CP – Number 11 (2006)

Issue:

CP, Number 11

Section:

No. 11 (2006)  Editorial

Abstract:

The article means to approach the ideological dimension of “Zorro”, the Mexican-American Early Californian Robin Hood avatar, primarily created as a literary character by dime novel and newspaper serial writer Johnston Mc Culley, for the All Story Walky Magazine, in 1919, in Los Angeles, and published regularly as The Curse of Capistrano, soon to be turned into a movie. The narrative will be seen as an answer to the political needs of a budding regional entity and as the provider of a new syncretic identity.

Our hypothesis will be that a pliable historic object, a caballero who could appear as a trinity made up of three different individuals, all secessionist Mexican politicos of the California of the 1830ies, has been adapted if not transformed, at least slanted, in accordance with a pervasive or smoothly persuasive ideology. It would contribute to reassure the Anglo consensus about its right to own the coveted territory of California, would morally justify the 1848 legal dispossession of Mexico, legitimize hegemonic claims by subtly inventing a culprit: distant, aristocratic Spain, rather than closer Mexico, to be opposed to democratic California, emblematic of a recently empowered United States.

Keywords:

Zorro, (cultural) identity, ideological dimension, icon, All Story Walky Magazine, cinematography, bi-culturalism.

Code [ID]:

CP200611V00S01A0001 [0002089]

Issue:

CP, Number 11

Section:

No. 11 (2006)  Editorial

Abstract:

This article is concerned with the dramatic character, an aesthetically constructed reality. It is generally agreed that the term is a complex one. It has taken on connotations of key words from other discourses, chiefly the philosophical and psychological/ psychoanalytical ones. Consequently, this article refers to such terms as personality, identity, self, character as a personal programme for converting wishes into deeds, all of them valid components of a working anatomy of dramatic character. It also runs over fine distinctions – character-actant, character-actor, character-role – which clearly reveal the deep structure of the text, the main conflicts of the play, and character classifications – mono vs. multidimensional characters, types and individuals – which bring to the fore the main features of the protagonists. Finally, there are suggested other means of character delineation: the meaning and connotations of the names, the use of objects and accessories with a symbolic value.

Keywords:

dramatic character, figure, personality, identity, actant-actor-role, type.

Code [ID]:

CP200611V00S01A0002 [0002090]

Issue:

CP, Number 11

Section:

No. 11 (2006)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper focuses on aspects such as: the interaction text, context, reader; cultural identities of readers; identity of text; linguistic identity/ identities of characters; authority; the act of reading; all of them, in a process of continuous reconstructing if/and when observed from the height of the 21st century – an age when the crossing of borders (be they literal or metaphorical) makes full use of semiotic tools and strategies. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written at the crossroads of changing mentalities, attitudes and styles, offers an illustrative example of what moving across territories that might belong to or might be written by or read by (an)other(s) means. Telling of pilgrims (author, invented character or real being, reader; or, in other words, producer, object and consumer) and their tales turns into an act of weaving a text whose warps and wefts create the design of multiple cultural identities.

Keywords:

(semiotic) being, multiple cultural identities, pilgrim, ways of reading, (inter)text(uality), cultural context.

Code [ID]:

CP200611V00S01A0003 [0002091]

Issue:

CP, Number 11

Section:

No. 11 (2006)  Editorial

Abstract:

From the Greek satyr to the American Mickey Mouse and from the Chinese dragon to the Egyptian Sphinx, animals and animal/humans have come through human imagination into myth, legend and story. This combination or fusion of animal and human in literature presents a double signification. At the same time that our attention goes to the animality of the human, we may also entertain the human(al)ity of the animal.Besides blending of physical and psychological characteristics, these ancient and modern characters of world texts may embed authentic experiences of communion or communication between humans and animals. The texts may be understood as signifying the limits of both the human and the animal and the possibility of the humanimal. Humanimality signifies the fusion of human and animal which dissolves the ordinary dualism of human subject and animal object and allows for intersubjectivity unmarked by specific biological limitations. This kind of inter-subjectivity occurs in the contact of communication and is often an occasion for awe on the part of the human if not of the animal. We may understand such awesome communication as imitation, non-verbal cooperation, and as teaching and learning. Three poems by the author, reproduced in the Appendix, “The Ravens Fly Yet,” “Neighbors,” and “The Lesson,” provide the literary fields in which humanimal phenomena may appear.1

Keywords:

fusion, humanimality, communication, poetry, wilderness, imitation, non-verbal cooperation, teaching and learning.

Code [ID]:

CP200611V00S01A0004 [0002092]

Issue:

CP, Number 11

Section:

No. 11 (2006)  Editorial

Abstract:

In Samuel Richardson’s novel, the feminine body is treated as an object deprived of the liberty to choose for and act by itself. This has important consequences not only regarding the fictional development of the plot, but also related to the conflicting spatial relationships reflecting the eighteenth-century roles of socio-cultural domination and repression. Our paper highlights the discourse of confinement supported by the image of the body as an object of obsessive desire and oppression, as well as by the image of space as a psychological state.

Keywords:

body, virtue, object, confinement, abuse, bodily fragmentation, distance, spatial positioning.

Code [ID]:

CP200611V00S01A0005 [0002093]

Issue:

CP, Number 11

Section:

No. 11 (2006)  Editorial

Abstract:

This paper aims to call into attention the fact that the dynamics of the Viking Age Norse society and its cultural patterns, in dearth of adequate archaeological evidence available to a scholar, can be researched by means of analysing its literary heritage, preserved in the form of sagas. While I am far from arguing that this peculiar genre should be indiscriminately treated as a body of veritable records of events, I do make a claim that sagas can be considered to be vessels of Viking Age Norse values, beliefs, and particular outlook on the world, among many.

Keywords:

Viking Age, Norse community, saga, literature, language, culture, (ethnic) identity.

Code [ID]:

CP200611V00S01A0006 [0002094]

Issue:

CP, Number 11

Section:

No. 11 (2006)  Editorial

Abstract:

Depending on their perspective upon character, writers conceive it either as a construct structured upon different layers of traits, or as a “creature”, displaying human features. George Eliot’s characters can be portrayed in terms of traits which function as character indicators in the text. Literary portraits are indispensable to her presentation of character as a collection of physical, moral and behavioural traits. If we examine the interaction among various means of characterization, the result is different, according to whether “the indicators repeat the same trait in different ways, complement each other, partially overlap or conflict with each other.” (Ewen, 1971:24, apud Shlomith, R.K, 2002:38). What we intend to prove in this paper is that, in addition to their cognitive function, Eliot’s portraits (in Adam Bede or Daniel Deronda, for example) often have an exemplary function: they depict humanity not only as it is, but also as it should be” (Witemeyer, 1979).

Keywords:

character portrait, characterization, textual indicators, traits.

Code [ID]:

CP200611V00S01A0007 [0002095]

Issue:

CP, Number 11

Section:

No. 11 (2006)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper intends to follow and analyse the use of a widely recognised myth – that of the wandering Jew – brought this time within the temporal limits of the 20th century and the spatial coordinates of Dublin. The issues of creating a new space and time as the universe of his manifestation and that of analysing the character’s sense of history and religion are among the salient points of our work.

Keywords:

Jew, time (Bloomsday), space (Bloomusalem, Flowerville), history, sin.

Code [ID]:

CP200611V00S01A0008 [0002096]