Philologia
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Philologia is a peer-reviewed academic journal established by scholars at Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, in 2003. The journal welcomes articles, critical and theoretical essays, empirically-based analyses, book reviews, conference reports and translations related to the studies of language, linguistics, applied linguistics, literature, culture, translatology, social science. Various subfields of the said sciences may also be analyzed.
All papers are evaluated in a double-blind fashion by two external reviewers who are experts in the relevant field. The contributions are required to be solidly anchored in theory and methodology (qualitative or quantitative). They may be of interdisciplinary nature.
Pages
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- Breaks in Thematic Progression
- This article examines Daneš’ (1974) thematic progression in editorial articles from the British newspapers The Sun and The Times. It outlines the need for a different type of progression category in cases where the choice of theme precludes the functioning of any of Daneš’ types. Whilst his threefold model (sometimes expanded to a four or five- fold model) is recognised as the normal or ‘unmarked’ means of progressing a written text, there appears to be a major theoretical lacuna, namely what happens when theme is not only something other than the subject, but something grammatically incapable of functioning as subject of a clause or sentence. To remedy this situation a category of ‘breaks’ (in thematic progression) is proposed. Breaks are thematised elements that cannot be subjects or participants in a text and may include elements functioning as exclamatives, WH- and polar interrogatives, verb groups, it and there predicates and bound clauses, as well as elliptical ‘annex’ themes. Breaks appear to lend themselves well to changes in the rhetorical direction of a text and are typically employed for evaluative purposes. Examples from The Sun and The Times are discussed and tentative conclusions regarding the rhetorical strategies behind them are offered.
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- Canadian English
- The differences between the Canadian and American variations of English are not clearly perceptible to the un/trained ear, as the two exhibit a considerable degree of homogeneity. We can account for this phenomenon by discussing several criteria such as historical development, geographical distribution, morphosyntax, phonology and lexicon. This paper will serve as a guide to the current similarities as well as dissimilarities Canadian English has with American English and to a lesser extent British English.
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- Center-periphery, equality-inequality, American dream and consumerism in Paul Auster’s Timbuktu (1999)
- Although in his novel Timbuktu Auster seems to use rather traditional narrative techniques, the narrative from the point of view of a dog represents a fantastic element that evokes doubts about the authenticity of the image of reality mediated through this character. Auster’s construction of the narrative in this novel is reminiscent of the fairy tale, which requires a sensibility that undermines belief in the mimetic representation of reality. My paper analyzes Auster’s construction of reality, his use of fantastic and metafictional elements and the way metafictional narrative techniques, imagination, fantasy and storytelling create an alternative space to the rational and consumerist approach to the world which the characters in the novel are influenced by. This article also deals with Auster’s symbolic treatment of the failure of the American Dream as symbolically expressed through his depiction of the relationships between the center and periphery. Dealing with Paul Auster’s fiction, many critics emphasize the postmodern character of his work, but not so many of them have commented on his depiction of marginal characters and their symbolic connection to the idea of the American Dream.1 I will not, therefore, focus on analysis of the manifestation of postmodernism in this novel. In this paper I will focus on Auster’s use of the imagery of the center and the periphery, equality and inequality, and the way he uses them to show the inadequacy of one of the most important myths related to American cultural identity— the American Dream. Further, I will explore Auster’s depiction of the nature of the postmodern cultural condition influenced by media, popular culture and consumerism.
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- Changing Motifs in Arthurian Literature
- The latest Arthurian Literature is changing the ideas we had about its characters, motifs and main important adventures and chapters. Old topics and characters, long-forgotten since the medieval tradition, are back in the Arthurian universe. More important, there is a new view on religion, contemptuous at times, a different reshaping of characters, and a new perspective of what we could consider Arthurian minorities. This article analyses some of these changes as represented in some of the most representative texts in modern Arthuriana and studies them from a historical, cultural and comparative perspective.
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- Chaos in the novel, the novel in the chaos
- The aim of this paper is to point to the specific synthesis of autobiographical, non-fictional, and fictional material in literary works of Herman Melville in which, according to the romantic postulates, the affirmation of different generic conceptions is manifested. The special concentration of the paper is on the early period in Melville’s career in which the first novel, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, presents the perfect example of the above stated. In this novel the author parodies the romance as a genre and, after a process of modification, ‘places’ it into the inner construction of his literary texts, where it succumbs once more to the specific laws and especially the horizon of expectation of the reading public in Melville’s time. The manifestations of the generic hibridity are evident on many layers of the text.
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- Collaborative Co-existence
- The following paper focuses on contemporary Sara Baume’s, Irish novelist’s debut novel, Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither (2015). It examines how Baume’s uses language to create an experimental narrative that doesn’t revolve around a fast-moving and dramatic plot yet forces the reader into the middle of the experience. Her meticulously descriptive language allows the reader to become closely tied to the experiencing body and see the landscape, the animal world, and the visceral means that it delivers to the body. The essay also analyses the innovative ways through which the novel reexamines the animal-human bond, urging a newly imagined co-existence in our current Anthropocene era. Baume touches upon crucial ethical topics and raises important questions about the possibility of a more harmonious bond between humans and the natural world.
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- Commonsensical Choices in John Logan's Red
- John Logan, a contemporary American playwright, centred his play on Mark Rothko, one of the greatest American abstract expressionist painters. The two-character play highlights the generation gap and centres on the moment when Rothko, who had been commissioned to create 35 murals for the walls of the Four Seasons restaurant, chooses to turn down the offer. The presentation unfolds into two directions: the identification of the ingredients Logan uses in the play to build a character with a convincing dilemma and the analysis of whether the choice Rothko makes is a commonsensical one or not.