2O16 a Journal of the Romanian Society of English and American Studies
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2O16 A Journal of the Romanian Society of English and American Studies Editor HORTENSIA PÂRLOG Executive Editors PIA BRÎNZEU MIRCEA MIHÃIEª LOREDANA PUNGÃ Advisory Board ªTEFAN AVÃDANEI University of Iaºi ANDREI AVRAM University of Bucharest ALEXANDRA CORNILESCU University of Bucharest MARCEL CORNIS-POPE Virginia Commonwealth University LUMINIÞA FRENÞIU University of Timiºoara FERNANDO GALVÄN University of Alcalá UAH, Madrid MAURIZIO GOTTI University of Bergamo MARIA-REGINA KECHT Webster University, Vienna J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam ªTEFAN OLTEAN University of Cluj-Napoca ISTVÁN D. RÁCZ University of Debrecen VIRGIL STANCIU University of Cluj-Napoca STEPHEN TAPSCOTT MIT, Cambridge, MA Publisher THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY OF TIMIªOARA The language of the journal is English. Contributions from both Romania and abroad are welcome. Articles for publication should be sent to Prof. Hortensia Pârlog, Department of English Language and Literature, 4, Bd. Vasile Pârvan, 300223, Timisoara, Romania. They should be supplied both as a hard copy, and electronically at [email protected] © British and American Studies, vol. XXII, 2016 BAS. British and American Studies is indexed in the following data bases: CEEOL, MLA, Erich Plus, Ulrich's (ProQuest) ISSN 1224-3086 e-ISSN 2457-7715 Publisher ADRIAN BODNARU Cover Design DAN URSACHI Cover llustration IOSIF O. STROIA Câmpul universal al corpului de luminã Layout DRAGOª CROITORU 300127, ROMÂNIA, TIMIªOARA str. Lorena 2B, ap. 13 Tel.: +40 356 424 872; +40 273 298 330 E-mail: [email protected] CONTENTS OLD AND NEW DILEMMAS Elisabetta Marino John Keats and the Stage: Otho the Great (1819) and King Stephen (1819) / 9 Alberto Lázaro The Reception of Thomas Hardy in Franco’s Spain: the Cases of Tess and Jude the Obscure / 17 Alice Bailey Cheylan Ford Madox Ford: Travel Writing in Provence / 25 Aleksandra Kędzierska In the Autumn of Life: Seamus Heaney’s Human Chain / 31 Mojca Krevel Time Being on Time: A Postmodern Tale / 41 Vesna Tripković-Samardžić Contradictions of Society in Tennessee Williams’ Plays / 49 Gabriela Glăvan Corrupt Childhood. Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm: a Weekend / 57 Alexandru Budac The Blue and the White. Visual Narrative in Steve Erickson’s Days between Stations / 65 CHALLENGING FRONTIERS AND GHOSTS OF EVIL Péter Gaál-Szabó African-American Religiosity from a Co-cultural Perspective in the 1950s and 60s / 75 Uroš Mozetič The Plays of Eugene O’Neill on the Slovene Stage: Contexts and Conditions / 83 Mihaela Popuța Going Places, Blending Spaces / 89 B.A.S ., vol. XXII, 2016 4 Kej Vackermann Retracing Liminal Epistemology in Jamaica Kincaid’s Bildungsroman / 93 John A. Stotesbury Mediterranean Gothic: M.G .Sanchez’s Gibraltar Fiction in its Contexts / 101 Şerban Dan Blidaru Education as a Tool for Achieving Freedom: the Cases of Frederick Douglass and Topsy / 111 Mirela Lăpugean Post 9/11 America: in Search of a Narrative / 119 Aurelija Daukšait ė The (Im)possibility of Forgetting in Jenna Blum’s Novel Those Who Save Us / 127 Terrence Craig American Journalism and Literature Subsuming British Colonialism / 135 LANGUAGE USE AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Matúš Hrubov čák A Sociolinguistic Research into Word - formation Strategies / 145 Lívia Körtvélyessy Reduplication from a Cross -linguistic Perspective / 153 Lidia Mañoso Are Writers Committed to what they Report? A Taxonomy of Reportive Verbal Expressions in the British and Spanish Press / 165 Alina Bughe şiu Brand Names and English Puns in Romanian Virtual Advertising Space / 173 Claudia E. Stoian, Thematic Development in Online Daniel Dejica Institutional Tourism Discourse: a Contrastive Study / 181 TitelaVîlceanu Cross -cultural Pragmatics in Translation. Ways of Achieving Common Ground / 197 5 CONTENTS Cristina-Mihaela Zamfir Internal Representation, Frame and Context in the Dynamics of Business Interactions: an NLP Perspective / 205 Luiza-Maria Filimon Politics and Magical Thinking: How Falsehoods, Showmanship and Hawkishness Became Trademarks of the Republican Presidential Electoral Campaign / 211 Dragica Žugi ć The Order of Acquisition of the English Article System by Montenegrin ESL Learners / 227 Vesna Pilipovi ć, The Decline in Use of Affective Tatjana Glušac Learning Strategies with Age / 233 Diana Oță t Developing Students’ Multi -Layered Translation Competences. An Applied Computer-Assisted Method / 243 NOTES ON THE AUTHORS / 249 OLD AND NEW DILEMMAS JOHN KEATS AND THE STAGE: OTHO THE GREAT (1819) AND KING STEPHEN (1819) ELISABETTA MARINO University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’ Abstract: At the beginning of the nineteenth century, theatrical performances underwent substantial transformations: dazzling backgrounds and unexacting plots aimed at attracting large audiences that wished to be entertained rather than instructed. This paper aims at exploring the way John Keats strived to reform the stage by addressing political and social issues in his two plays: Otho the Great and King Stephen . Keywords: John Keats, Charles Armitage Brown, Romantic drama, Hunt Circle, Edmund Kean 1. Introduction: John Keats’ neglected plays The extraordinary theatrical quality of John Keats’s poetry has been admiringly highlighted by several critics: Beth Lau (1998: 47), for example, has detected “traditional dramatic elements” in his most famous odes, featuring the “development of a debate”, “a confrontation that is charged with dramatic tension, climax, and resolution”. O.P. Mathur (2007: 39) has praised “the highly dramatic moments of suspense and action” as well as the notable “scenic effects” in poems such as “The Eve of St. Agnes” and “Lamia”; even though he admitted that the association between the word drama and Keats’s poetic output may seem “rather unusual, if not unjustified” (Mathur 2005: 111), in another article, Mathur has also emphasised the meticulous attention paid by the author to the “stage-settings” (Mathur 2005: 115) and the background details of his compositions, besides noticing that Keats often acted as a chorus-like narrator and commentator in his texts (Mathur 2005: 117). It is all the more surprising, therefore, that his two existing theatrical attempts, namely Otho the Great (in collaboration with his friend Charles Armitage Brown) and King Stephen (left incomplete after the first four scenes), have been largely overlooked − when not openly rejected and condemned − by most scholars. Written in July-August 1819 (in parallel with the above- mentioned, celebrated poems), with the clear intention of securing an income which would enable Keats to marry Fanny Brawne, Otho the Great was regarded by Amy Lowell (1925: 282) as a mere “pot-boiler” and “a failure” (294), also because it was never staged while the poet was alive; as Lowell (1925: 294) underlined, “[Otho ] is dull beyond belief, it is unnatural, perfervid, and weak […] To a modern reader, [it] is inconceivably dreary and stupid”. The American writer was less critical of King Stephen (begun in November 1819), even if she censored the poet’s “slavish adherence” (Lowell 1925: 362) to the Shakespearian model. Over the years, her disparaging observations have been echoed by quite a number of academics: Philip Eggers (1971: 997) argues that both dramas lack “the suppleness and depth of [Keats’s] best poetry”; John Bayley (1993: 116) maintains that “Keats had not, and probably never would have had, any true dramatic talent”; conversely, despite labelling Otho the Great as “undistinguished” (White 2010: 183), White (2010: 186) has attempted a timid reassessment of the tragedy’s value, B.A.S. , vol. XXII, 2016 10 stating that it “is no worse, and probably much better than many of the original plays performed in the West End of London during the period”. Leaving aside the actual meaning of the two plays (which, nonetheless, will be the object of further investigation in this essay), the general dismissal of Otho the Great and King Stephen as second-rate works stems primarily from the sheerly economic reasons that apparently prompted Keats to undertake the challenge of writing for the theatre: in his letters, he remarked that, given the lucrative nature of theatrical productions, Otho “would have been a bank” (Buxton Forman 1900: 101) to him, had it only proved successful. Moreover, Charles Armitage Brown’s self- flattering comments in his biography of John Keats, suggesting that, with the sole exception of the fifth act (entirely ascribed to his friend), the poet’s role in the creation of Otho had been only secondary, seriously undermined the reputation of the drama: “I engaged to furnish [Keats] with the fable, characters, and dramatic conduct of a tragedy, and he was to embody it into poetry” (Armitage Brown 1937: 54). He (1937: 56) also credited himself with selecting the subject of King Stephen , although he had to eventually confess that, tired of being in “leading-strings”, Keats had decided to develop the theme of the play on his own. This essay sets out to demonstrate that John Keats actually attached much greater importance to his plays than it is commonly thought and that, like other artists belonging to the Hunt circle , he viewed the stage as the perfect site to promote a message of communal regeneration and political reform, during the tumultuous and difficult times of the Regency Period. A brief account of Keats’s abiding – albeit not much known – commitment to the theatre, in its inextricable connection with his frequently disregarded engagement in current political debates, will provide the necessary information to contextualise and support the analysis of Otho the Great (a drama in which social institutions are covertly criticised and hypocrisy finally unmasked) and King Stephen . 2. John Keats’s keen interest in the theatre As Jonathan Mulrooney (2003: 233) has elucidated, in the time-span between 1815 and 1819, Keats was a habitual theatre goer; besides, he regularly attended Hazlitt’s lectures on Elizabethan drama at the Surrey Institute (Slote 1958: 114). In 1818, he composed a fair number of short texts “intended as songs towards an opera” (White 2010: 177), and a play on the Earl of Leicester might be listed among his tentative literary endeavours (Eggers 1971: 997).