The Chronicle of John of Nikiu: Its Arabic Vorlage and Its Afterlife in Ethiopia

The Chronicle of John of Nikiu is an important historiographical text which was most probably composed in Coptic but only survives in its Ethiopic translation, executed from an Arabic intermediate version. Although none of the witnesses to the earlier stages of the text transmission has been found so far, the Ethiopic version offers some material which allows for speculations on the possible text transformation in the course of time. The impact of the Chronicle on the literary production of Ethiopia documents a peculiar process of text reception.

Ressocialização de Presos pela Produção Literária

This article aims to analyze the resocialization of prisoners through literary production. The population crisis plaguing the Brazilian penitentiary system is a reality. One of the main factors contributing to the high occupancy rate of prisons is the high rate of recidivism. This situation denotes the failure of current public policies for the rehabilitation of inmates, who do not satisfactorily fulfill their mission. In this context, it is worth highlighting the lack of incentives on the part of our legislation, and public authorities, for literary production by those who are confined to prison. The intellectual activity promoted by the production of literary works requires, in its most varied nuances, a level of knowledge and awareness on the part of the author, which, by itself, requires greater engagement on the part of the one who sets out to express his thoughts. Because it requires more commitment, it is natural that these people’s propensity for intellectual life becomes more natural. Precisely for this reason, the hypothesis raised in this work is that the incentive to literary production, in Brazilian prisons, would help in the re-socialization of prisoners. In the search for answers to the formulated hypothesis, bibliographic research was adopted as a research method. The results found confirmed the raised hypothesis, demonstrating that the correct incentive to literary production could be an agent of transformation in prison, promoting the adequate resocialization of prisoners through intellectual production.

Shaping the Canon. The International Profile of Viața Românească (1906-1916)

The present paper aims to investigate the circulation of foreign cultural input in one of the most important Romanian literary periodicals of the prewar era. The main focus of the present research revolves around the means by which the editorial group of Viața Românească (The Romanian Life), have managed to create an international dialogue oriented towards Western models that helped shape the modernization of both the autochthonous literary production and the critical or theoretical national systems. Generally considered a rather reactionary community, with nationalistic tendencies, the aforementioned literary group has engaged in many occasions into transplanting foreign theoretical and critical models. The amplitude of these communications and its quite remarkable effects on the Romanian cultural scene may still come as a surprise. By means of quantitative and digital methods, the present proposal attempts to measure and investigate this very particular process.

Louis Cheikho and the Christianization of Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Ascetic Poetry

Using the Jesuit scholar Louis Cheikho’s (1859–1927) work on pre-Islamic and early Islamic ascetic poetry as a focal point, this article examines two strategies which contemporary and later scholars accused Cheikho of using to falsify the Arabic literary heritage. Cheikho de-Islamized Arabic language texts through editorial interventions, as evinced by his edition of the Dīwān of the Abbasid ascetic poet Abū al-ʿAtāhiya. Furthermore, he overtly laid claim to the past by Christianizing pre-Islamic poetry. In his work al-Naṣrāniyya wa-ādābuhā bayna ʿarab al-jāhiliyya, Cheikho tried to establish the “origins” of Arabic cultural and literary production in Christianity. He did so in response to Arab and European intellectuals who challenged the Christian contribution to Arabic. Above all, he rejected racist ideas embedded in nineteenth-century European philology, notably the denigration of Semitic languages and their speakers based on the “Aryan”/“Semite” binary in Ernest Renan’s (1823–1892) work.

W. G. Sebald: reino dos mortos e espetáculo midiático | W. G. Sebald: realm of the dead and mediatic spectacle

O objetivo do artigo é investigar as possíveis relações entre a reflexão teórica de Friedrich Kittler (especialmente em seu livro Grammophon Film Typewriter) e a produção literária de W. G. Sebald (especialmente seu último romance, Austerlitz). Minha hipótese é que Sebald mescla dois registros diagnosticados por Kittler: acessa o “reino dos mortos” (codificado com base nos resíduos materiais das fotografias) a partir tanto do paradigma técnico-midiático inaugurado com o gramofone, o filme e a máquina de escrever quanto do paradigma anterior, literário e alucinatório, apreendido por Kittler nas obras de Poe e Balzac, entre outros.Palavras-chave: W. G. Sebald. Friedrich Kittler. Mídia. Fotografia. Romance. AbstractThe aim of the article is to investigate possible contacts between Friedrich Kittler's theoretical reflection (especially in his book Grammophon Film Typewriter) and the literary production of W. G. Sebald (especially his latest novel, Austerlitz). My hypothesis is that Sebald merges two fields diagnosed by Kittler: he accesses the “realm of the dead” (coded from the material residues of photographs) from both the technical-media paradigm inaugurated with the “gramophone, film and typewriter” and from the previous paradigm, literary and hallucinatory, apprehended by Kittler in the works of Poe and Balzac, among others.Keywords: W. G. Sebald. Friedrich Kittler. Media. Photography. Novel.ORCIDhttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-8997-1174

The International Poetic and Cultural Manifestation “Ante Popovski – Ante’s quill” – a traditional event that is yet to become a synonym for the true values of the Macedonian literary reality

The text raises the question of the significance of literary manifestations for literary reality. The thesis is that the significance of a specific literary manifestation in this digital age is not predominantly conditioned by its format and how conventional or modern it is, but by whether its mission is primarily based on aesthetic and literary criteria and consequently, by its content – how much new impulses it gives to the literary life. As a confirmation of this perception, the text highlights the international poetic and cultural manifestation “Ante Popovski – Ante’s Quill”, which has been part of the Macedonian literary reality for four years. Although it is quite new, with an aspiration to become traditional manifestation, and although it is organized in a conventional format and program, without pretentious efforts for non-standard program contents, it is already recognizable on the Macedonian cultural map, as an event that simultaneously seeks to invest in the valorization and affirmation of the lasting values of the Macedonian culture, to promote the Macedonian literary production, to enable less affirmed authors to emerge from the shadows of living literary monuments and to encourage literary science. Moreover, the text analyzes and valorizes the achievements of this year’s edition of the manifestation. Particular emphasis is placed on the international scientific symposium which posed key and hitherto unactualized questions about the creative work of one of the greatest Macedonian authors of the 20th century – Ante Popovski. At the same time, the concept of the manifestation is analyzed, which is constantly evolving, enabling it to be an event that leaves a mark and can lead to happenings that will one day have to be written down in literary history.

Problém „mužského“ jazyka (na príklade básní Migleny Nikolčinej a Ireny Ivanovej)

The paper is devoted to the problem of the „male“ language which can be found in the works of two Bulgarian poets – Miglena Nikolchina and Irena Ivanova (better known by her pseudonym Rene Karabaš). The author associates them with the change that happens in literary criticism and the literary production itself after the 1990s. The author considers the synthesis of poetry and prose, poetry and theory as an intertextual „dialogue” through which is possible to analyze the texts of both poets. Thematically, the article focuses on the ways in which the woman gains „a right to have a voice“ rejecting her gender to take up the poet’s word and on how man appears to be a „quotation” in their works.

Language Politics in the Comparative Media Crucible

This chapter recounts the language politics of north India, with particular stress upon the heydays of Hindi nationalism, which wrested control of literary production from Urdu on behalf of the ‘Hindis’ of northern plains. Bhojpuri among other ‘tongues’ were therefore side-lined by the nationalist fervour. Tracing the trajectory of women’s folksongs, popular chapbooks and theatre troupes, the chapter reconstructs the resurgence of the vernaculars via audiocassettes, VCDs/DVDs and microSD cards. Electronic media thus absorbed the energies pushed out of the literate public sphere. The chapter also highlights the role played by a lateral-ness of address to unspool Bhojpuri from its ‘folk’ bearings and mount a mass address upon it. At the end, the chapter places the language politics of north India in relation to the Trojan horse of English, and the attendant struggle for the political existence of the vernacular linguistic communities.

Les textes francophones malgaches sont-ils hybrides?

Francophone literary production in Madagascar, although born out of a colonial context, has found its own voice in terms of the codes and themes it uses. It seeks to take its place in Francophone literature through comprehension based on a common language. However, the works written in French are informed by the cultural, social, spiritual and linguistic context of Madagascar. The resulting texts are full of allusions to prestigious literary genres, shared concerns and concepts whose comprehension is difficult for a readership which understands the words without understanding their cultural connotations. It is necessary to reflect on the specific task of the literary critic who may, whilst respecting the dynamics of a literary text, add annotations in the form of ‘cultural translations’. The aim would be not to smother a body of work, which must be allowed to maintain its own nuances, but to allow better knowledge of the works and to make more effective the intercultural exchanges which are part of contemporary globalisation.

Verses at the Court of the King: Shifts in the Historical Imagination of the Sanskrit Literary Tradition during the Second Millennium

This essay argues that the rise and circulation of large numbers of Sanskrit literary anthologies as well as story traditions about poets in the second millennium together index important changes in the ‘author-function’ within the Sanskrit literary tradition. While modern ‘empirical authorship’ and external referentiality in Sanskrit has long been deemed ‘elusive'by Western scholarship, the new forms of literary production in the second millennium suggest a distinct new interest in authorship among wider literary communities. This new ‘author-function’ indexed a shift in the perceptions of literary production and the literary tradition itself. Focusing on the famous sixteenth-century work known as the Bhojaprabandha as both an anthology as well as a storybook about poets, this essay further argues that the paradigmatic courts of kings like Vikramāditya and Bhoja (but particularly the latter), placed not in historical time but in an archaic temporality, became the mise en scène for the figure of the poet in the second-millennium literary imagination. They were courts where the finest poets of the tradition appeared and where their virtuosity could be savored and reflected upon by generations of readers.