Selbstpräsenz auf Tonband (András Ferenc Kovács: Öninterjú)

This paper investigates an early poem of a contemporary Hungarian (Transylvanian) poet András Kovács Ferenc. The poem outlines a poetic framework for the gesture of self-address, turned into a situation where the lyrical voice is interrupted by recording technology. The reading offered here tries to connect the lyrical proposition with the philosophical problem of self-presence. It further discusses political references in the poem that relate to the revolutionary events that took place in Romania in 1989.

De los muertos no siempre se habla bien: muestras de la ironía en los textos periodísticos sobre Hugo Chávez Frías

In the present paper, irony is perceived as a rhetorical strategy used to emphasize certain issues described in selected discourses. It goes beyond the scope of antiphrasis which was a traditional way of referring to irony. It is a pragmatic phenomenon and the context is crucial for its understanding. Since irony is a perfect tool for persuasion, it can be analyzed within press discourse. The present paper sets out to analyze instances of irony in press articles extracted from the Spanish newspaper El País published over a period of 30 days following the death of the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

Place, rôle et représentation de l’animal dans le roman Sans l’orang-outan (2007) d’Éric Chevillard

Animals occupy a central place in Chevillard’s oeuvre Sans l’orang-outan deals with animals’ place, roles, representations and relationships with humans. The novel depicts a chaotic and apocalyptic world, foreground as it does the disappearance of the last orangutans caused by the arrogant and insolent actions of people. Two aspects characterize Chevillard’s writing: the seriousness of the theme and the irony in its representation. The paper analyzes the numerous dimensions of the novel’s involvement in environmental problems through the reflection on the circumstance of animals. It also discusses the eschatological aspects of the environmental crisis. It is demonstrated that for Chevillard the question of biodiversity is also a question of aesthetics and imagination. The article also looks to show that the aim of adopting ethical and aesthetic stances is to encourage the reader to opt for responsible and life-preserving attitudes towards Earth’s ecosystem; and the raising ecological awareness as such.

Récit colonial allemand sur la région du Cross-river au Cameroun : pluri-référentialité, collection des savoirs ethnologiques et relations interculturelles – le cas de Urwald-Dokumente: Vier Jahre unter den Crossflussnegern Kameruns d’Alfred Mansfeld

On the basis of the colonial narrative of Alfred Mansfeld, the present article shows how the narrator manages to convey his knowledge about Cameroon’s Cross-river region. German colonial literature played a very active part in the media campaign for the dissemination of information about the colonies. Therefore, the colonial space became an object of interest (as a source of knowledge) for colonial writers. The presented intercultural reading makes it possible to outline the different visions of cultural contact that existed between the colonizer and the natives.

La ville comme espace d’identités multiples dans Surtout ne te retourne pas de Maïssa Bey

This paper aims to analyze the extent to which Maïssa Bey in her novel Surtout ne te retourne pas features actual events relating to the earthquake that shook the city of Boumerdes in 2003. She describes its tragic implications for the protagonist of the story, who seeks to find her identity in a city reeling from a natural disaster. In this sense, the paper investigates the novel in terms of a quest for both a lost Boumerdes and the urban identity of the protagonist herself.

„Mordercy? To byli ci z SS.” O micie niewinnego Wehrmachtu na marginesie powieści Ulli Hahn Unscharfe Bilder (,Nieostre zdjęcia’, 2003)

This article looks at the idea of the “Clean Wehrmacht”, as opposed to the SS, who were implicated in the mass executions of Jews and other civilians in the East. This narrative is proven wrong in Ulla Hahn’s Unscharfe Bilder wherein an exhibition on the Wehrmacht exposes the crimes of its soldiers. The main protagonist in Ulla Hahn’s novel Unscharfe Bilder recognizes in one of the photos a character strikingly similar to her father, and so she starts questioning him about his past. He insists that the Wehrmacht was a regular German army and tries to put individual cases into perspective. It turns out that the historical of the Wehrmacht is not so clear.

„Schriftstellerischer“ Kampf gegen antipolnische Stereotype? Thomas Manns Interview für La Pologne Littéraire

In this article, an interview that Thomas Mann gave to the magazine La Pologne Littéraire in April 1927 is carefully analyzed in the context of Polish-German relations. At the time, the public opinion of the Weimar Republic was dominated by anti-Polish stereotypes. In the analyzed interview, Mann looks to show a different face of Poland, depicting it as a country with a rich cultural heritage that is insufficiently known in Germany. His fight against anti-Polish stereotypes would not yield any visible results but his article still remains an engaging testimony of Polish-German dialogue.

Baroness Emma Orczy’s Divided Loyalties in the 1910s and 20s

The aim of this article is to examine the ambivalent attitudes of the British-Hungarian popular writer Baroness Emma Orczy towards involvement in the Great War. In the 1910s Orczy participated in British military recruitment drives, whilst also maintaining cultural ties with her homeland of Hungary. The questions this study attempts to answer are: what kind of strategies of identification did Orczy employ in order to come to terms with supporting both the Allies and the Central Powers? And: whether through her contrasting stances the operation of a hybrid identity can be captured.

La présence de la nuit dans Wakolda de Lucía Puenzo

This paper analyzes the presence and significance of the night in the novel Wakolda by Lucía Puenzo and also in the film adaptation of the text. The novel presents the short period during which the former Auschwitz extermination camp doctor, Josef Mengele, supposedly spent under the name of Helmut Gregor in Bariloche in Argentina. It is clear that there is no shortage of expressions linked to night when it comes to evoking the horrors committed by the Nazis. True to its etymology, the time between sunset and sunrise, is marked by the presence of darkness conducive to crimes. The paper thus links the night to the ideas of destruction, misfortune and death. The night is analyzed on three levels: as a singular space-temporal concept, as a symbol of criminal acts, and as a mirror of the sexual awakening of the character of Lilith.

La experiencia migrante en las crónicas de Gabriela Wiener

This article analyses a migrant’s experience – one that changes, and is fluid and dynamic – in the selected reportages by the Peruvian author Gabriela Wiener – El Gran Viaje, Teléfono malogrado conmigo misma and Del lado de acá y del lado de allá. Following the concept of the vagabond as coined by Zygmunt Bauman, we show how the migrant status of the narrator-protagonist changes. We argue that this process takes place at the level each of given space: Peru – fades away, and Barcelona, at first a hostile place, becomes the place where she manages to forge her identity as a writer. To illustrate this point, we make recourse to the theories of Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault and César Aira.