Metacritic Journal


for Comparative Studies and Theory

comparative literature
ISSN 2457 – 8827
Ana-Maria Deliu Ana-Maria Deliu

Metafiction, transfictionality and possible worlds in Jorge Luis Borges’ The Immortal


The paper aims to develop and put into operation the concepts of metafiction, transfictionality and possible worlds, particularly fictional worlds. The analysis is placed within the context of fictional studies, discussing the status of fiction and its relationship with reality, not only from a modal logic perspective, but also by exploring the fictional possibilities of the world outside the fictional text, while taking fiction as a starting point. Possible worlds theory has the means for understanding and...   ⇨ Read more
Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu

TRANSLATION AND MUTUAL TRANSCENDENCE


Persistent and futile are the theories of translation. But so are as those of the fantastic or the acts of public piety. From the posturing of a judgmental above or an insidious aside, little of substance has been said about the swarming, sharp work of translation. As if there were a general of translation, not having to whom to delegate the work of difference across the clouds, the sun gets bored upon seeing than everything underneath is the same. To be sure, there is no interesting theory of translation as...   ⇨ Read more
Christian Moraru Christian Moraru

"The World Has Become Self-Referring": Don DeLillo’s THE NAMES and the Aesthetic of the Contemporary


The essay suggests that Don DeLillo is one of the U. S. authors who have reflected most responsibly on the crisis of modernity's fundamental institutions and community structures. Compared to the relatively stabilizing deep freeze of the Cold War, the late 1980s and the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall are, as DeLillo shows especially in his post-White Noise works, more interconnected, more “systematic,” and overall more “present.” Focusing primarily on DeLillo's 1982 novel The Names and its “world...   ⇨ Read more
Mihaela Ursa Mihaela Ursa

Lovers and Tamers: Transmediations of Shakespeare's TAMING OF THE SHREW to Visual Culture


The critical dispute in the interpretive history of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is traditionally polarised between whether Katherina is - at the end of the play - tamed or not. This article examines part of this interpretive history as a barometer of cultural coding of domestic love. Instead of deciding yet again if Katherina is sincere, or just acting obedient, I want to see how different cultural contexts choose their reading of a canonic play in popular culture. The article shows how and where the...   ⇨ Read more
Mihnea Bâlici Mihnea Bâlici

The Emergence of Quantitative Studies. Actual Functionalities and the Romanian Case


The aim of this essay is to examine the evolution of quantitative studies and the changes that occurred within their usage, portraying the international case as well as debating upon the existence and the relevance of a Romanian case. Given the fact that quantitative studies have become increasingly visible in literary studies during the last decades, due to various influences such as Franco Moretti’s theoretical branch or Matthew L. Jockers’ macroanalysis and its appropriation in digital humanities, a...   ⇨ Read more
Adrian Tătăran Adrian Tătăran

ANARCHISM, ANTIREPRESENTATIONALISM AND THE TRANSLATION PARADIGM


The paper aims at discussing translation as a political and ethical paradigm, as proposed by Bogdan Ghiu and Lawrence Venuti, in the broader context of comparative literature‘s contrarian turn with the Bernheimer and the Saussy reports, as well as in conjunction with anarchism‘s minor literary tradition (in the deleuzian sense). I argue that the translation paradigm and the non-vanguardist anarchist aesthetic are stemming from the same legacy of freedom, both formulating their basic ethical, political and...   ⇨ Read more
Mihaela Ursa Mihaela Ursa

Is Romanian Culture Ready for the Digital Turn?


The aim of this paper is to describe and interpret some of the challenges that digital humanities pose to Romanian culture and Romanian studies. Apart from technical difficulties such as the lack of digitized archives, further problems arise when it comes to the interpretation of existing archives, to public perception of digitization in terms of free access to information but also, more often than not, in terms of exposing a “national identity” and national values to what are perceived as malicious...   ⇨ Read more
Alex Văsieș Alex Văsieș

Reconsidering the Comparative. David Damrosch and a New Mode of Reading


The literary domain has suffered several delineations throughout the centuries. No matter if it is perceived from a chronological, theoretical or constitutive perspective, there is a ceaseless readjustment regarding the perception of literature, with its afferent notions, such as the literary canon, translations or its own dynamics. This article outlines one of the major approaches for the literary space, due to David Damrosch, who has made visible the concept of “world literature”. Moreover, this article is an...   ⇨ Read more
Emanuel Modoc Emanuel Modoc

The Romanian Post-Avant-Gardes. Between Influence and Equivalence


For the better part of the last three decades, Romanian poetry has undergone a series of mutations that led to the recovery of the interwar avant-garde, both in terms of poetic discursive strategies and in the militant rhetoric of its manifestoes. Although the first avant- garde influences date back to the 60ies, with a major iteration in the 70ies and the 80ies, because of the socio-cultural context of these periods we can only speak of a formal influence of the avant-garde. This paper intends to analyse how...   ⇨ Read more
Daria Condor Daria Condor

Don Quixote and the Golden Age or the Meaning of Life as Fiction


The author’s intention is to analyse the themes of madness and imagination as means of world-making and mediators between them in Cervantes’ novel, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. The premise of the central argument is that each of Cervantes’ characters relate to the world through their own imagination. The first conclusion generated by this hypothesis is that Don Quixote himself deliberately makes up his world and defines himself as an archetype. This paper proposes a classification of three...   ⇨ Read more