CP – Number 1 (1996)

Issue:

CP, Number 1

Section:

No. 1 (1996)  Editorial

Abstract:

I want to survey British literary and cultural studies from the perspective of Northern Ireland since that is where I come from and teach and it is therefore not surprising that my view of the culture of the islands that used to be British is conditioned by that experience. This focus will necessarily involve a consideration of the concept of place which will also be the main linking issue of my article.

Keywords:

Northern Ireland, British culture, place (lessness), cultural and political unionism, cultural genesis and function.

Code [ID]:

CP199601V00S01A0001 [0004547]

Issue:

CP, Number 1

Section:

No. 1 (1996)  Editorial

Abstract:

Definitions of’ Irishness’ and ‘Englishness’ have been inflected by the historic relationship of Ireland with England, a relationship of the colonized and the colonizer. Accordingly, the two identities have been constructed within a colonial discourse which has always described the colonized in opposition to the colonizer, using imagery and language related to the concept of wilderness to define them as, variously, barbarian, pagan, ape, female, but always subordinate and inferior. More recent studies analysing the reciprocity of the possible relationships between the colonizer and the colonized identify their discursive positing to be so entrenched that no aspect of their identity can safely be assumed to be inherent. A re-thinking of such concepts as ‘Irishness’ and ‘Englishness’ is advocated in favour of an unprejudiced and pluralistic sense of identity which would transcend disabling stereotypes and oppositions. After attempting to examine the two main paradigms of definition that have fixed ‘Irishness’ in stereotyped readings of identity (referred to as barbarism and Celticism respectively), the paper concludes with reference to Brian Friel’s play, Dancing at Lughnasa, which brings into play given stereotypes of Irishness and raises questions related to ways of defining identity.

Keywords:

barbarism, Celticism, colonial discourse, contemporary Irish drama, cultural identity, Dancing at Lughnasa, Englishness, Friel, Brian, Irishness.

Code [ID]:

CP199601V00S01A0002 [0004548]

Issue:

CP, Number 1

Section:

No. 1 (1996)  Editorial

Abstract:

This paper is an attempt to show the state of Northern Irish culture and falls into two sections. Section 1 is written under the influence of an article published in The Guardian Weekend, by Ronan Bennett, where he makes a presentation of the situation of Irish culture in 1994. The study has become somewhat outdated, as the situation in Northern Ireland has considerably changed since 1994. Moreover, the article was followed by a series of replies, published by the same newspaper, which calls for further considerations, to bring the presentation up-to-date. Anyway, the underlying idea is that, in spite of the Troubles, Ulster culture still exists, although biased in many cases. In different regions of Northern Ulster artists show varieties of approaches in their works, due to political and religious influences. Section 2 is dedicated to an analysis of Brian Friel’s play Translations, where political interpretations become the basis fora link between 19th century Ireland and after-war Ulster. In essence, the events of 1830 (mapping the country) show their destructive effects in the lives of the characters then, and, by extrapolation, today, as well.

Keywords:

Ireland, Ulster, the Troubles, violence, (non)-involvement, drama, Catholics, Protestants, paramilitaries, mapping.

Code [ID]:

CP199601V00S01A0003 [0004549]

Issue:

CP, Number 1

Section:

No. 1 (1996)  Editorial

Abstract:

Drawing its sap from the famous Italian commedia dell’arte, the English pantomime is to this day a usual type of entertainment for young and old, especially at Christmas time, when the borderline between the two basic age groups becomes flexible. A spoken event since the mid-18-th century, the panto became an extremely popular dramatic species in Victorian England including music, dancing and jokes, all based on a fairly well-known fairy tale. Today’s panto is no less delightful and seems to be growing into a favourite Christmas time amusement again.

Keywords:

arranger, burlesque, comic, Harlequin(ade), hotchpotch, improvisation, joke, mask/masque/masquerade, pantomime, tableau vivant, transformation.

Code [ID]:

CP199601V00S01A0004 [0004550]

Issue:

CP, Number 1

Section:

No. 1 (1996)  Editorial

Abstract:

Angela Carter’s version of The Little Red Riding Hood points to a redefinition of identity in a feminist perspective as she subverts the patriarchal pattern of the traditional tale. The main aim of this approach is to reveal the ambivalence and the duplicity of the modern mind, for the writer introduces various types of ambiguity such as the werewolf (human / beastly nature), the girl warrior (female stealing male power), the vampire text (the war of variants: original versus copy), the crossroads (meeting place of alternatives of being), prosperity (culture feeding on culture).

Keywords:

shadow, pleasure principle, vampire text, father-figure, male seducer, crossroads, girl-warrior, werewolf, anticlimax, prosperity.

Code [ID]:

CP199601V00S01A0005 [0004551]

Issue:

CP, Number 1

Section:

No. 1 (1996)  Editorial

Abstract:

In the 1990 collection of essays The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue, Hubert Butler’s ideas about the last 80 years or so of (Irish) history oscillate between autobiography and political testimony, taking the little community as the minimal unit for explaining culture in its dynamics as struggle, at the level of facts and mentalities, and as debate at the level of the commentary about the facts and mentalities. Moving to and fro in an ideal space between politics and literature, Butler’s texts surprisingly touch, without naming them so, on nearly all our fashionable cultural analysis topics:power in society and the official ideology and propaganda of the religious, political or ethnic groups, plus the means of their subversion through intellectual, economic, spiritual initiatives of the community.

Keywords:

the real (village) community, cultural bridges (in Ireland), versions of nationalism, the remnant in the native land, the Anglo-Irish, the Catholic, the Protestant, the press.

Code [ID]:

CP199601V00S01A0006 [0004552]

Issue:

CP, Number 1

Section:

No. 1 (1996)  Editorial

Abstract:

This paper discusses one of the hot issues of contemporary literature: popular literature as an academic subject and its relation to postmodernism. After defining both terms, the author shows that the distance between popular and ‘high’ literature has diminished during the past decades and that this fact has been acknowledged and referred to by celebrated critics and philosophers, which is the last in a line of arguments in favour of the legitimacy and topicality of the matter.

Keywords:

popular literature, modernism, postmodernism, the canon, hyperrealism, taste, impact, response analysis, topicality.

Code [ID]:

CP199601V00S01A0007 [0004553]

Issue:

CP, Number 1

Section:

No. 1 (1996)  Editorial

Abstract:

The purpose of the paper is not to describe and analyse these three concepts – although such an enterprise could be useful because they might prove their efficiency as sensitive indicators of all the changes in modern societies – but, by discovering their overlapping areas, to raise the students’ awareness of the spiritual, intellectual and even material values of a nation on the one hand and of the artistic values of literary works on the other hand. The study of autobiographical texts reveals the existence of some stylistic patterns which may constitute the” food” for fruitful intercultural studies within the general framework of the teaching of foreign languages.

Keywords:

autobiography, culture, education, stylistic pattern, Britishness, Romanianness, cultural reading, Thomas, D, , Creanga, I.

Code [ID]:

CP199601V00S01A0008 [0004554]