanbul (2011), Romania (2010), Venice
(2011), Hungary (1998), BAPA conference
Bulgaria (2010, 2011). She participated in the
UNESCO workshop sharing and caring
Tryavna- Bulgaria 2004; she participated in a
Joined survey of non formal education
Grundtvig (Cyprus 2003); student exchange
Balkan school _ 81 school _ Nova Goriza
(2005) Farnham, U.K .– intercultural skills –
workshop _Grundtvig(2011). Her areas of
interest are: Cultural Studies, Etiquette,
European and International integration,
Active citizenship, Vocabulary, Memory
techniques, Suggestology.
Contact: [email protected];
[email protected]
TEACHING – WORKSHOP
A. TEACHING AT HOME
Maureen Daly GOGGIN*
Knowledge separates the educated from the common people. Neither
knows. But the common person claims to know, while the educated
knows that he does not know. .. . In the society of men of letters, the
most abundant fruit that we shall reap is modesty of spirit by which no
one would presume to know beyond his measure. (89-90)
--Giovanni Battista Vico, On Humanistic Education
I felt clueless, a feeling I have since come to learn is at the heart of the
scholarly process. In academia, one is in a perpetual liminal space. As
soon as you answer a research question, you ask another, your
growing body of expertise simply marking the expanding edge of your
ignorance. (13)
--David Gold, The Accidental Archivist1
Arizona State University, USA
Arizona1State University is currently
the largest public university in the
United States. Its main campus is in
Tempe, Arizona, and it has three other
campuses: Phoenix, Mesa, and
Glendale, Arizona. As of AY 2012, it
enrolled over 72,000 full-time students
on its campuses and has plans to
increase enrollment to 100,000. It also
offers an ASU online degree program
separate from its on campus programs;
the goal of this side of ASU is also
100,000 students.
As stated on the ASU website:
More2 than 30 percent of ASU's freshmen
graduate in the top 10 percent of their
high school class, and 57 percent in the
top 25 percent. ASU ranks among the top
in the nation in student entrepreneurs and
one of the top 10 producers of Fulbright
Scholars in the U.S. ASU is also home to
612 National Merit Scholars and 324
National Hispanic Scholars. Our students
have one thing in common: total
immersion in an innovative atmosphere
where they are able to chart their own
path to success.
The English department, one of, if
not, the largest English department in
the country, is home to several different
disciplines that make up English
studies: creative writing, English edu-
*
Chair and Professor, Department of English, Arizona
State University
2
Gold, David, “The Accidental Archivist: Embracing Chance and Confusion in Historical
Scholarship.” Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process. Eds. Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz
Rohan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. 13-19.
1
1
108
Maureen Daly GOGGIN, Slava TCHERPOKOVA, Dacian BĂRBOSU,
Sandra-Lucia ISTRATE, Dragoş-Lucian IVAN, Thomas PARSONS
cation, film & media studies, literature,
linguistics, rhetoric/composition, and
Teaching English to speakers of other
languages (TESOL). We offer three
undergraduate majors, eight different
MA programs, and four PhD programs.
(See http://english. clas.asu.edu/). It
also offers an online program in
English studies that is separate from the
campus programs noted above.
With so many areas of scholarly
focus, students are able to find a niche
for themselves. Courses are taught in
person, hybrid (face-to-face and
online), and online for the campus
degree programs. The ASU online
English studies degree is solely online.
We offer a variety of delivery systems
for our classes: everything from large
lectures to 150 or more students, small
lectures
to
38
undergraduates,
discussion based courses, workshop
courses to 20 or fewer, and seminars to
15 students, to name a few.
We also offer internships to
undergraduates and graduate students
that place them in over 80 companies.
We offer several certificate programs.
And we offer unique programs such as
the Prison Program in which students
work via distance learning with
maximum security prisoners or in a jail
for minimum security prisoners. They
teach creative writing, literature,
rhetoric, and other courses. Research
has shown that recidivism rates for
those who can read and write beyond a
9th grade level is much lower than for
those who have not been educated.
For more details about all we offer, I
encourage you to visit our website and
cruise around our pages: http://english.
clas.asu.edu/.
My Pedagogy
Since I was asked to speak about my
methods of teaching, I will focus the
rest of this brief paper on my pedagogy
as a Professor of Rhetoric in the
English department at ASU.
Scholarship of teaching and learning
(SoTL) calls for engaging students in
the learning process and creating
pedagogical environments that foster
active learning. For me, such learning
also has an epistemological dimension
whereby students should be encouraged
and taught how to create knowledge
rather than merely how to demonstrate
and consume knowledge of issues and
questions that already have known
answers. It calls for helping students
address what they don’t know in the
ways Vico and David Gold speak of in
the epitaphs at the beginning of this
talk.
Keith Trigwell and Suzanne
Shalea propose a “practice-based
concept of scholarly of teaching” (535)
that resonates with my theoretical
concept of active epistemological
learning. Of their model they write:
In its descriptive aspect surely a good
conception of scholarship of teaching
would accord proper priority to the idea
that teaching is an activity that emerges in
collaboration with students as partners in
learning. In its purposive aspect, surely a
good conception of scholarship of
teaching would honour and publicly
acknowledge the scholarly energy that is
creating situations in which students
learn, rather than a scholarly energy
which creates situations in which teachers
instruct. (534)
109
TEACHING-WORKSHOP
While creating situations within the
classroom, whether face-to-face, or
online, that allow learning to take place
is a critical strand of SoTL, the role of
knowledge in relation to learning has
received less attention. For example,
Michael Prosser argues that the main
point of SoTL is “to work towards
improving our students’ learning” (4),
but he has little to say about the
epistemological dimension of that
learning. Similarly, while David Dees
explains that “I have now committed
myself as an educator to create learning
environments with my students, not for
them… the SoTL project … served to
free me as an educator, moving away
from an instructor-driven perspective to
a more learner-centered approach” (3),
but what he means by “learn-centered
approach” is assumed rather than
articulated. Thus, although notions of
teaching as collaboration and engagement with students are running themes
in much of the SoTL scholarship, few
scholars have taken on the role of
knowledge-making versus knowledge
demonstration, a role I take up here in
describing some of what I do in the
classroom.
I teach primary graduate classes in
face-to-face formats, though occasionally I teach hybrid classes with half the
classes face-to-face and half online. For
my face-to-face courses, I arrange my
classroom activities, assignments, and
exams as collaborative activities with
students and offer spaces inside and
outside of class where students have an
opportunity to create rather than
demonstrate knowledge. I will describe
just a few of the things I do given the
short time frame of this roundtable.
Classroom Format
1. I lecture very rarely usually only
about concepts, theories, studies, or
histories that are connected to the
subject that is the focus of the course.
a. For instance, in my graduate
Research Methods class, I want
to show how real research is
accomplished and will do a
lecturer on how I began a
research project, the questions I
asked and honed as I went
along, the dead ends I
encountered, the resources I
used, the conferences where I
spoke about different aspects of
the project, and then the
drafting and final publication. I
want to show how to be a
learner because that is what I
am teaching them to do.
2. Scholarly log book – often, I ask
students to keep a scholar’s log book
where they record reactions to readings
and questions that emerge from the
readings (I make clear that the
questions can’t be ones that could be
answered by a Google search – e.g.,
When was so and so born? Where did
she come from? Etc. Instead they are to
look for moments of motivating
dissatisfaction that occurs because
something is opposite or different than
they thought, or you they don’t
understand where the idea came from,
or the ideas contradict what they have
learned elsewhere etc.
110
On my syllabus I write:
Your scholar’s log provides a space for
you to respond to each reading (a
minimum of one page per weekly
assigned reading, though some readings
may give rise to more than a page),
record
salient
quotations,
make
observations on readings and class
discussions, draw connections among
assigned and out-of-class readings, pose
questions, explore issues, topic ideas,
research questions, and so on. Thus,
your log will serve as a valuable
resource for grappling with both the
readings and the seminar project. Bring
your scholar’s log to each class; you
will be reflecting on your responses in
class, and we will use these at times as a
jumping off point for discussions and
activities
3. Whole class activities
a. Discussions – to prompts and
questions I throw out or to
students’ prompts and questions
b. Students are given an opportunity raise questions at the
beginning and end of each
class (or even throughout but
I arrange time at beginning
and end)
4. Small Group Activities
a. On readings – students share
in small groups (3-5 students)
response to readings, marginalia, questions, and compose
questions for class to discuss
b. Game-styled small group
activities (What’s My Line,
Who Wants to be a
Millionaire, Jeopardy, etc.).
Students separate into hosts
and contests and draw up
questions based on the
readings to use in the games.
I usually bring small prizes
for the students who got the
most points.
c. Workshops on papers – rough
draft and polished draft
workshops. I want students to
learn how to read the papers
and to become familiar with the
genres of writing they are
learning.
d. The 5-minute pairs, that move
along like the 5-minute dating
game, where they face another
student and must describe their
research project. (I make two
rows of chairs facing each
other, and students move from
chair to the next so that
everyone has a chance to state
their research project and get
some reactions and feedback.)
5. Assignments
a. I develop sequenced assignments whereby students do
pieces of a paper and in the end
put them all together. For
example, research proposals
represent a genre students
typically aren’t taught, so I
break it down into: research
question, review of literature,
design of study, and them have
them put together the pieces to
do up a proposal.
b. I have them construct and offer
rationale for a mid-term exam
or a final exam. Sometimes
they just turn this in. Other
times they swap papers and
take each other’s exam. Still
111
TEACHING-WORKSHOP
other times I make up an exam
from all that have been passed
in.
c. I also have them come up with
quiz questions on readings.
d. I give quizzes early on and
throughout the term on readings
(focusing
on
theoretical
concepts, definitions, research
design, findings, etc.). At the
beginning they don’t do well
but by the end, most “ace” the
quiz (not that I grade them) and
this shows them how much they
are gaining in knowledge.
e. Team projects where they
negotiate who does what for the
team project
These are just a handful of what I do
but I will stop here. The point is that
everything I design in my teaching is to
help students create knowledge; that is,
learn how to learn. Bronowski claim is
a good place to stop:

Knowledge is an unending
adventure at the edge of
uncertainty.
--Jacob Bronowski Assent of
Man
WORKS CITED
Bronowski, Jacob. Assent of Man. London: BBC,
1973. Print.
Dees, David M. “A Reflection on the Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning as Democratic
Practice.” International Journal for the
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2.2
(2008). 2 March 2012. <http://academics.
georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v2n2/personal_refle
ctions/PDFs/Reflection_Dees.pdf>
Gold, David. “The Accidental Archivist:
Embracing Chance and Confusion in
Historical Scholarship.” Beyond the Archives:
Research as a Lived Process. Eds. Gesa E.
Kirsch and Liz Rohan. Carbondale: Southern
Illinois UP, 2008. 13-19. Print.
Prosser, Michael. “The Scholarship of Teaching
and Learning: What is It? A Personal View.”
International Journal for the Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning, 2.2 (2008). 6 March
2012.
<http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v
2n2/invited_essays/PDFs/Invited%20Essay_Pr
osser.pdf>.
Trigwell, Keith, and Suzanne Shalea. “Student
Learning and the Scholarship of University
Teaching.” Studies in Higher Education 29.4
(2004): 523-36. Print.
Vico, Giambattista B. On Humanistic Education.
1699-1707. Trans. Giorgio A. Pinton and
Arthur W. Shippee. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,
1993. Print.
112
NEW BULGARIAN UNIVERSITY
By Slava TCHERPOKOVA
The New Bulgarian University
(founded in 1991) is a vibrant
Autonomous Liberal Academic institution determined on setting a model for
Higher Educational Academic Institutions in Bulgaria through offering
specialized and interdisciplinary education. It aims at bringing together public,
business, media and academic potential
while promoting novel strategic
concepts and research related to current
market and social issues, thus
becoming a strategic factor at National
level.
NBU offers Bachelor, Master and
PhD programmes, alongside with
Distance learning programmes (Bachelor and Master) and Continuous Education programmes. NBU is the only
Academic institution in Bulgaria that
provides obligatory training in PC
skills, Bulgarian language and Foreign
Languages for all the students in the
first two years of their studies (reaching
level B2 (CEFR) through the school of
Basic Education.
Programmes
offers training in a wide range of areas
from Fashion Design, Art and Management,
Economics,
Sociology,
Psychology, Artes Liberales, Graphic
Design, Mass Communication, InforHyperCultura, nr. 2(11), 2012
matics,
Administration,
Tourism,
Alternative Energy, Earth Sciences,
Food Technology, Bulgarian Cultural
Heritage, History and Egyptology.
NBU is also planning to set new
Bachelor programmes in Physics,
Mathematics, Biotechnologies, alongside with the creation of new and more
flexible minor programmes: Bulgarian
Studies, English Studies, Oriental and
Roman Studies, just to list a few.
Strategic Priorities:
Extensive use of IT technology,
interactive teaching and MOODLE 2
virtual platform, Internationalization of
the education and certification of skills
obtained through formal, non-formal
training have been recognized as
priorities for the period of 2011-2015.
Development and introduction of
joint programmes with foreign universities aimed at obtaining mutually
recognized diplomas is also believed to
be crucial for the development of NBU
as an Institution. Not last to mention is
the transformation of NBU into a Green
university.
International Cooperation
works on programs of the European
Union – SOCRATES, TEMPUS,
113
TEACHING-WORKSHOP
LEONARDO etc. One of the greatest
partners of the NBU is the Higher
Education Support Program of the
Open Society Institute, Budapest
(HESP).
It
contributes
to
research and educational initiatives,
exchange of students, lecturers and
administrative staff and provides
funding for students and equipment for
the University complex.
NBU is an exclusive representative
of The Open University (UK) in the
area of distance learning; A member of
AUF (Francophone University Agency
(AUF)) – a world organization with a
network of many educational and
cultural institutions from Europe,
Africa, the USA, and Canada aimed at
supporting the development and
exchange in the field of education and
culture. As a result of this membership,
NBU offers a BA Program in Political
Sciences. NBU is also a member of
(IASS), (NISPAсee), (ELIA) (EAST),
(RSA), (IETM).
Activities
The New Bulgarian University organizes annual summer international
schools – semiotics, cognitive science,
mass
communications,
Bulgarian
language, archeology and theater. It
offers a master class in opera singing
and initiates many seminars and
conferences.
Some numbers:
Currently NBU trains students from
Poland, Macedonia, Russia, Germany,
Greece, Cyprus.
For the first 10 years, ERASMUS at
the NBU sent approximately 500
students who achieved mobility; more
than 180 foreign Erasmus students
were admitted and more than 300
Bulgarian and European lecturers
traveled under the same agreements.
The NBU was visited by 100 visiting
lecturers who held courses, seminars or
gave separate lectures. At present, the
NBU has signed 120 Bilateral
agreements for exchange of students
and lecturers with 115 European
universities from 20 countries from the
European Union. NBU has extended
Erasmus University Chart (EUC) for
the whole period of LLP Program
2013-2017. /EUC reference number:
85427-IC-1-2007-1-BG-ERASMUSEUCX-1. ID CODE: BG SOFIA02.
WORKS CITED
Bachelor Programmes :<http://www.nbu. bg/
index.php?l=916>
International Relationship:< http://www. nbu.
bg /index.php?l=30&lang=1>
NBU partners: <http://www.nbu. bg/index
.php?l=155>
NBU Schools : < http://www.nbu.bg/entrance.
php?lang=1>
New Bulgarian University Strategic Plan
2011-2015
New Bulgarian University web site :< http://
www. nbu.bg/entrance.php?lang=2>
114
B. TEACHING ABROAD
Dacian BARBOSU
Arizona State University
I work for the Romanian Studies
Program, in the School of International
Letters and Cultures at Arizona State
University. It is the largest Romanian
program in the United States of
America offering Romanian in-person
and online courses to one hundred and
fifty students. Since 2007 it also offers
Minor in Romanian. Some students
who attend Romanian classes are firstgeneration Romanians born in the
United States or the children of the
people who immigrated there some
years ago and want to finish their
education. There are some U.S.
students who take Romanian just ‘to
learn an exotic language’ or to boost
their GPA (grade point average). I
would like to mention the steps in
designing and teaching the first online
Romanian language course in the
United States.
Teaching online courses in an
American university is certainly a big
challenge. In order to augment the
number of students, ASU Senate
decided to increase the number of
online courses and also for every study
program to offer such a course. It took
me a semester to design it, to gather the
materials. An online language course is
very different that an in-person one.
You need to give clear instructions and
use as many visual interactions as
possible. Students need to be taught all
four language competences: reading,
writing, listening and speaking.
However, baby steps must be taken for
an American student to learn a whole
new language. The American students
are more focused on the cultural part,
on myths and legends rather than on
developing grammar skills. Therefore, I
needed to show them a lot of videos on
Romania’s history music, movies,
cooking, Romanian celebrations, cities
and famous Romanians. After seeing
all these videos, they were pleased to
discover so many things about a
country which hadn’t been on their map
before.
As this was an elementary course
designed for those who wanted to learn
a new language individually, at their
own pace, without being present in the
classroom, students had to be given all
the attention that they would have got,
had they been attending an in-person
class. Therefore, I considered that
meeting with them at least once a week,
on Skype or Adobe Connect, would be
the best thing. On our online meetings
we discussed any problems with their
homework and did the speaking
interaction part from the book, which I
had scanned for them.
TEACHING-WORKSHOP
During the semester they had three
quizzes for their evaluation, one
Midterm paper and one Final Exam.
All these quizzes and online classroom
materials were included in a software
named Blackboard, which is currently
used by more than 150 American
Universities. There was a “Discussion”
tab where students could ask for
clarifications or start a discussion topic
with the instructor and the other
students. The grades had also to be
posted on this educational software.
At the end of the course, I asked the
students to fill-in a survey where they
gave me feedback in order for the
course to be improved.
115
All in all, it was more than an
exciting challenge especially in
deciding which materials to include and
which to leave behind in the course. I
had to keep a balance among those who
wanted to learn grammar and those
who were interested only in quenching
their curiosity in finding new information on the culture of a country.
By designing and teaching this
course I hope I opened the way to
foreign students to study the Romanian
language, find out more about our
country and spread the information to
other people.
116
JAPANESE EDUCATION
Sandra-Lucia ISTRATE
Hyperion University,
The Faculty of Social, Humanistic and Natural Sciences
The Department of Letters and Foreign Languages
The Japanese education system is
particularly known as an efficient one
and very important to the Japanese
society. Teachers are very dedicated to
their job and, at least, regarding the 8
institutions where I used to teach, in
Tokyo and in Chiba Prefecture, I could
notice that pretty clearly. It seems like
their whole life is dedicated to students.
Courses are prepared thoroughly, and
the number of the educative activities
outside the school is overwhelming.
Teachers prepare carefully these activities that greatly contribute to students’
education and it is obvious that these
activities prepare students for life.
Everything is extremely well
thought out. After the early morning
classes, with short rest times between
them, during which, most times, you
can listen to symphonic or instrumental
music, students take all together lunch
in their classrooms or at the school
cafeteria. Before one says ‘bon appétit’,
a student introduces the menu of the
day, food ingredients and the number
of calories. A short rest time follows
and then, the cleaning program.
Teachers and students, all together, are
to clean both the school and the school
yard. During this time, in all Japanese
schools, joyful music resounds and
TEACHING-WORKSHOP
cheers everybody up. Classes end in the
afternoon and they are followed by
different types of “clubs”, such as
Japanese Calligraphy Club, Reading
Club, Sports Club, Music Club, Dance
Club, etc. Under the guidance of a
teacher, students carry out special
activities that enrich both their
knowledge and their spirit.
Summer vacation is one month long
and, sometimes even shorter, and
during it, students participate in
"summer schools" activities and they
learn a lot of interesting things, mostly,
about the environment and its
117
protection. In October, all educational
institutions organize sports and music
competitions and because they train
really hard for that, the number of
classes is extremely low.
Everywhere, the most important
Japanese national holidays are taken
into account and students, together with
their teachers, organize “school
festivals” to celebrate that day.
The academic year begins in March,
because in Japan any "beginning" has
to be around spring and revival of
nature.
106
“WHY I SHOULD REMEMBER AND WHY WE SHOULD BE
INSPIRED…REFLECTING ON MY EXPERIENCE
AT UNIVERSITAT AUTÒNOMA DE BARCELONA”
Dragos-Lucian IVAN
Visiting scholar Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
The National School of Political Studies and Public Administration Bucharest
All right, so for starters I would like
to say that for me being involved in
research and teaching activities while
actively participating in this environment is not a job, it is a career. I very
enthusiastically think of it as a journey,
because you constantly learn, research,
teach, practice, transmit and innovate
while striving to network and build
knowledge. You never stop. I am in
love with this journey and I have
dedicated my life to it, not because I
am striving in secret to become famous,
but because I adore it and everything
that has to do with it. It could also be in
some way something linked with genes,
because my mother, Ivan Elena, also a
dedicated professor, has it. It is
debatable, but I like to believe it to be
true.
I am very passionate about this
environment, about interacting with
passionate people, such as yourself, and
I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of
this career. When Sorina Georgescu
was kind enough to invite me to write a
small article around my experience at
the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
I was confronted with mixed feelings.
Overwhelming enthusiasm was the first
feeling I felt. This was my enthusiasm
at the chance of writing about my
passion and getting to depict a slice of
reality from Barcelona. Next I felt a
burden. I felt a great responsibility.
Teaching is a very dynamic activity.
Scientific research carries a great deal
of responsibility. I recognize that it is
indeed a difficult task even just to
outline my experience as a visiting
scholar at the Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona. It is a great opportunity to
have access to such an impressive
university. The impressive number of
students, with a rich cultural background is mindboggling for a teacher.
The vast data, the scientific resources,
the experienced and friendly scientists,
the scientific events are dazzling for a
devoted and passionate researcher.
Well, hear now, I will briefly
recount one of the best academic
experience I’ve ever had, my
experience as a visiting scholar at the
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. I
invested a lot of time and effort into
getting here. I was really enthusiastic
that I met this opportunity. I must admit
that I call it a great opportunity for
personal development, but also an
TEACHING-WORKSHOP
experience that would enrich my
classes. Each conference, each visit,
each workshop taught me something
and each time I was itching to share the
knowledge with my students.
I remember how I valiantly started
to research European Universities. I
looked over many universities to decide
where to apply. It was paramount to
benefit from a positive academic
environment that would benefit not
only my egoistic personal development,
but also be of a real use when shared in
my classes. My mindset was to engage
into academic activities in two major
world academic centers. I took into
consideration not only their world
ranking, but also their academic,
research and historical background.
Going even further, I read the
publications of their major professors.
So there it is, in the end, Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona and Oxford
University.
I don’t wish to make the mistake of
expressing my complete enthusiasm
towards teaching. Expressing or at least
trying to express my enthusiasm
towards interacting with students would
lead to a book, not an article, a never
completed book. I feel that my primarily teaching and research experience
gives me just enough latitude to express
a few generalizations around the
subject of teaching and researching at
the
Universitat
Autònoma
de
Barcelona. Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona is an elite academic and
research university. It is an historically
recognized academic center in a
powerful European city, a research-
119
intensive and academic focused center
given the function of protecting,
organizing, creating, applying and
disseminating knowledge. There is no
emphasis on teaching or research per
say, both are well represented and
looked after. In writing this short article
I will have at my disposal the caveats
of my own experience brought together
with those of my Catalan colleagues
with whom I have worked or otherwise
interacted these past few months. My
experience is completed through
interaction with students and classes in
different subject domains, but in the
greater subjects of Sociology and
Philology.
I was extremely surprised and,
frankly encouraged that the academic
staff was extremely helpful and
friendly. I would like to give credit
especially to Professors Lluís Flaquer
and Fernando Antón Alonso for my
successful experience at Universitat
Autonoma de Barcelona. I do know
that being a professor at the Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona requires one to
meet a very high bar. For example, the
majority of the professors would
engage in both teaching and research
activities, while functioning as
ambassadors in international academic
relations and fund-raisers not only for
their research projects but also for the
university.
At Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona I built around my thoughts
on research and teaching. Watching the
academic staff, listening to Professor
Lluis Flaquer I was encouraged to
believe in the power of passion.
120
Passion is one of the key ingredients in
any undertaking: thorough research or
captivating lectures. I have been
fortunate enough to witness passionate
professors at every stage of my
development: Professor Paul Dobrescu
(The National School of Political
Science and Public Administration
Bucharest), Professor Georgiana Chişiu
(Politehnica University Bucharest),
Professor Lluis Flaquer (Universitat
Autonoma de Barcelona), Professor
Anca Dobrinescu (UPG- University of
Ploieşti).
I enjoyed seeing the encouragement
of critical thinking and respect towards
different opinions. Professors encourage students to think independently.
Students have permanent and ease
access to journals, books, virtual
materials and supervision. They listen
to the professor’s opinion, they respect
it, but they are encouraged to verify it
and to add knowledge to the course.
The professor is supportive of the
student’s effort to better himself, but
the student is expected to be supportive
of the professor’s effort to impart and
create knowledge within the class. The
students are involved in research
activities at different levels. They can
be part of the target group or actually
perform tasks within research projects.
Their learning experience is paved with
small research and practical projects
that in the end conclude into both skills
and knowledge. Students are helped by
the professor to realize that they are
responsible for their own education.
The professor is there to help them, to
facilitate the creation of knowledge,
supported by the University, while the
student has to fulfill his role: to respect
the opinion of his colleagues, to
contribute to each class, to respect the
university, to respect the professor, to
study outside the class, to pay attention
in class, to encourage the others to
participate, to offer feed-back, doing
homework, reading material, and to be
an ambassador for his University.
Students are also involved in group
projects and some professors resort to
frequent quizzes to keep them selfmotivated. Helping the student to
understand how the didactic material is
created and how all the knowledge
offered by the professor fits in is
facilitated through frequent overviews
of the course content. Such overviews
are offered at regular intervals by some
professors and I believe it is a god idea.
A lot of research goes into the
courses presented to the students.
Based on research the courses are upto-date and are well thought out with
lots of examples. The lectures draw
from the course materials, but are also
supplemented with other research and
with the personal experience of the
professor. This encourages the students
to attend the class. Office hours are
extremely important because there is a
great number of students and they have
both a different cultural background
and a different fundamental learning
experience. All the professors are
available at their office to further
discuss a subject taught in class.
Students are not reticent in talking to
the professor, maybe those that are not
used with this system, such as myself. I
must admit I was surprised by the
TEACHING-WORKSHOP
openness of both academic and
administrative staff. Office hours were
public and clearly displayed, access
was facilitated and encouraged.
Students are unafraid to approach a
professor or a member of the university. I observed that they believe in the
socratic method. Students are helped to
arrive at the solution of a problem by
themselves. They receive guidance and
are encouraged so as to develop
confidence in themselves. E-mails and
questions are very promptly answered.
We often discover how very good
students that are more than capable of
following our class run into difficulties
when trying to apply the knowledge
gathered at the course. Proper practical
use of the knowledge offered by the
professor is encouraged but in two
stages. The first stage consists in
supervised practice. The professor also
encourages students to form groups and
work together not only within the
classroom, but also outside it.
Socializing and working on assignments outside the classroom is very
important in creating the most efficient
and student friendly academic mood.
The learning experience is and
should be tailored in accordance with
the student’s own expectations and
abilities. Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona is an international hub for
students. It hosts tens of thousands of
foreign students. As a foreigner myself,
I felt that the university tries to
accommodate my special personal
needs. The staff is prepared to
understand and adapt the learning
experience in accordance with the
cultural background, the fundamental
121
knowledge acquired by each student, its
linguistic skills so as to overcome any
learning obstacle. The University
provides free Catalan Language classes
and constant supervision in your
journey towards knowledge.
Traditional lectures are wonderfully
complemented with a fast array of
technologically sound methods such as
multimedia,
e-learning,
learning
software, internet utilities and facilities
to accommodate your personal needs.
Course materials and the knowledge
provided by the professor are still
fundamental in the entire system, but
they are integrated within an interactive
environment.
This experience changed me both
professionally and personally. No
matter the country, be it Spain or
Romania, no matter the subject domain,
students have feelings and dreams.
They do not like to feel cornered,
because in such a situation they would
forfeit control. Students desire to learn,
perhaps in a combination of both
formal and non-formal instruments, but
they also wish to feel as if they have
some control over themselves and over
what they chose to be taught. I struggle
not to make assumptions about the
student before coming to class. I
consider it my task, as a professor, to
discover and facilitate a meeting place
between me, student, knowledge and
motivation. Bringing proper learning
tools, embedding them with a correct
attitude, we can facilitate a more
effective learning experience that can
leave not only practical knowledge, but
also pleasant experiences.
122
People support the righteous idea
that science presents more value when
it is practical. I believe that science can
be even more valuable when it is
shared through teaching. Research is
important because it creates knowledge
and teaching is important because it
imparts knowledge. This is one dictum
that stands proud at Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona. I can say that
this experience is something I can look
back to and be proud of it and when I
see the results, the pleasant people that
made it possible, then I realize that
everything that happened and will
happen at the Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona
is
worthwhile
and
rewarding. It is very gratifying to
receive feed-back and support from
such prestigious and experienced
professors such as Paul Dobrescu, The
National School of Political Studies
and
Public
Administration
and
Professor Lluis Flaquer at the
Universitat Autonoma Barcelona. I am
forever in their debt.
106
The AEAfE Essay Contest:
Preparing for Exams and Learning in Context
Thomas PARSONS
– Educational Development Consultant –
The AEAfE programs available
include administering language competency examinations and offering pre
and post test services. Teacher training
programs are also designed and
implemented, certification of EFL
teaching staff, design and implementation of examination preparation
programs, consultancy on curriculum
reform and school development
planning and the development and
publishing of teaching materials to
support training. AEAfE aims to
achieve its objectives through our
various partnerships and networks
throughout Europe and the world
through an alliance of experts who help
to implement the academic programs.
An example of how AEAfE can
provide tools for students and teachers
to help pass exams but also develop
their writing skills is the Essay Contest
which has already met with great
success in Greece, Albania and
Bulgaria and we hope to introduce it
into Romania this year.
The objective here is to combine
learning to write and writing to learn. It
is of equal weight and importance to
learn the process of writing and through
the process of writing to learn about
other contexts and disciplines. Next is
the learning to write in context. The
context should be raising awareness of
young students on current issues of
global concern such as cultures,
international
affairs
and
the
environment and special interest
groups. Preparing for the exams is
always very important especially
concerning the writing section. The
effective combination includes the
basic writing principles (academic
writing) and the way to respond to
specific task requirements according to
level and test type. The basic writing
principles include the introduction,
main body, conclusion stating purpose
clearly, stating specific points to be
developed,
cohesion,
coherence,
effective cohesive devices and lower
order concerns such as spelling and
punctuation. Students cannot respond
effectively to exam writing tasks
without having mastered to some
degree according to level these basic
principles. Task requirements refer to
what the particular examination
requires in relation to prompts, tasks
and overall mechanics of the test.
AEAfE intended the Essay Contest
to be a tool for teachers to be used in
the classroom. It is open to the public
but of course it is extremely difficult to
determine the language level of
candidates outside the classroom. The
objectives are to help students develop
their writing skills, to help students
124
express ideas creatively in context, to
help raise awareness of cultural, social
and environmental issues and to help
candidates prepare for the University of
Michigan ECCE (B2) certificate
examination. Of course these objectives
are also benefits for students
participating in the contest. The level of
the Contest is B2 (according to the
CEFR) and of course prepares the
students for the University of Michigan
Examination for the Certificate of
Competency on English (ECCE). This
exam tests all the four skills of
Listening, Reading, Writing and
Speaking in multiple choice format,
also testing the level of grammar and
vocabulary.
The prompt for a contextual topic is
then given, in the case of the
presentation the prompt is about
violence at a sporting event. The ECCE
Writing Task comprises of two choices
of a letter or an essay related to the
prompt, and the candidate must choose
one. Of course the essay contest only
involves the essay task.
The Essay Contest consists of two
stages, the Preliminary Stage and the
Final Stage.
In the Preliminary Stage firstly the
institutions send collective lists of
students registering for the contest.
AEAfE sends participating schools
support material for teachers and
students in the form of a booklet for
activities which includes the topic of
the contest. The teachers use this
material and whatever other material of
their own choice to prepare students for
the writing of the essay. In the process
students learn more about the topic and
its significance at a global and local
level. The students then submit their
essays through the institutions. Dates
and deadlines are set in a timeline
issued by AEAfE at the beginning of
each academic year.
A special booklet is prepared every
year for the contest. The essay contest
booklet includes the topic and the
students will gradually learn the subject
through reading, listening, speaking
and listening exercises all in the format
of the ECCE, so students also become
familiar with the ECCE examination.
Rules and guidelines are also found in
the booklet and an important section
about plagiarizing, inspiring the
students to be creative and use their
own ideas.
The Essay Contest submissions are
rated by the AEAfE Rating Committee.
Each essay is assessed by two raters
and the 10 finalists are announced.
At the Final Stage of the Contest the
10 finalists and their parents and
teachers are invited to a Day Event at a
hotel or the American Corner. The
finalists then write on a new topic
under
actual
testing
conditions
according to the requirements of the
University of Michigan, (30 minutes
for the test and an examiner). Before
and after the event presentations are
organized to broaden the educational
scope of participants, and there are
visits to exhibitions and open
discussions on educational and
vocational issues. Special awards are
then presented to institutions which
have registered a high number of
candidates over the year and prizes can
consist of laptops and notebooks.
TEACHING-WORKSHOP
The ultimate objectives of the Essay
Contest are therefore to help in
teaching of writing skills, to help in the
preparation for the UM ECCE (B2)
examination, to provide a global
context for language learning and to
bring international academic communities closer. This is reflected in AEAfE
partnerships and collaborations and
exchange of ideas which is part its
vision.
Continuing on from the B2 Essay
Contest AEAfE is considering a C2
Essay Contest preparing students for
125
the UM ECPE (C2) examination and
developing students’ writing skills for
university studies abroad. This would
be useful for graduating school students
and university students.
In conclusion, the Essay Contest is a
tool for use in the classroom to get the
students motivated, interested and
creative in writing in context and to
make writing seen as enjoyable rather
than a mundane task that every student
has to endure.
2
CRONICI BOOK REVIEWS HyperCultura, nr. 2(10), 2012
2
Sorina GEORGESCU
3
CRONICI / BOOK REVIEWS …
AFRICA IS NOT MY HOME
Reviewed Work:
Oana Cogeanu, Introducere în literatura afro-americană de călătorie*, Editura
Universităţii “Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, Iaşi, 2013, 193 pg.
Reviwed by: Sorina Georgescu**
In* the context of Multiculturalism
and Globalization, Oana Cogeanu’s
book makes a unique and valuable
contribution to the study of AfricanAmerican literature and to the study of
travel literature in general.
As the author herself states in the
“Introduction”, this study proposes to
discuss several examples of works
written by the descendants of black
slaves in America, focusing “exclusively on the self-identification criterion”
(Cogeanu 7).
In order to achieve her purpose,
Oana Cogeanu organizes the book in
six parts: an Introduction, two chapters
with two subchapters each, a
Conclusion, a Bibliography and an
Annex with “African-American Autotaxidigraphies 18th – 20th Century”.
She approaches the texts semiologically, from a ‘textcult’ point of view,
and arranges her study thematically. As
she argues:
It were, of course, utopian to aim at an
exhaustive coverage of the itineraries in
time and space of African-American
travel literature, and I only propose here a
*
Introduction into African-American
Travel-Writing
**
Hyperion University
general critical description of AfricanAmerican autotaxidigraphy and a specific
analysis of several selected texts that will
serve at best as exemplary models and at
least as examples (Cogeanu 8).
She uses theoretical key-concepts
such as ‘autotaxidigraphy’1, ‘travelogue’2, ‘text’3, ‘pretext’4, ‘metatext’5,
‘transtext’6, ‘autobiography’7, ‘femi1
autotaxidigraphy: autos + taxidi +
graphein – the writing of one’s own travels;
both fiction and non-fiction, the authority of
truth plus the power of non-truth; external
autotaxidigraphy: travels abroad – Africa.
2
travelogue: travel narrative – itineraties,
places, monuments, customs, artifacts,
characters.
3
text: ethic product, identical with the
reality given; or aesthetic product, different
from the reality given; consubstantial with
that which is before it and with that which is
behind it.
4
pretext: before the text; its elements
derive from the literary discourse and from
cultural intertextuality.
5
metatext: with the text, the world in/of
the text.
6
transtext: beyond the text; the effects of
the text on the discourses of experience and
imagination; the function of the text to
highlight and even to reform discourse itself
7
autobiography: auto + bio + graphein –
the self writes his life; something is
transformed into something else.
130
nine autobiography’8, ‘the talking
book’9, ‘the perlocutionary act’10 and
‘autointertextuality’11.
Although, for some, it might seem a
little difficult to read, due to its
abundant theoretical analysis, there are
several major points which strongly
recommend this book to your attention.
Firstly, the author starts the
definition of travel literature with a
comparison between a contemporary
travel guidebook from the Lonely
Planet series and Marco Polo’s 13th
century travel-book Il Milione. Seen
from the perspective of comparative
formalist analysis, travel writings share
the ‘leave-travel-return’ structure with
the epic genre. The definition continues
with the difference between fact and
fiction, Oana Cogeanu’s conclusion
being that travel literature is neither
pure fact, nor pure fiction; it is inspired
by places and people as well as by
imaginary frames and characters.
8
feminine autobiography: travel as a
means of self-determination; double or
multiple consciousness (Nany Prince –
reticence, Susan King Taylor – double
identity; Mary Church Terrell – inadequacy;
Eslanda Goode Robeson – multivocity; Ida B.
Wells – clarity, Gwendolyn Brooks intentionality
9
the talking book: the master reads from
it > it speaks to the master (the Bible); the
great religious code used to maintain an
economic mission; the sacred Sacrament of
the Occidental world; writing + travel >
liberation through text; ‘I’m writing,
therefore I exist’
10
the perlocutionary act: it privileges
what is accomplished through its writing; it
certifies the author ontologically
11
autointertextuality: any reference to the
experiential world is always already a
reference to its transcription in previous or
subsequent texts (Cogeanu 138)
Sorina GEORGESCU
Secondly, African-American travelliterature in particular is seen as
belonging to several genres such as
essay, report, journal, editorial, memoir
and travelogue, with the ‘Middle
Passage’ as its main theme, even when
hidden, a “permanent hypotext”
(Cogeanu 42), in the author’s words.
Major themes in this chapter are:
‘destinations’, ‘boundaries’, ‘landmarks’, ‘directions’ and the ‘home’.
The ‘destinations’ are ideologically
marked countries and continents.
Africa, defined as Ghana and Liberia,
means pan-Africanism and the black
cradle of civilization, it means the
ancestral home and the “building of a
national home” (Cogeanu 43). Europe
is modernism and refinement, art and
the meeting place, in Paris, of blacks
from all over the world. Russia means
Communism, that is, social justice and
no racism. Finally, the Middle East
means Islamism and Mecca, the centre
of colored people’s spiritual liberty.
The ‘boundaries’ show AfricanAmericans as ‘strangers’ both home
and abroad, while their ‘landmarks’ are
‘the tourist embarked in the Grand
Tour”12 (Cogeanu 50) and the ‘journey’
itself, during which the black traveler
discovers the so-called ‘talking book’
mentioned above. These ‘landmarks’,
the last of which will be “Africa as the
impossibility of coming back home”
(Cogeanu 54), are perceived by the
author as the American dream
uprooted, the first meaning of the
Middle Passage being a “denial of the
self” (Cogeanu 54).
12
with the clear purpose to improve
his/her culture/education and get a bettern
view on his/her current home.
The ‘directions’ are the attempts of
the traveller to negotiate between
slavery and freedom, with the ‘black
sailor’ and the ‘ocean’ as the first
prevailing motifs since the beginnings
of this kind of African-American
literature. America is always ‘home’,
Africa is mostly viewed through
western-made images in degrading
terms. Self-discovery is the main
purpose when visiting Russia, Europe
or Jamaica in the case of feminine
African-American voices.
The third and final major point in
this book are the two examples on
which our author compellingly applies
her theories: Richard Wright – Black
Power: A Record of Reactions in a
Land of Pathos (1954) and Maya
Angelou – All God’s Children Need
Traveling Shoes (1986).
The ‘pretext’ for the very controversial African-American
Richard
Wright is his critique of Africa in terms
of ideology, lack of realistic ideals and
his distance towards the so-called
cradle of blacks in the US. The ‘text’ is
his main question – “What is Africa for
me?” (Wright 4, qtd. in Cogeanu 98),
which is not easy to answer. He is the
author, the narrator and the main
character of the story at the same time,
and a subjective one, always wondering
“But, am I African?” (Wright 4, qtd. in
Cogeanu 98). Africa is primitive and
irrational, it is his ‘alterity’, it is slave
trade, exoticism, heathenism, sickness,
maimed
and
grotesque
bodies,
sexuality, infantilism, instinct, myths
instead of progress and animals-like
behaviour. Its cultural inheritance is
very doubtful and Wright’s intellectual
curiosity makes him wonder whether
this so-called ancestors had not actually
131
sold their own relatives to the white
people.
Their
language
means
inferiority,
their
journalism
is
superficial, therefore they cannot be
undestood and need to be silenced, like
characters in a silent movie. Color
becomes meaningless, Wright has no
race, no home, no feeling of origin or
destination. He is, in Oana Cogeanu’s
view, the ‘ideal tourist’. He wants
himself an Occidental, he sees no
similarities between African-Americans
and Africans, whom he sees through
the eyes of the colonizer. He is the
‘universal man’, yet he is black for the
Occident and Occidental for the blacks,
free but marginalized in Paris, and he
needs to escape from Africa. Finally,
the ‘transtext’ here is the combination
between the colonialist texts of the
white travellers and his continous
negotiation/debate of the AfricanAmerican identity beyond race and
ethnicity. In his own words: “I’m a
rootless man… I like and even cherish
the state of abandonment, of
aloneness… It seems to me the natural,
inevitable condition of man, and I
welcome it. I can make myself at home
almost anywhere on this earth.”
(Wright 17, qtd. in Oana Cogeanu 129).
And, in Oana Cogeanu’s words: “it is
not a geographical, racial or ethnic
home that Wright finds in his travels,
but an ideal home built in Western
letters” (Cogeanu 129).
The ‘pretext’ in Maya Angelou’s
case are her previous writings, which
turned her personal life into a bestseller
in which she is the ‘exemplary figure’.
The ‘text’ is her ‘egowriting project’
that once started can never reach its
end. All through her works, she refuses
to be identified with either the positive
132
or the negative traditional images of
black femininity. The temporary home
for her, this time, is Ghana. She also
suspects Africans of having been
involved in the infamous slave trade
and redefines ‘home’ through the
relationships she builds with people
there and at work, turning a concrete
term into the product of her own
imagination. Even when she becomes
trully involved in their specific rituals,
she feels like a ‘diaspora’, not like a
native, she feels misunderstood and
discriminated, although also accepted
sometimes and she cannot translate
herself to the Africans.
Sorina GEORGESCU
When her son becomes independent,
she can find no more reasons to stay
there and returns to America, because,
as Oana Cogeanu argues: “As Maya
has learned the relativity of home, she
leaves us to suspect, as a critic says,
that her traveling shoes are never really
out of sight (Neubauer 1990:114). In
many ways, one needs to put on his/her
travelling shoes in order to find a
home” (146)13. As with Richard
Wright, the conclusion is that home is
nowhere and everywhere, on no
specific country or continent, it is only
circumstantially determined.
Or, shorty put: ‘Africa is not my
home’.
13
The ‘transtext’ here is a ‘trick’, the
‘signifying monkey’, as Oana Cogeanu calls
it, quoting Henry Louis Gates Jr.
133
“UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL*”:
ROMANIA AND JAPAN, TWO BRANCHES
OF THE SAME TREE
Reviewed Work:
Sandra-Lucia Istrate, Folclor românesc şi japonez. Proverbe**, Bucureşti: Editura
Victor, 2013, 241 pg.
Reviwed by***: Sorina Georgescu
In* an era when every subject of
research means a connection to the
world around us, from slavery and
nationalism to Multiculturalism and
Globalization as such, Sandra-Lucia
Istrate’s book makes a unique and
valuable contribution to the study of
Romanian folklore and to the study of
folklore in general, through an
illuminating comparison with Japan.
Through this, she also hopes to ‘infect’
her readers with her deep love for the
Japanese wisdom, education and
mentality.
As with any comparative study, our
author explores both the common and
the opposite characteristics of the two
folklores under analysis, refering to the
Romanian and Japanese exterior
physical life as well as to the two
countries’psychology.
*
*
In order to achieve her purpose,
Sandra-Lucia Istrate organizes the book
in eight parts: Forword, three main
chapters, a Conlusion, one list of
Japanese proverbs which have or may
have a Romanian equivalent, one list of
those who don’t, and the Bibliography.
The examples she chooses are from the
years 1955-2005 and are approached
both linguistically and culturally.
As*she argues from the start,
proverbs are very difficult to analyze
even the most famous ones:
If we analyzed the proverb “Cine fură azi
un ou, mâine va fura un bou” (He that will
steal an egg will steal an ox) […] The
historian might tell us when robbery was
so striking that they started to write about
it in the history annals, the psychologist
may explain us what robbery once meant
and what caused it, the philosopher might
find unsuspected meanings beyond the
*
< John Dickinson: The Liberty Song – 1768 - “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans
all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!”; Patrick Henry: public speech – 1799 - “Let us trust
God, and our better judgment to set us right hereafter. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not
split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.”
**
Romanian and Japanese Folklore. Proverbs
***
Hyperion University
134
words, the literary critic and the linguist
can give us valuable information
regarding the structure of this proverb and
how it ended up in this form, the priest
may tell us how this crime was punished
when the Bible meant every person’s
essential reading, and the old man’s
experience may clarify to what extent the
theoretical or the written elements
correspond to reality and when he actually
applied this proverb. (my translation)
(Istrate 7-8)
In her attempts to define the
proverb, Sandra-Lucia Istrate starts
with a survey of Romanian and
Japanese folkloristic reasearch from the
last fifty years, continues with
explanations regarding the contextual
nature of the proverb, and ends with the
comparative perspective as such,
choosing the relationship between the
man and his physical environment on
the one side, and his social
environment on the other, all three
chapters
being
powdered
with
important theoretical concepts.
Thus, the first chapter informs us
about the origins and the evolution of
the proverb, from Hesiod (9th century
BC) to Homer in Greece and to 19th
century Romania and the bulding of its
national identity. Major concept here is
the Greek ‘paroemiology’, that is, ‘the
science of proverbs’, followed by
several definitions of the proverb as
such, Constantin Negreanu’s one
among them, plus an attempt to
distinguish the proverb from the
“saying”. An important point here is
the division of the Romanian proverb in
several categories according to style
and structure: sayings, imperative
proverbs, proverbs as such, proverbs
expressed in dialogue, metaphor
proverbs with emphasis on their
Sorina GEORGESCU
constitutive elements (general-particular, symbolic/multiple connotetion,
simple terms, syntactic stereotypy,
nucleus, intonation, rhythm, archaic
grammar, the use of the present tense
and of the imperative). Our author’s
major contribution here is the introduction of the Japanese “kotowaza”,
which may be divided in “short
saying”, “idiom” and “four-characters
idiom” as well as Kunio Yamagita’s
“Center vs Periphery” theory:
New words are created in the cultural
centres, often synonymous, which are
taken, step by step, by the periphery and
the non-cultural centres, in wave-like
structures, which function as the capillary
vessels, crossing an interface (here, the
geographical area), among fluids (here,
language users), the dynamics (here, the
result) being dominated by the effects of
the surface pressure (here, the distance,
the level of culture etc) (my translation).
(Istrate 45)
She applies this theory to one
Romanian and one Japanese proverb,
while the rest of the chapter is
dedicated
to
parallel
situations
regarding the types of style and
structure mentioned above, a first
compelling and convinging instance of
how similar can two completely
different cultures/folklores can be:
For ‘Pielea rea şi răpănoasă ori o bate, ori
o lasă’ (Same thing whether you beat or
ignore the evil and scabby skin), we have
an additional element, the ‘răpănoasă”, a
Moldavian regionalism. If the proverb had
been born in Banat, ‘răpănoasă’ would
have been replaced by ‘buboasă’ […] For
instance, the proverb ‘Katatsumuri no
tsuno arasoi’ (Snails lock their horns),
which means an insignificant quarrel for
an insignificant matter, is mostly used
with the word ‘katatsumuri’ (snail)
regardless of the area. Still, we can also
find the proverb ‘Mamai no tsuno arasoi’
(‘mamai’, melc) (translation mine) (Istrate
48)14.
The second chapter characterizes the
proverb, in general, in terms of three
main contexts: genetic (decoding),
generic (how we use it) and locutionary
(its form). That is, when analysing a
proverb, we need to know the moment
and reason of its birth and its possible
source, i.e, how it was influenced by
spirituality, traditions, religion, a
scholarly, oral or professional environment (cultural-genetic context), when it
can best fulfil its role, i.e, as advice,
guide, general truths, social consensus
(situational-generic context) and when
14
Romania: Buturuga mică răstoarnă
carul mare (A small leak will sink a great
ship)/ Japan: Iwanu ga hana (Silence is
flower) (metaphor); Romania: Găina care
cânta nu ouă (You cackle often, but never lay
an egg)/ Japan: Ōma mo tsumasugu (Even a
stallion can shake) (simple terms); Romania:
Cine munceşte hrană agoniseşte (He who
works earns food/ No cross, crown)/ Japan:
Hataraku hito taberu hito (He who works,
eats) (no connotation); Romania: Cine
împarte azi, parte-şi face mâine (He who
shares today, will produce his own share
tomorrow)/Japan: Yoru neru hito asa sakana
nai (He who sleeps in the evening will not
have fish in the morning) (connotation);
Romania: Unde nu-i cap, vai de picioare
(Woe to the mule that sees not her master/
Woe to the feet that have no had)/ Japan: Nō
nai atama mo itakunai (Where there is no
brain, there is no headache) (syntactic
stereotypy); Romania: În copacul fără poame,
nimeni nu aruncă cu piatra (Nobody throws
stones at the tree without fruit)/ Japan:
Rikuchi ni yaki mo inai (Not even a goat on
the barren land) (central nucleus – flora/
fauna)
135
we should best say it in order to send
the
right
message
(functionallocutionary context): life-matters guide,
methods of consolation, practical
advice, rules for behaviour, call to
action, teachings.
Sandra-Lucia Istrate also decomposes the proverb in its structural
elements and sees their collective
nature, their orality, anonimity and the
tradition-inovation relationship as well
as their function of expressing indisputable truths. She sees concise and
suggestive, stereotypical wording,
expositive terms and various types of
conclusions: direct, indirect, preference-like and advice-imperative conclusions. She also sees figures of speech,
verse, folkloric syntax, key terms from
life, history, nature, divinity or
concrete/tangible elements, irony,
satire, humour, grotesque, ridicule,
paradox. Various relationships such as
‘big-small’, ‘love-beauty’, ‘causeeffect’,
‘action-response’,
‘manwoman’,
‘artisan-craft’,
‘parentschildren’ plus the ‘ethno-fields’ theory
derived from Constantin Negreanu
make another important element in the
composition of the proverbs.
Speaking about structure and meaning, she sees proverbs with identical
expressions (tautological proverbs),
proverbs expressing a repeated experience, general attitudes, behaviors and
reactions, philosophical meditations,
moral/educational principles, historical
and social events, particularities of a
certain era and proverbs inspired by
concrete
happenings,
scholarly,
folkloric and ethnographic literature.
She also sees remains of lost anecdotes,
fables, traditions and legends, song
refrains. As themes, she discovers
136
‘death’, ‘life’, ‘luck’, ‘fear’, ‘perseverance’, ‘the order of things/events as it
should be’, the ‘human being’, ‘equality’, ‘inequality’, ‘laziness’, ‘injustice’,
‘exploitation’, the ‘rich-poor’ relationship,
‘money’,
‘cowardness’,
‘rebellion’, ‘church’, ‘faith’, ‘friendship’, ‘education’.
Therefore, the chapter concludes,
both countries feature proverbs that
have circulated, in translation, through
the whole world, Japan included, such
as those taken from the Bible, the
Antiquity and the Greek and Roman
classics. In both countries proverbs are
conditioned by the repetition of new,
simlar experiences and are characterized by the same linguistic contexts
– idiomatic, verbal and extra-verbal
(Eugen Coşeriu), locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary (J. Austin –
speech acts theory)- and share the same
three levels: situational, communicational, conclusive (J. Austin – speech
acts theory).
Finally, one of the most fascinating
moments in this book, the third/last
chapter compares two important
categories of proverbs from Romania
and Japan: “the man and the physical
environment” and “the man and the
social environment”.
In the first case, we have the
pleasure to discover the animals that
populate the proverbs, as well as their
meanings. Thus, we have mamals: the
tiger (Japan: force, savagery, scarry,
superiority, power), the wolf (Romania:
cunning, evil, hypocrite, enemy, keen
hearing, greedy, negative solidarity, the
fear of consequence, frienship/ Japan:
lack o honeasty, hypocrisy, falshood),
the lion (Romania: power and courage,
superiority), the cow (Romania: abused
Sorina GEORGESCU
animal, stupidity, insult towards a
woman/ Japan: perseverance, slow
motion-slow progress, patience), the
horse (Romania: harassed, worn out
person, impossible things, rapidity,
diligence, intelligence, comic/ Japan:
superior man, personality, energy,
habitude, reliable person, flexibility),
the dog (Romania: loyal friend, an
animal on the watch, fear, evil man,
barking, trouble, uselessness, selfishness/ Japan: fear, coward, loyalty,
obedience, fidelity). We have birds: the
goose (Romania stupidity/ Japan: the
wilde gander – normality, a hard to
obtain thing, order and hierarchy), the
turkey hen (Romania: stupidity), the
peacock (Romania: stupidity), the crow
(Romania: stupidity/ Japan: incapable,
overestimate), the hen (Romania:
stupidity, much ado about nothing,
diligence, life experience), the falcon
(Japan: superiority, dignity, power,
ability, energy, wisdom, cleverness),
the swallow (Japan: small, weak), the
sparrow-hawk (Japan: inferior raptor,
as opposed to the falcon); the crane and
the cormorant (Japan: happiness,
prosperity, longevity, fidelity, peace,
delicacy, gentleness, precios thing), the
pheasant (beautiful but fool, stupid,
dirty legs). We have fish, water
animals, insects, reptiles: the fish
(Romania: bad beginning-bad end, bad
education, to know exaclty what to do,
effort, abundance/ Japan: the bream –
very appeciated, the carp – courage,
power, perseverance; the sardine –
something insignificant; the loach –
remedy against extreme heat); the
octopus (Japan: wasteful), the crayfish
(what is strange for us, is natural for it);
the snake (Romania: dangerous, lousy,
mean/ Japan: luck, born predatory,
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dangerous); the frog (Romania and
Japan: ordinary man, stupidity, it
doesn’t know its place); the bee
(Romania and Japan: diligence, sting);
the ant (Romania and Japan: small,
weak, insignificant – very significant in
group); the fly (Romania and Japan:
inferior). Nature as lanscape is made
here by the tree (Romania: don’t trust
what others say, power and protection),
the moss (Japan: change, dynamism,
movement); the water, the fire, the
wind and the cosmic elements.
In the second case, proverbs in both
countries refer to responsibilties in the
parents-children
relationship,
to
exaggerated love, to the similarities
between parents and children, to the
men-woman/ husband-wife relationships, to friendship, professions,
nationnalities and, in the Japanese
folklore, we have the very positive
image of the samurai.
I will conclude this review with
another quotation from Sandra-Lucia
Istrate, this time, from the back cover, a
quotation which also justifies my own
choice for the title of this study: “I hope
my book could actually bring together
two seemingly diametrically opposed
civilizations and cultures, which still
share the same existential nucleus
characteristic of the entire mankind”.
WORKS CITED
Istrate, Sandra-Lucia. Folclor românesc şi japonez. Proverbe. Bucureşti: Editura Victor,
2013. Print.
“United we stand, divided we fall”. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_we_stand,
_divided_we_fall
2
Sorina GEORGESCU
3
Redactor : Elena DIATCU
Tehnoredactor : Mihaela PASCHIA
Bun de tipar : 20.XI.2013. Format: 16/70 × 100.
Coli de tipar: 9.
Tipografia Editurii VICTOR
Bucureşti, Calea Călăraşilor 169
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