Periphrastic construction andar a + infinitive – didactic issues in the case of Polish students

The article attempts to highlight the problems in teaching and learning of one Portuguese periphrastic aspect construction. The author will try to present the problem related to multiple possible meanings of the periphrasis as well as factors influencing the meaning. In addition, various Portuguese grammar manuals will be analysed for the presence of information regarding the periphrasis andar a + infinitive to determine whether the information is complete enough for the pupils to use the periphrasis in the proper context.

The body and its perception in the French language: From the concept of simplicity/simplification to the metaphorical phenomenon

The article focuses on the analysis of the concept of simplicity/simplification in relation to the human body in the metaphorical dimension. First, the problem was presented on three reference planes: physical, functional and spatial parameters. Secondly, a detailed analysis of a static body framed in a three-dimensional view was performed. Scientific reflection has shown the interesting metaphorical effect of orientation high & low, behind & before and right & left in the process of creating spatial lexis, although of varying extent.

Linguistic and extralinguistic problems in the Spanish and Italian translations of the novel L’élégance du hérisson by Muriel Barbery. A case study

Ever since Translatology became a discipline of its own, separated from Linguistics, the philologist-translator relationship, which we consider essential in the task of translation, has been split. This worrying  lack of collaboration is what has led us to carry out this research, with which we intend to highlight the importance of working together in order to produce a translation. In this respect, our study focuses on the philological analysis and the translation results in Spanish and Italian of the novel L’élégance du hérisson (2006) by Muriel Barbery. After carrying out a comparative and a translatological analysis of some chapters of the novel, in order to observe how they have been adapted to the language and culture of the countries of arrival, we believe that it is essential to underline the importance and obligation on the part of the translators, especially when dealing with related languages, of a previous, detailed and philological study of the source text. The purpose of this work is to identify the obstacles, analyze the solutions provided by the translators, and finally offer alternative proposals in order to improve the target texts.

A Lacanian reading of the novel by Marguerite Duras The Ravishing of Lol Stein − the “other” experience of the subconscious and the language

Inscribed in human condition, Loss is an integral part of Duras’s work. It is a leitmotif of the novel Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein (The Ravishing of Lol Stein), in which the feeling of love is shown as ambivalent, connected − on the one hand − with ecstasy, admiration and exaltation, and on the other – with suffering, loneliness, pain and absence.

Considered from the Lacanist perspective, the text allows us to see the originality of Duras’s prose, which involves capturing the unspeakable, the thing that escapes rational analysis and conventional writing technique: the subconscious. The author refers to it both in the thematic and stylistic layers, thus emphasizing the fragmentary nature of the language that implicitly transmits the eroticism of a woman condemned to silence.

The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq as a Postmodernist Künstlerroman

The purpose of the article is to study the phenomenon of postmodernist Künstlerroman on the example of The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq. The paper is focused on the social voyage of the artist-protagonist, Jed Martin, who enters into the art world and has to face its capitalist logic. The analysis of Michel Houellebecq’s novel allows not only to trace the evolution of the young artist and his search to develop a sense of identity, but also to reveal the process inherent to the postmodernist Künstlerroman – the process of devaluation, marginalization and relativization of art.

The paper continues “object-oriented” analysis of the most inspiring experiments in the Romanian Surrealism’s repertoire, notably in the short stories by Gherasim Luca, one of the movement’s leading representatives. His two books of poetic prose, published originally in the 1940s, could be interpreted as the emblematic example of Surrealist revolutionary tendencies in the field of new materialism. Such texts as The Kleptobject Sleeps or The Rubber Coffee become the laboratory of the object itself, gaining a new, unlimited identity in the platform of Surreality, where the human-like subject loses its status. Objects possess quasi-occult powers to initiate and control human’s desires. Therefore, Breton’s “revolution of the object” could concretize as literary praxis showing the way how contemporary “materialist turn” in anthropology deals with avant-garde theories.