From the Art de Dictier to the Poetic Art: The Lyrical Voice

Eustache Deschamps writes in 1392 his Art de Dictier, an art of writing (ars dictandi) and, according to its added title, an art of “making songs, balads, virelais and rondeaux.” He introduces it, therefore, as a versification treatise that is exemplary for his generation of nonmusician poets, unlike Machaut, his most probable initiator into metrics. In so doing he introduces the concept of natural music, a genre proper to inspire poets for whom lyrical musicality is entirely produced by poetic language alone. Without perceiving, perhaps, the novelty of this poetic aesthetics, he thus opens the avenue for a new poetry, freed from Rhetorics and from added music, more precisely for a poetic art.

An Immobile Nomad: “the Peasant from the Danube”

European writer of Romanian origin, Vintila Horia (1915-1992) - Goncourt Prize in 1960 for the novel Dieu est né enexil - was a truly awakened consciousness of his time. Wherever he was - in Bucharest or Florence, Buenos Aires or Paris, Rome or Madrid - this “polyglot nomad” (Jean-François-Malherbe) never left the unyielding values of the spirit and of knowledge. His work of literary epistemology, hisnovelistic creation - fed by exile, love and by the divine -, as well as the Journal d’un paysan du Danube (1966), stand as testimony. Focal point of my approach, this text sheds light on the metaphysical realm of a way of thinking in which the undivided man (a double-faced reality: big infinity /small infinity) and the man to come are one and the same. Since for the exiled VintilaHoria,”the peasant from the Danube” is “celui dans lequel ce qui fut rencontre celui qui sera, dans un espace-temps non-euclidien”, and his journal emphasizes this “rediscovery”, in spite of the dark times of history; an encounter in, through and beyond the broken grounds of science, art and philosophy, but nevertheless, deeply anchored in philosophy, art and science. Apparently, rediscovery and isolation of the same proportion; in fact, we are talking about an anagnorisis: the inner man and the outer man have never separated, despite the “microbial fauna of Kali Yuga” (“la faunemicrobienne du Kali Yuga”). “Nomade polyglotte” through his evolution, a result of flawless reflexive stability, Vintila Horia proves himself to be, at the same time, animmobile nomad; “the peasant from the Danube” is the plenary expression of this unusual simultaneity.

Sade and Infanticide in China: around La philosophie dans le boudoir and Justine

The present study will introduce us into a new world of Chinese imagology in the 18th century in France. Different from the negative side of the “sinophobes” such as Montesquieu and François Melon, Sade built a universe of a perfect China in which all crimes were justified. Nevertheless, as a libertine, his point of view was also different from the famous “sinophiles”, La Mothe Le Vayer, Pierre Bayle, Leibniz or Voltaire, for example. China as imagined by Sade was full of infanticide, murder and incest. The pictorial description he uses was largely drawn from the Jesuit literature of that time and some famous travelers’ “relation”, time of the famous theological quarrels about the ritual, easily interested Sade. But, was Sade faithful to these sources or not? Could a libertine moralize about public denunciation? By this foreign image as a mirror, what did he want to explain, taking China as an example, for his own culture? We will give the answers in this article.

Mother Nature in Silko’s Yellow Woman : An Ecofeminist Dimension

Ecofeminism is a term coined by Françoise D’Eubonne in her book Feminism or Death (1974) to show the affinities between ecology and feminism. Both women and nature are perceived as passive elements and like women who complain about patriarchal constraints, ecologists shed light on the impacts of human exploitation over nature which is affected by pollution. Some dimensions of ecofeminism are present in Leslie Marmon Silko’s The Yellow Woman (1981). The postmodern novel contains a female character who forges a link with the natural surroundings and is in a direct contact with some natural elements like plants and animals. What is specific about the heroine is that she escapes her matriarchal society and goes back to nature in order to reconstruct her identity. At the end of the narrative, the female narrator leaves the natural setting and goes back to her family to replay social roles. The present article sets out to study the importance of Mother Nature for the female narrator and to examine the affinities between Earth Mother and the female protagonist. The first part will offer a theoretical background about the basic principles of ecofeminism. Then, my analysis will touch upon the aspects of ecofeminism in the novel. However, the last part will focus on the way the narrator goes beyond her matriarchal culture and reshapes female identity.

Faults of the International Trade System: the Notion of Multilateralism in the Retreat

The indisputable success of the European integration project also prompted other regions of the world to follow suit. On the other side of coin, these regional blocs cultivated free trade within but remained protectionist vis-àvis the outside, thereby impeding the progress of the multilateral trade system. But also the soaring number of WTO member states accompanied by their incompatible interests, its ambitious agenda spanning over 20 diverse issues and, in particular, the single undertaking approach emerged as the Doha’s Round “stumbling blocks”. The utter dismay over the Doha’s Round deadlock has provoked countries to opt for alternative for a outside the WTO in their endeavor to expedite far-reaching trade liberalization. Besides the vast economic growth in Asia and the rise of international production networks, this urge for deeper integration represents one of the central root causes for the most recent wave of PTAs which has been gathering force over the course of the 21st century and increasingly puts the WTO’s raison d’être under critical scrutiny.

A New Unpublished Inscription Dedicated to Jupiter, Discovered in Ulpiana (Kosovo)

This article emphasizes the importance of an altar dedicated to Jupiter Sacrum find during the archaeological survey in the ancient city of Ulpiana in 2014. The epigraphy data stored on the altar clearly indicates the existence of the Fulgur cult in Ulpiana. Therefore, with this epithet, Jupiter it is proven for the first time in Ulpiana, but also in Kosovo. The discovery of the altar dedicated to Jupiter in Ulpiana only confirms the fact that Jupiter was worshiped and widely respected among the inhabitants of the city, and his appearance with the epithet Fulguri completes the corpus of epithets, with which he was worshiped and honoured in the city of Ulpiana.

Popular Culture and the Dilemma of Corruption in Nigeria

This paper examines the nexus between popular culture and the problem of corruption in Nigeria within the theoretical framework of the Socratic dictum that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. The paper argues that corruption is a social behavior that is propelled by popular culture and sustained by skewed application of logical thinking in critical decision making. Hence, the paper posits that formal education remains the bedrock upon which corruption can be curtailed and also equips people with logical tools to examine their actions as individuals and its consequences on the larger society.

Values, Leaders and Social Representations

When referring to values as “general principles of desirability” or as “social cohesion binders”, one should bear in mind that such notions contribute decisively to the shaping and crystallization of social representations. It would be improper to believe that there may be in-depth (“exhaustive”) studies upon people, ideas and events, as this approach disregards the fact that social representations have the capacity of being strongly anchored in the dynamics of relational processes, to the symbolic relationships specific to a given social field, to the values that constitute the eloquent expression of this dynamics and this specific field of research. An eloquent example in this respect is the way in which the social representation of leaders appears; data show that there is harmony between the image of power the leaders have or could have and the axiological dimensions of the group participating in the elaboration of such an image.

Journeys of Political Self-Discovery: The Writings of Miyamoto Yuriko and Panait Istrati from late 1920s Soviet Russia

This study reopens the question of the nature of political commitment and its causes during a time that drastically altered the history of the 20th century, the 1920s and 1930s. Focused largely on a body of texts produced by Japanese female writer Miyamoto Yuriko (1899-1951) who returned from a three-year long trip to the Soviet Union in late 1920s as a convinced communist, the study offers a comparison with communism renunciation writings produced by leftist Romanian French writer Panait Istrati (1894-1935), as well as other communist and fellow travelers who experienced the same Soviet realities as Miyamoto but with opposite outcomes, such as French writer André Gide (1869-1951). What made those members of the intelligentsia so passionately embrace or renounce certain political ideologies that ultimately changed the face of modern history?