CULTURAL INTERTEXTS

The 2024 issue of Cultural Intertexts focuses on representations and translations of food, advancing multiple evaluations and reading grids. The volume includes a guest section of articles collected by scholars from the University of Bucharest – “Reading Food in Literature, the Arts and across the Media” – in partnership with the editing team at “Dunarea de Jos” University of Galati, and hosts contributions on “Translating Food”. Part one sheds light on the poetics and politics of cultural texts which encode images of food and aliment various decodings. The corpus is generous, including: dispora women’s writing; feminist discourse; food blogs; newspaper articles; individual novels, screenplays, films, poems, paintings. The findings gravitate towards the following conclusions: food performativity is both constitutive and reflective of transnational identity construction (Sima Aghazadeh); counter cookbooks have the potential to mobilize revolutionary culinary spaces (Majda Atieh and Batoul Deeb); food is a symbolic medium whereby female identity is built and negociated (Nicolae Bobaru); food blogs add to the (virtual) food literature accompanying migration (Betty Chukwu and Robin Oakley); food plays a significant role at different junctures of a novel’s narrative pattern (Antony Hoyte-West); explorations of hunger (as starvation and insatiable craving) reveal the gap between classes (Lorena-Clara Mihăeş); fruit imagery supports existential questioning, spiritual emptiness and societal critique (Monica Manolachi); food aesthetics expresses societal concerns, class distinctions, moral lessons, and cultural exchanges (Lidia Mihaela Necula); real and figurative hunger are recurrent themes in the literature covering the horrors of the Holocaust (Cristina Mihaela Nistor); the theme of striving for food reflects the struggle for justice (Raluca Ştefania Pelin); banquet menus transcend culinary functions, conveying broader political and societal messages (Adriana Sohodoleanu); investigations of veganism underpin exploration of ethics and the interconnectedness of all living things (Alin Temeliescu). Part two brings forth culturally-oriented translation and interpretation efforts aimed at clarifying food related issues and their journey across temporal and spatial frontiers. It offers incursions into the challenges of rendering contemporary local textures and tastes, enriching and re-appropriating older food-related terminology, investigating gastronomic culturemes in successive translations into a minority language. The case studies include Muamer Spahic’s cookbook The Bosnian Cuisine (2016), Jonathan Grimwood’s novel The Last Banquet (2013) set in late 18th century France and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813; trans. into Romanian 1943, 1968, 1992, 2004, 2006, 2011, 2012, 2016, 2017).

The editors of Cultural Intertexts renew their gratitude towards reviewers, contributors and partners, acknowledging their valuable input and commitment to the publication of the series.

Michaela Praisler

This year’s issue of Cultural Intertexts hosts a guest section dedicated to

“Representations of the Danube in Literature, Music and Visual Arts”,

including articles collected and edited by Monica Manolachi, from the

University of Bucharest, in partnership with scholars from “Dunarea de Jos”

University of Galati.

The impact and avatars of the Danube are tracked in Romanian literature, with

emphasis on: the construction of cultural spaces and associated identities in

Queen Marie’s writing; the limits of fictionality and the narrative challenges of

Mircea Eliade’s Miss Christina; exile, migration, and the trauma of separation

with novelists from Banat (Sorin Titel, Miloš Crnjanski, Danilo Kiš, Herta

Müller and others); the metamorphosis of the blue Danube into its black

counterpart in the poetry signed by detainees in the communist forced labour

camps of the Danube-Black Sea Canal. Universal literary texts encapsulating

Hungarian culture are also selected in view of highlighting the real and

represented river (The White King by György Dragomán, Train to Budapest by

Dacia Maraini, Under Budapest by Ailsa Kay and Los Amantes Bajo el Danubio by

Federico Andahazi). Moreover, the Danube – in shape and ethos – is traced at

the level of urban landscapes (Galaţi, Brăila, Sulina) where natural and artificial

watercourses indicate tradition and generate renewal. The river is also

cartographied to reveal past realities, which only inhabit collective memory

today; the reference is to the island of Ada-Kaleh, which, although no longer

on the map, is recreated in popular culture. In music, the Danube is shown to

take on additional consequence and to communicate in plural ways, charged

with cultural significance; the case studies include Romanian folk songs, Ioan

Ivanovici’s waltz and George Grigoriu’s operetta “Danube Waves”, and four

film soundtracks. Last but not least, snapshots of the river – which emerges as

a shape shifter – are collated from photography, literature and sculpture to

unveil colourful waterscapes, latent musical scores and entire worlds in words

which tell herstory.

The second part of the volume, “On Gender and (Re)writing Patterns”,

comprises articles which cover broader solid and fluid, real and imagined

spaces, and which are aimed at: exploring the connections between

ghostwriting and spectrality, as emerging from Robert Harris’s intertextual

ISSN

Call for papers - Special issue 14/2024 - Reading Food in Literature, the Arts and across the Media

29.01.2024 10:08

Cultural Intertexts, academic journal of Literature and Cultural Studies, ISSN 2393-0624, E-ISSN 2393-1078, invites proposals of original articles, related to the theme: “Reading Food in Literature, the Arts and across the Media”. With the rise of information technology over the past...

Call for Paper - vol. 11 (2021)

11.02.2021 11:31

Dear all, We hereby invite proposals of original articles related to the general theme of Cultural Intertexts, an academic journal of Literature and Cultural Studies, ISSN 2393-0624, E-ISSN 2393-1078. The editors will consider for publication papers which tackle strategies of representation and of...

DOI assigned for Cultural Intertexts vol. 10/ 2020

15.12.2020 11:24

Praisler, Michaela, Gheorghiu, Oana-Celia, Necula, Lidia-Mihaela, Sorcaru, Daniela, Praisler, Alexandru, Debita, Gabriela, & Georgescu, Monica. (2020). Cultural Intertexts. Nr. 10/ 2020. Special Issue: The Roaring (20)20s. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4322290

ISSN

20.05.2020 00:15

ISSN-L 2393-0624 ISSN 2393-0624 E-ISSN 2393-1078

News

Issue 5 and 6/ 2016 are available!

11.11.2016 10:26

Contents VOLUME 5 Ruth AMAR, Patrick Modiano‘s Voice: from La Place de l‟Etoile to Dora Bruder Katarzyna BRONK, Esse versus Percipi: The Old and the Elderly in Restoration and Early Eighteenth-century English Plays Liliana COLODEEVA, The James Bond: Psychology and Fiction Irina GRIGORE,...

Printed Edition

31.12.2014 02:22

The printed edition of the academic journal Cultural Intertexts is available from Casa Cărții de Știință, a renowned publishing house located in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

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