The greeting formula “salve” in teaching Italian as a foreign language at reference level A1

The aim of this this paper is to examine the greeting formula “salve” in the context of teaching Italian as a foreign language at A1 level of competence. First, the topic is investigated from the perspective of pragmatics and communicative competence. Then we analyse a range of teaching materials to see how “salve” is realized on a more practical level and to check how the authors of the coursebooks understand its function.

This article aims at presenting two concepts from the modern typology of the Romance languages, with a special focus on the Aromanian ethnolect. The first concept, which is widely accepted in the Romanian linguistics and was most prevalent before the Second World War, does not recognise Aromanian as a separate language, but treats it as one of four dialects of the Romanian language. The second movement, much closer to modern Romanist research at the international level, opts for a full autonomy of all Balkan Romance ethnolects and attributes to them statuses of national languages. It also negates the existence of a common Romanian language in the first millennium, arguing that the Balkan Romance languages developed independently from a late form of Balkan Latin around the 11th century.

*Translation of the paper founded by the “Proofreading and translations at POB Heritage” programme.

Memories from a voluntary prison. A general theory of oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa

The paper presents an analysis of A general theory of oblivion, a novel by José Eduardo Agualusa, in light of the Portuguese postcolonial paradigm, specifically by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. It presents the trajectory of the protagonist, Ludovica, as a hybrid of a representant of the past, colonial tradition and a habitant of the emerging postcolonial reality. Agualusa shows two strategies of dealing with those conditions and, in a creative effort of constructing a new Angolan identity, positions himself on the side of the memory perpetuated through time.

Affective politics in Guadalupe Nettel’s After the Winter. Towards a more inclusive society

This paper proposes an approach to Guadalupe Nettel’s After the Winter from the theory of emotions as understood by Sara Ahmed (2015, 2019). The Mexican author carries out an affective politics that, firstly, tracks the emotions related to otherness (disabled, immigrants); secondly, she resignifies “other bodies” in such a way that they are perceived with positive emotions. She consciously makes use of the emotions of love and melancholy to resist the normalising and repressive discourses of “should be.” It is a novel politics that seeks to come into contact with the reader – it seeks an emotional contagion – whose purpose is clear: a cultural and social change that aims for a more inclusive society.

(A)céphales of modernity. Transformations of the “headless women” theme in Émile Zola’s novel Au Bonheur des Dames

The article reflects on the “headless woman” motif, taking into account its transhistorical and transsemiotic character, in Émile Zola’s novel Au Bonheur des Dames. The eleventh volume of Les Rougon- Macquart describes the moment of the transition from the economy of the “ancien regime” to capitalism. This naturalistic view of socio-economic modernity is reflected in the depiction of figures, mainly female ones. The aim of the article is to show that although the presentation of the new femininity is based on the old figure of ambivalence, this time the axis of opposition runs between the “hysterical fever of novelty” and reason or logic.

Caligula: Mental illness or lucid madman? (Rostworowski and Camus)

This article – focused on two plays about the Roman Emperor Caligula – has a double objective: firstly, it puts aside two dramatic versions of history of Caligula, and, secondly, it asks a question whether it is more legitimate to consider Caligula as a madman or as a mental patient. After introducing the playwrights Karol Hubert Rostworowski and Albert Camus, as well as the basic terminological concepts concerning the notion of madness and mental illness, the article analyses the symptoms of the illness and the madness included in the studied texts.

“Washing the dishes” or the mission of literature according to Matéi Visniec

Matéi Visniec can be considered a “committed” author, in the broadest sense of the term, because he often speaks on current socio-political problems. For him, writing is a mission, as evidenced in numerous interviews and the peritexts of his works. This article aims to analyse Visniec’s relationship to literature and to his own writing, as well as to define his literary mission and to analyse the way it manifests itself in his dramatic work.