From Victorian Canonical Writers to Postmodernist Approaches

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

From Victorian Canonical Writers to

Postmodernist Approaches

Victor Olaru

Habilitation Thesis

University of Craiova, 2015

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

University of Craiova Universitatea din Craiova Faculty of Letters Facultatea de Litere Departamentul de Studii Anglo-Americane si Germane

HABILITATION THESIS TEZĂ DE ABILITARE

From Victorian Canonical Writers to

Postmodernist Approaches

De la scriitorii canonici victorieni la abordări postmoderniste

Professor PhD VICTOR OLARU Prof.univ.dr.

- Craiova, 2015- - Craiova-

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Contents

Abstract

Rezumat

I. Short Introduction

II. Scientific, Professional and Academic Accomplishments. Main lines of research.

II.1.Victorian canonical literature. Theoretical background

II.1.1.The place of women in a patriarchal society

II.1.2. Woman’s status and roles – between subject and object

II.1.3. Woman’s image-between inferiority and oppression

II.1.4. Attitude to female body and mind- the dichotomy body / mind

II.1.5. Body, sex and gender-studies of gender

II.1.6. Femininity and sexuality (within Victorian boundaries)-references

II.1.7. Realism vs. idealism

II.1.8. Typological features of (female) Victorian characters

II.1.8.a. Types: social and literary concepts

II.1.8.b. Archetypes: psychological and literary concepts

II.1.8.c. Stereotypes: social and gender delineation

II.2. Literary Studies. Published books. II.2.1. Victorian Writers, vol. I (Craiova, Editura Universitaria, 2005), pp.258, ISBN 973-743-206 II.2.1.a. Introduction. The Victorian Age…..5

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

II.2.1.b. Algernon Charles Swinburne . . .(pp. 11-83) II.2.1.c. Edward Lear . . . . .(pp. 84-118) II.2.1.d. Leslie Stephen. . . . . (pp.119-152) II.2.1.e. Matthew Arnold. . . . . (pp.153-193) II.2.1.f. Oscar Wilde . . . . . (pp.194-255)

II.2.2.Victorian Writers, vol. II (Craiova, Editura Universitaria, 2006),

pp.227, ISBN 973-742-272-4; 978-973-742-272-9

II.2.2.a. Introduction……5

II.2.2.b. Anthony Trollope- (pp.15-55

II.2.2.c. Elisabeth Gaskell- (pp.55-97)

II.2.2.d. George Gissing-(pp.97-138)

II.2.2.e.George Meredith- (pp.138-183)

II.2.2.f. Robert Louis Stevenson (pp.183-225)

II.2.3. Victorian Writers, vol. III ( Craiova, Editura Universitaria,2006,ISBN (10) 973-

742-541-3,; ISBN (13) 978-973-742-541-6

II.2.3.a. Charles Dickens- (pp.7-82)

II.2.3.b.The Brontes ( pp.82-190)

II.2.3.c. George Eliot (pp. 190-331)

II. 2.4. Literary Essays. Close reading and comprehension (Craiova, Editura

Universitaria, 2009 ), pp.329 , ISBN 978-973-742-595-9

II.2.4.a. Forward by Gabriel Cosoveanu ( pp. I-VIII)

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

II.2.4.b. The Construction of Privacy in Henry James’s The Bostonians (pp.1-33)

II.2.4.c. Henry James and the Art of Criticism .(pp.33-62)

II.2.4.d. James’s The Wings of the Dove and the Romance of Choice (pp.62-98)

II.2.4.e. I ndustrial Capitalism and the Situation of the Professional in Dickens’s David

Copperfield (pp.98-133)

II.2.4.f. Spectatorship and Ideology in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (pp.133-153)

II.2.4.g. Relationships between Masters and Servants in Thackeray’s Fiction ( pp.153-

175)

II.2.4.h. Withheld Speech and Female Authorship in Jane Eyre and Villette (pp.175-206)

II.2.4.i. The Trauma of Colonialism in Conrad's Early Work (pp.206-243)

II.2.4.j. Felicia Hemans’ Heroines and the Construction of National Identity (pp.243-274)

II.2.4.l. Epiphany and Character in Browning’s Poetry (pp.274-300)

II.2.4.m. The Imaginary Irish Peasant (pp.300-329)

II.3. Course books: Victorian Literature, Craiova, Reprografia Universitatii din Craiova,

1999

II.4. Published studies on Victorian canonical literature

II.4.1. in academic journals

II.4.2. in periodicals

II.5. Texts in the course of being published

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

II.6. English literary criticism

II.6.1. Books: The Foundations of English Criticism ( Craiova, Editura Universitaria, 2

2004), pp.161, ISBN 978-973-742-599-7

II.6.1.a. Introduction II.6.1.b. From the Middle Ages to the High Renaissance (1350-1660): the beginnings of English Criticism. II.6.1.c. The Age of Reason (1660-1789): the critic in authority II.6.1.d. The Romantic Age (1790-1830): the critic as explorer II.6.1.e. The Victorian Age (1830-1914): the critic against society II.6.1.f. The Twentieth Century (1914-present day): the responsibility of the critical function II.6.2. Articles

II.7. English civilization

II.7.1. Books

II.7.2. Course books

II.7.3. Dictionaries

II.7.4. Studies in academic journals

II.8.Articles on British and American Postmodernist literature published in

periodicals

II.8.1. Theoretical background

II.8.2. British and Irish Postmodernist authors

II.8.3. American Postmodernist authors

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

II.9. Comparative studies

II.9.1. Studies in foreign academic journals

II.9.2. Studies in Romanian academic journals

II.9.3. Papers read in sessions

II.10. Literary translations

II.10.1. Literary translations published in volumes

II.10.1.a. From English into Romanian

II.10.1.b. From Romanian into English

II.10.2. Literary translations published in Romanian periodicals

II.10.3. Literary translations published in foreign periodicals

III. Plans of evolution and development of the professional career

III.1. Identity and Otherness in Victorian Fiction

III.2. Neo-Victorian literature. Reinterpreting Victorian fiction.

III.3. Contemporary British women poets

IV. Bibliographical references

IV.1. List of published books and articles (publications)

IV.1.1.Books and course books

IV.1.2. Collective volumes

IV.1.3. Studies in academic journals

IV.1.4. Articles in periodicals

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

IV.1.5. Bibliographical quotations in volumes

IV.1.6. Critical references, reviews

IV.1.7. Papers read in sessions

IV.1.8. Other professional activities-conferences, seminars, workshops

IV.1.9. Membership in professional associations

IV.1.10. Professional honors, awards and fellowships

V. References

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Abstract

In the habilitation thesis, entitled From Victorian Canonical Writers to Postmodernist Approaches, we describe our scientific, didactic and academic accomplishments since the defence of our doctoral thesis in May 1998, as well as our plans for future development in the combined field of research, publishing and teaching activities. Mention must be made that the work to complete my doctoral dissertation was done concurrently with my constant concern with British and American literary studies (canonical and postmodernist authors), as illustrated by my publications (books, studies and articles in academic and literary periodicals), as well as by presentations on these topics in various sessions, as shown in my CV. (see CV in Section IV. Bibliographical References).

In the period of more than fifteen years after defending my doctoral dissertation ( the title of the published version is Topomimie engleza si romana - Studiu contrastiv, Craiova, Scrisul Romanesc, 1998, pp.270, ISBN 973-38-0247-6 ), I have been involved in research projects only partly related to the above-mentioned work (a project suggested by Professor Gheorghe Bolocan, a member of the Romanian Academy, before 1990 and that had to be continued), but directly related with my courses on English literature and civilization, which I started teaching in 1990, when I was attached as senior lecturer at the Faculty of Letters and History (Department of Foreign Languages) of the University of Craiova.

I consider that the academic year 2000 (Sept.) -2001(June) represents a mostly important period for my professional development by being awarded a Fulbright grant of teaching and research at Boston College, USA. For two semesters, besides teaching Romanian Studies to American students, I tried to make the best of Boston libraries by deepening and updating my knowledge of theoretical and contextual literature; on the one hand, the scholarly writings helped me to build and sharpen my conceptual focus, on the other, the books and articles closely related to my area

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

or subject of research (British and American literature) were of great help in further improving my literary knowledge, as illustrated by my publications appeared after 2001.

I would also like to mention that in this period I gave several presentations on contemporary Romanian literature and civilization within the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures of Boston College where I was attached (as Fulbright Visiting Professor of Romanian Studies), and participated in several conferences, of which I mention the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Conference “Immigration and Migration. Past, Present and Future”, March, 2001. I was also invited at the Romanian Cultural Center in New York where I gave the presentation:”Romanian Cultural Studies at Boston College”, and at California State University, Long Island, Department of Romance, German, Russian Languages and Literatures, in May 2001 to give the conference: “George Eliot’s Moral World”, a material later developed in the chapter on George Eliot in Victorian Writers, vol. III, Craiova, Universitaria, 2007, pp.190-331.

The most representative publications in this period (May 1998 to present), all reflecting the courses I currently teach, are: 1) Literary Essays. Close Reading and Comprehension (Craiova, Universitaria, 2009), pp.340, ISBN 973-742-595-9; 2) Civilization Landmarks of Britain, Craiova, Universitaria, 2008, pp.314, ISBN 978-973-742-598-0; 3) Victorian Writers, vol. III, Craiova, Universitaria, 2007, pp.331, ISBN 10973-742-541-3; 3) 978-973-742-541-6; 4) Victorian Writers, vol. II, Craiova, Universitaria, 2006, pp.227, ISBN 973-742-272-4; 978-973- 742-272-9; 5) Victorian Writers, vol. I, Craiova, Universitaria, 2005, pp.258, ISBN 973-743- 206-6; 6) The Foundations of English Criticism, Craiova, Universitaria, 2004, pp.198, ISBN 978-973-742-599-7; 7) A short Dictionary of English Place-Names, Craiova, Universitaria, 1999, pp.195, ISBN 973-9271-83-1; 8) Victorian Literature, Craiova, Reprografia Universitatii din Craiova, 1999, course book; 9) Elements of English Civilization, Craiova, Reprografia Universitatii din Craiova, 2001, course book.

In addition to the above-mentioned, we could mention a number of 27 studies published in various academic journals, most of these being BDI-indexed (EBSCO, URIH. Fabula, Scipio, Professional Proquest Central, Proquest Research Library, ProQuest 5000 International, Proquest Central K12, Gale Cengage Learning, Index Copernicus, Georgetown University Library,

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek EZB, Journal Seek, DOAJ, Georgetown University Library, Journal Seek, worldcat.org., sciverse.com, ceeol.com, linguistlist.org, indexcopernicus.com), 5 studies in collective volumes, 61 articles published in periodicals, participation in 17 national and international research projects. Among these two of my contributions appeared in international publications: a comparative study translated into Portuguese-As duas versões em inglês de Mioritza/Two English versions of Mioritza- pp. 192- 203, in alea ESTUDOS NEOLATINOS,Alea: Estudos Neolatinos,Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras Neolatinas/Faculdade de Letras – UFRJ,v. 16, n. 1. Rio de Janeiro, janeiro/junho de 2014, Semestral.1. Letras Neolatinas – Periódicos. I. Instituição,ISSN 1517-106X C DD. 807,FINANCIAMENTO, Programa de apoio às Publicações Científicas, INDEXAÇÃO: Scielo (www.scielo.br/alea),Redalyc (www.redalyc.com), and the English translation of the essay: Between Zenon and Leda: notes on Marin Sorescu’s poetry by George Popescu, pp.179-203, in alea ESTUDOS NEOLATINOS, n. 1. Rio de Janeiro, janeiro/junho de 2014, INDEXAÇÃO: Scielo (www.scielo.br/alea), Redalyc (www.redalyc.com).

The structure of the thesis is the following: Section I. Short Introduction presents my professional evolution (personal data, employment, professional affiliation, courses taught, participation in conferences and projects. Section II. Scientific, Professional and Academic Accomplishments. Main lines of research is meant to illustrate that my professional, research and academic interests have been basically focused on British and American literary and cultural studies, my books, articles and papers showing concern for the following areas: Victorian (canonical) literature, literary criticism, postmodernist British and American literature, Anglo- Saxon civilization, translation studies. I have also been interested in comparative studies, particularly in the constant comparison of British, American and Romanian cultures. The interest for this topic was made manifest by my participation in projects which approached the problem of cultural and national specificity by means of literary translation. Two projects ended in the production of two volumes of contemporary Romanian poetry translated into English: 1) Limba sarpelui calator. The Tongue of the Wandering Serpent. Poems by Mihai Firica, Translated from Romanian by Victor Olaru, Editura Ramuri, Craiova, 2006, ISBN 973-7936-29-9 and 2) Lettres Entre Deux Femmes. Letters Between Two Women. Scrisori între două femei. Nina Castinado

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Rodriguez, Cecilia Burtica, Traducere in limba engleza de Victor Olaru, Scrisul Romanesc, Craiova, 2007, ISBN 978-973-38-0083-5, thus continuing a series of publications started by the volume ANGELS AND GODS. Poems by Gabriel Chifu - Translated from Romanian by Victor Olaru.- The poetry Miscellany Chapbooks Chattanooga, USA, 1992, ISBN 1-881489-00-0 (see CV in Section IV. Bibliographical References). These two volumes published before 1998 were also preceded by my contribution to an anthology of postmodernist Romanian poetry in English translation (ten poems translated in collaboration with Professor Adam J. Sorkin from Penn State University, USA): Day After Night. Twenty Romanian Poets for the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Gabriel Stanescu and Adam J. Sorkin- Criterion Publishing, USA, 1998, ISBN 1- 887304-14-2, Library of Congresss Nr. 98-9458.

Mention must be made that this section of the thesis starts with an introduction of the theoretical concepts that allowed us the approach of the Victorian canonical writers and their works, the subject of most of our publications in academic journals. Since concepts and perspectives from different research fields had been used, we thought it necessary to introduce subtitles for a better presentation of the notions.

Section III. The plans of evolution and development of my professional career follow two directions: 1. on the line of recent approaches of Victorian literature, inspired by the theories of present literary criticism, more precisely by postcolonial criticism, with the identification of the elements of race, ethnicity and genre, 2. on the line of British postmodernist literature. My future research plans include three projects derived from my current teaching activity.

1. Identity and Otherness in Victorian Fiction is a project derived from my core course of Victorian literature. The project approaches Victorian fiction from a postcolonial perspective and deals with the Victorians’ understanding of the concept of Otherness and with the presence of the Other in the selected novels by using the methods of the comparatist and the instruments of cultural criticism. Reference is made to the principles of postcolonial theory (formulated among others by such critics as Kwame Anthony Appiah, Homi Bhabha, Ania Loomba, Abdul JanMohammed, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Sara Suleri), stress being laid on the critical reception of the selected works analyzed from the perspective of recently appeared

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

literary studies. The Others included for discussion are seen mostly as stereotypes, as they appear in the selected writings. The following categories of characters are the object of our research: 1. The Irish, in writings by Maria Edgeworth, Sydney Owenson, Charles Robert Maturin, William Carleton, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker and Emily Brontë, 2. The Gypsy, in writings by Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 3. The Jew, in writings by George Du Maurier, Anthony Trollope, Maria Edgeworth, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, George Elliot, 4. The Colonized in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, 5. The Vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a character that turns the analysis of otherness into an entirely different direction.

2. On the line of postmodernist literature enrols the project Neo-Victorian literature. Reinterpreting Victorian fiction. What we consider to be currently one of the most interesting areas of literary studies, Neo-Victorian literature implies that the postmodern literature of the second half of the twentieth century witnessed an unexpected re-emergence of the Victorian novel. The aim of our project is trying to understand the reasons for this tendency of some twentieth-century writers to resort to the subject matters and settings of the Victorian age by analyzing some examples of Neo-Victorian fiction implying a recent interpretation of what it means to be English in the Victorian Age. Thus I have chosen for analysis three pairs of novels: 1) Charles Dickens’s Great expectations and Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs; 2) Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea; 3) Wilkie Collins's Armadale and Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night: A Confession (2006), as well as two Booker-Prize- winning novels with a Victorian setting: Peter Carey's Oscar and Luanda (1988) and A. S. Byatt's Possession (1990).

3. Directly related to the course on British postmodernist literature I currently teach at MA level, we mention Contemporary British women poets, a project that approaches specific and varied postmodernist themes such as: displacement, confessionalism, duality, domesticity, seclusion, multiplicity, openness, emotional disorder, etc., identified in and illustrated by the works of Carol Ann Duffy, Fleur Adcock, Liz Lochhead, Jo Shapcott, Helen Dunmore, Anne Stevenson , Ruth Fainlight, Elaine Feinstein, Mimi Khalvati, Kathleen Raine. The aims of our project are: 1. to emphasize the link between contemporary British poetry and present-day cultural context

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

represented by the theories of Tzvetan Todorov (identity and alterity), Jacques Lacan (structuralism- symbol of the Borromean knot), Michel Foucault (self-empowerment by language), and Helene Cixous (liberating the female mind and body), 2. to point out the particular character of contemporary British poetry within the European cultural context, 3. to enhance the future doctoral students’ interest in British postmodernist feminine poetry writing, with all its varied themes, motifs and nuances that emphasize the individual literary value of the authors. Mention must be made that the women poets selected for discussion are the subject of the articles and translations published by me in the long run in various Romanian literary periodicals (starting with 1981, see CV in Section IV. Bibliographical References).

Section IV. Bibliographical References.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Rezumat

În teza de abilitare intitulată De la scriitorii canonici victorieni la abordări postmoderniste descriem realizările noastre ştiinţifice, profesionale şi academice din momentul susţinerii tezei de doctorat din luna mai 1998, cât şi planurile noastre de viitor privind activităţile de cercetare, publicare şi predare. Trebuie să menţionez faptul că munca de cercetare necesară realizării tezei mele de doctorat s-a desfăşurat concomitent cu preocuparea mea constantă pentru studiile literare britanice şi americane (postmoderniste), aşa cum arată publicaţiile mele (cărţi, studii şi articole în reviste academice şi literare), cât şi comunicările ştiinţifice prezentate la diverse sesiuni şi simpozioane, mentionate în CV. (Secţiunea IV. Referinţe bibliografice)

În perioada de mai mult de 15 ani după susţinerea tezei de doctorat ( titlul versiunii publicate este Topomimie engleză şi româna - Studiu contrastiv, Craiova, Scrisul Romanesc, 1998, pp. 270, ISBN 973-38-0247-6 ), am fost implicat în proiecte de cercetare numai parţial legate de lucrarea mai sus menţionată (un proiect sugerat de Dl. Prof. Univ. Dr. Gheorghe Bolocan, membru al Academiei Române, înainte de 1990 şi care a trebuit să fie continuat şi după această dată), dar legate direct de cursurile de literatură şi civilizaţie engleză pe care le predau din octombrie 1990, când am fost angajat ca lector la Catedra de Limbi Străine a Facultăţii de Litere şi Istorie a Universităţii din Craiova.

Consider că anul universitar 2000 (septembrie) - 2001(iunie) reprezintă o perioadă foarte importantă pentru dezvoltarea mea profesională si intelectuală prin obţinerea unei burse Fulbright de predare şi cercetare la Boston College, SUA. Timp de două semestre, pe langă activitatea de predare a cursurilor de Studii Româneşti studenţilor americani, am încercat să profit căt mai mult de oferta bibliotecilor din Boston prin efortul făcut de a-mi aprofunda şi actualiza cunoştinţele de literatură teoretică si contextuală; pe de o parte, scrierile teoretice m-au

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

ajutat să-mi rafinez şi să-mi dezvolt baza conceptuală, pe de altă parte, carţile şi articolele direct legate de principalele mele domenii de cercetare (literatura canonică victoriană si literatura britanică si americană postmodernă) m-au ajutat mult în demersurile profesionale ulterioare, aşa cum demonstrează publicaţiile mele apărute după întoarcerea în ţară în iulie 2001. Aş mai dori să menţionez că în această perioadă am susţinut mai multe prezentări pe teme de literatură şi civilizaţie romanească în cadrul Catedrei de Limbi şi Literaturi Romanice de la Boston College unde eram afiliat (ca Fulbright Visiting Professor of Romanian Studies) şi am participat la o serie de conferinţe, dintre care menţionez Conferinta Fulbright: “Immigration and Migration Past, Present and Future”, Washington, martie, 2000. Totodată, am fost invitat la Centrul Cultural român din New York, unde am susţinut conferinţa: ,,Studii culturale românești la Boston College”, cât şi la California State University, Long Island, Department of Romance, German, Russian Languages and Literatures în mai 2001 pentru a ţine o prelegere cu tema ,,Universul moral a lui George Eliot”, material dezvoltat ulterior în capitolul despre George Eliot în volumul Victorian Writers, vol. III, Craiova, Universitaria, 2007, pp.190-331.

Cele mai representative publicaţii ale acestei perioade (mai 1998-prezent), toate în stransă legatură cu tematica abordată în cursurile pe care le predau, sunt urmatoarele: 1) Literary Essays. Close Reading and Comprehension (Craiova, Universitaria, 2009), pp.340 , ISBN 973-742-595- 9; 2) Civilization Landmarks of Britain, Craiova, Universitaria, 2008, pp.314, ISBN 978-973- 742-598-0; 3) Victorian Writers, vol. III, Craiova, Universitaria, 2007, pp.331, ISBN 10973- 742-541-3; (13) 978-973-742-541-6; 4) Victorian Writers, vol. II, Craiova, Universitaria, 2006, pp.227, ISBN 973-742-272-4; 978-973-742-272-9; 5) Victorian Writers, vol. I, Craiova, Universitaria, 2005, pp.258, ISBN 973-743-206-6; 6) The Foundations of English Criticism, Craiova, Universitaria, 2004, pp.198, ISBN 978-973-742-599-7; 7) A short Dictionary of English Place-Names, Craiova, Universitaria, 1999, pp.195, ISBN 973-9271-83-1; 8) Victorian Literature, Craiova, Reprografia Universităţii din Craiova,1999, note de curs; 9) Elements of English Civilization, Craiova, Reprografia Universităţii din Craiova, 2001, note de curs.

La volumele mai sus menţionate, putem adăuga un număr de 27 studii publicate în diverse reviste academice, majoritatea indexate în BDI (EBSCO, URIH, Fabula, Scipio, Professional

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Proquest Central, Proquest Research Library, ProQuest 5000 International, Proquest Central K12, Gale Cengage Learning, Index Copernicus, Georgetown University Library, Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek EZB, Journal Seek, DOAJ, Georgetown University Library, Journal Seek, worldcat.org., sciverse.com, ceeol.com, linguistlist.org, indexcopernicus.com, Scielo, Redalyc ), 5 studii în volume collective, 61 articole publicate în reviste literare, participarea în 17 proiecte de cercetare naţionale şi internaţionale. Referitor la publicaţii, două dintre contribuţiile mele au apărut în 2014 în reviste academice din străinătate: un studiu tradus în portugheză: As duas versões em inglês de Mioritza/Two English versions of Mioritza- pp. 192-203, în alea ESTUDOS NEOLATINOS,Alea: Estudos Neolatinos,Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras Neolatinas/Faculdade de Letras – UFRJ,v. 16, n. 1. Rio de Janeiro, janeiro/junho de 2014, Semestral.1. Letras Neolatinas – Periódicos. I. Instituição,ISSN 1517-106X C DD. 807,FINANCIAMENTO,Programa de apoio às Publicações Científicas, INDEXAÇÃO: Scielo (www.scielo.br/alea),Redalyc (www.redalyc.com) si traducerea în engleză a eseului, Between Zenon and Leda: notes on Marin Sorescu’s poetry de George Popescu, pp.179-203, în alea ESTUDOS NEOLATINOS, n. 1. Rio de Janeiro, janeiro/junho de 2014, INDEXAÇÃO: Scielo (www.scielo.br/alea), Redalyc (www.redalyc.com).

Structura tezei este următoarea: Secţiunea I. Scurtă introducere, prezintă parcursul meu profesional (date personale, locuri de muncă, afiliaţie profesională, cursuri predate, participarea la proiecte şi conferinţe. Secţiunea II, Realizări profesionale şi academice. Direcţii principale de cercetare, arată că interesul meu academic s-a îndreptat în special spre studiile literare şi culturale britanice şi americane, carţile, articolele şi comunicările prezentate la conferinţe demonstrând preocuparea mea pentru următoarele domenii: literatura (canonică) victoriană, critica literară, literatura britanică si americană postmodernă, civilizaţie anglo-saxonă, traduceri literare. Totodată, am fost interesat şi de studiile comparate, mai ales în comparaţia elementelor culturale britanice, americane şi româneşti. Interesul meu pentru acest domeniu s-a manifestat prin participarea la diverse proiecte care au abordat problema specificului naţional şi cultural pe calea traducerilor literare. Două astfel de proiecte s-au materializat prin publicarea a doua volume de poezie romanească tradusă în limba engleză: 1) Limba șarpelui călător. The Tongue of the Wandering Serpent. Poems by Mihai Firică. Translated from Romanian by Victor Olaru,

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Editura Ramuri, Craiova, 2006, ISBN 973-7936-29-9 si 2) Lettres Entre Deux Femmes. Letters Between Two Women. Scrisori între două femei. Nina Castinado Rodriguez, Cecilia Burtică, Traducere în limba engleză de Victor Olaru, Scrisul Românesc, Craiova, 2007, ISBN 978-973- 38-0083-5, continuând seria unor astfel de publicaţii incepută de volumul Angels and Gods. Poems by Gabriel Chifu - Translated from Romanian by Victor Olaru.- The poetry Miscellany Chapbooks Chattanooga, USA, 1992, ISBN 1-881489-00-0 (a se vedea CV complet Victor Olaru în Sectiunea IV, Referinţe bibliografice). Aceste două volume publicate dupa 1998 au fost precedate şi de contribuţia mea la o antologie de poezie românească postmodernista în limba engleză (zece poeme traduse în colaborare cu prof. dr. Adam J. Sorkin de la Penn State University, USA): Day After Night. Twenty Romanian Poets for the Twenty - First Century. Edited by Gabriel Stănescu and Adam J. Sorkin, Criterion Publishing, USA, 1998, ISBN 1- 887304-14-2, Library of Congress Nr.98-9458.

Menţionam ca această secţiune a tezei începe cu o introducere a conceptelor teoretice care ne-au permis abordarea scriitorilor canonici victorieni şi ale operelor acestora (subiectul majorităţii publicaţiilor noastre din revistele academice). Deoarece am folosit concepte şi perspective din diferite domenii de cercetare, am considerat necesar să introducem subtitluri pentru o mai bună prezentare a noţiunilor.

Secţiunea III. Planurile de evoluţie şi dezvoltare a carierei mele profesionale urmăresc două direcţii: 1. pe linia abordărilor recente ale literaturii victoriene, inspirate de teoriile criticii literare actuale, mai precis de critica postcolonială, cu identificarea elementelor de rasă, etnicitate, gen, 2. pe linia literaturii britanice postmoderniste. Între proiectele mele de viitor, menţionăm trei planuri de cercetare legate de activitatea mea actuală la catedră.

I. Identitate și alteritate în romanul vctorian este un proiect derivat din cursul meu de literatură victoriană. Acest proiect abordează romanul victorian din perspectiva postcolonialismului şi urmareşte înţelegerea conceptului de Alteritate, cât şi prezenţa Celuilalt în romanele selectate, folosind metodele comparatistului şi instrumentele criticii culturale. Se face referire la principiile teoriei postcoloniale (formulate , printre alţii, şi de criticii Kwame Anthony Appiah, Homi Bhabha, Ania Loomba, Abdul JanMohammed, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak şi

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Sara Suleri), accentul fiind pus pe receptarea critică a operelor selectate, analizate din perspectiva studiilor literare recent aparute. Ceilalți care fac subiectul discuţiei sunt priviţi în general ca stereotipuri, aşa cum rezultă din scrierile selectate. Următoarele categorii de personaje fac obiectul cercetării: 1) Irlandezul, prezent în scrierile autorilor: Maria Edgeworth, Sydney Owenson, Charles Robert Maturin, William Carleton, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker şi Emily Brontë; 2) Țiganul, în scrierile autorilor: Charlotte şi Emily Bronte, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning ; 3) Evreul, în romanele lui George Du Maurier, Anthony Trollope, Maria Edgeworth, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, George Elliot; 4) Colonizatul în romanul Inima întunericului de Joseph Conrad; 5) Vampirul în romanul Dracula de Bram Stoker, personaj care conduce discutarea alterităţii intr-o direcţie complet diferită. 2. Pe linia literaturii postmoderniste se înscrie proiectul: Literatura neo-victoriană. O reinterpretare a romanului victorian. Ceea ce considerăm a fi un segment foarte interesant al studiilor literare recente, noţiunea de Literatură neo-victoriană implică faptul că în literatura postmodernistă din a doua parte a secolului XXI s-a constatat o neaşteptată reapariţie a romanului victorian. Scopul proiectului este de a înţelege motivele ce stau la baza acestei tendinţe a unor scriitori de a reveni la teme şi fundaluri specifice epocii victoriene prin analiza unor exemple de literatură neo-victoriană ce implică o interpretare recentă a ceea ce înseamna să fi englez în perioada victoriană. Astfel, am ales să analizăm trei perechi de romane: 1) Marile speranțe de Charles Dickens şi Jack Maggs de Peter Carey; 2) Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë şi Wide Sargasso Sea de Jean Rhys; 3) Armadale de Wilkie Collins şi The Meaning of Night: A Confession (2006) de Michael Cox, cât şi două romane cu fundal victorian: Oscar and Luanda (1988} de Peter Carey şi Possession (1990) de A. S. Byatt.

3. În legatură directă cu tema cursului meu de literatură britanică postmodernistă din programul de master, menţionăm proiectul Poete britanice contemporane, o cercetare care abordează diverse teme postmoderniste: dizlocarea, confesionalismul, dualitatea, secluziunea, multiplicitatea, deschiderea, disfuncţionalitatea emoţională etc, aşa cum au fost acestea identificate în lirica următoarelor scriitoare: Carol Ann Duffy, Fleur Adcock, Liz Lochhead, Jo Shapcott, Helen Dunmore, Anne Stevenson, Ruth Fainlight, Elaine Feinstein, Mimi Khalvati,

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Kathleen Raine. Scopurile proiectului sunt: 1. să evidenţieze legatura dintre poezia britanică postmodernistă şi contextul cultural contemporan reprezentat de teoriile lui Tzvetan Todorov (identitate si alteritate), Jacques Lacan (structuralism-nodul borromean), Michel Foucault (autoimputernicirea prin limbaj) şi Helene Cixous (eliberarea spiritului şi trupului feminin), 2. să reliefeze caracterul specific al poeziei britanice postmoderniste în contextual cultural European, 3. să sporeasca interesul viitorilor doctoranzi pentru lirica postmodernistă britanică cu întreaga sa varietate tematică, motive şi nuanţe care reliefează valoarea individuală a scriitoarelor. Menţionăm că autoarele propuse pentru discuţie au constituit subiectul articolelor şi traducerilor publicate de mine în periodicele literare româneşti de-a lungul timpului. (începând cu 1981, a se vedea CV complet în Secţiunea IV. Referinţe bibliografice).

I. Short Introduction

The undersigned, Victor OLARU, I was born on February 4th, 1953 in Craiova. My parents’ names are Alexandru Olaru (late Professor of Psychiatry, University of Craiova), and Lucia Olaru (late laboratory physician, Craiova Emergency Hospital). I am married to Gabriela Elena Olaru, teacher of Physics at the Economic College “Gheorghe Chitu” from Craiova. I live in Craiova, 17 Opanez Street.

I left the National College “Nicolae Balcescu” from Craiova in 1972 and attended the courses of the Faculty of Germanic Languages, University of Bucharest, specialization English-Hindi, between 1974-1978. The topic of my graduation paper was Synonyms in English and Romanian, supervised by Professor Dumitru Chitoran. The average of my examination marks after four years was 9,89.

In 1990, as a result of a project suggested by Professor Gheorghe Bolocan before 1989, I went in for my PhD program with a comparative topic: Toponymyc Structural Patterns in English and Romanian, which I defended in 1998, consequently taking my PhD degree in Philology.

Between 1990 and 2014 I had several professional training and research scholarships abroad, of which I mention: 1992 (Nov.-Dec.) Institute for Applied Language Studies, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; 1994 (Sept-.Oct.) - Institute J.F. Kennedy for North American Studies,

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Berlin, Germany; 1997 (April-May), British Centre for Literary Translation, University East Anglia, Norwich; 1998, (July-Aug. ) Literary Translation Centre of Senneffe, Belgium; 1999 (Nov.), Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Ireland; 2001-2002 - Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Boston College, USA.

After graduation, I was employed as follows: teacher of English at the Military High School ’’Tudor Vladimirescu”, Craiova (1978-1989), and at the National College ”Nicolae Balcescu” of Craiova (1989-1990). In this period I took my teaching grades: tenure-University of Bucharest, 1981 (mark: 9,75); teaching grade II-University of Bucharest ,1986 (mark: 9,50), – teaching grade I - University of Bucharest, 1990 (mark: 10); 1990-Senior Lecturer - University of Craiova, Faculty of Letters , Department of English ; 1999 - Assoc. Prof., University of Craiova, Faculty of Letters, Department of English; 2009-present, Professor PhD, University of Craiova, Faculty of Letters, Department of English and German Studies. From 1992 to present, I have been associate editor of the literary periodical Ramuri of Craiova, member of the Writers Union of Romania. In 1994 I was admitted as a full member of the Writers’ Union of Romania, Craiova Branch (letters of reccommandation: Stefan Augustin Doinas and Marius Ghica).

I am a member of several professional associations nationally and internationally acknowledged:

- Writers' Union of Romania

- Romanian Fulbright Alumni Association (RFAA)

- RAAS - Romanian Association for American Studies

- ESSE-European Society for the Study of English

- English-Speaking Union – Romania

- Romanian Association of Comparative Literature

- Romanian Society of Philological Studies

- Ramuri Cultural Foundation –founding member

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Since 1990 to present I have taught at the Faculty of Letters the following courses: English civilization, Victorian literature, The Victorian Essay (optional course) at BA level; Contemporary British Civilization, Contemporary British and American Women Poets at MA level.

I participated with scientific papers in different international conferences:

- 10th International Conference Language, Literature and Cultural Policies - ”Details That Matter”, 7-9 October 2011

- 4th ENIEDA Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education, Vrsac, Serbia, 29 September-1 October, 2011

- International Symposium ”Language, Culture, Civilization”, Craiova, 24-26 martie, 2011

- 9th International Conference” Centres and (Ex-)Centricities”- Craiova, November 12-14, 2010

- International Colloquium “Language, Culture, Civilisation”, Craiova, 3-5 March, 2009

- The 7th International Conference “Language, Literature and Cultural Policies”- Interfaces, Craiova, Romania, November, 13-15, 2008

- The 6th International Conference “Language, Literature and Cultural Policies” - Obsessive discourse, University of Craiova, Faculty of Letters, Department of British and American Studies, October 25-27, 2007

- 3rd International Scientific Conference Eco-trend 2006, 24-25 Nov., 2006, Targu Jiu, Romania

- The 5th International Conference “Language, Literature and Cultural Policies” – Word Power, Craiova, 2-4 Nov., 2006

- EPSO competition, Brussels, Oct. 2006

- The 4th International Conference “Language, Literature and Cultural Policies”, Craiova, 5-6 Nov. 2004

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

- International Conference “Language, Literature and Cultural Policies”, Craiova, 2-4, Nov., 2001

- Romanian Cultural Studies at Boston College, Romanian Cultural Center, New York, April 2001

- George Eliot’s Moral World, California State University Long Beach, May 2001

- Boston College University, Conferences on Romanian Cultural Studies at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, 2000-2001

- Translation assessor for Romania at I.L.E ( Ireland Literature Exchange) , Nov., 2001

- Seminar on British Cultural Studies, organized by British Council, 3-7 May, 1999, Fantanele, Judet Cluj

- International Conference “The Meeting of Romanian Writers from Around the World”, Neptun, 2-6 June, 1999.

- The Seneffe Translation Seminars, Seneffe, Belgium, August, 1998.

- The BCLT Translation Seminars, Norwich, U.K., 1997, April – May.

- Craiova Sociolinguistic Seminar, iulie 1995, “English Place-Names with Christian Association”.

- British and American Studies, Timisoara, 18-20 mai, 1995, The Structure of English Place Names.

- International Conference “The Historical and Political Turn in American Literary Studies“, J.F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Berlin, 1994, “Some Cultural Aspects of the Romanian Americans”.

- University of Warwick, Graduate School of Comparative Literary Theory and Literary Translation, the paper “Translating Romanian Poetry into English”, 26 mai, 1992.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

- Second Warwick Seminar on British Cultural Studies, 27 Aug. - 3 Sept., 1991, Warwick, Anglia.

I was a member of several scientific grants:

Number of grants/research projects: 13

- international: 9

2009 Head researcher –English bibliography in the international grant TELLVIT ( Teaching, Learning to Learn. Virtual Trainer), approved by the European Commission with the contract cu nr. 1424444-LLP-1-RO-COMENIUS-CMP and contractated by the University of Craiova with the contract nr. 2008-3401/001-001. The research activity of the project has in view the bibliographical analysis, the making up of bibliographies on the topic ”To learn how to learn”, the applying of research instruments regarding the conception of teachers on the collocation ”To learn how to learn”, as well as training courses on the same topic. . Total value of project 370.062 Euro, out of which the sum of 54.806. EURO was allocated to the University of Craiova. Proiect manager: Assoc.Prof. Codruta Stanisoara. (www.ea.gr/ep/comenius- study/action)

2009 - Member of the research team of the topic “Civilization and Theology as a Basis for Juridical Orders and Systems” in the international grant “Science and Orthodoxy, Research and Education”. This grant offered by John Templeton Foundation for a three-year period was obtained in December 2006 by the Association for Dialogue between Science and Theology of Romania. (www.adstr.ro). Proiect manager for Romania Dr. Magda Stavinschi, ADSTR president. (www.adstr.ro.)

2009 - Member of the implementation team of the project “Rethinking and implementation of entrepreneuring culture by providing training input and partnership development at (trans)national level” TREPAN-POS-DRU/9/3.1/S/6, implementation period 2009-2011, Total value of project : 4.980.000 EURO, project manager: Prof. dr. Paul Rinderiu. In this project I contributed to the elaboration of technical and scientific documents in and from English,

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

documents that have been published in indexed data bases, as well as in the scientific project report, and that contribute to the project successful implementation. (www.trepan.eubiz.ro).

2008 - Coordinator from the Department of English and German Studies of the international grant “Translation and inter-culturality”, financed by The Writers’ Union of Romania( WUR ), total value of project 7000 RON. The project is on the WUR site; Approved projects on semester II, 2008, position 12. Project manager: Assoc. Prof. Ian Lascu. (www.uniuneascriitorilor.ro/)

2008 - Member of the implementation team of the international research project VDF FC/16.11.2007 “Consultancy and Research Agreement Concerning Investigating Mechanism of Action, Delivery Systems, analytical Methods of Calcium Fructoborate” for VDF future Ceuticals Inc., Illinois, USA (project manager Assoc Prof. Romulus Ion Scorei , Facultatea de Horticultura, University of Craiova, 2007-2008, contract value :36000 USA, (27000 EURO). In this project I contributed to the elaboration of technical and scientific documents in and from English, documents that have been published in indexed data bases, as well as in the scientific project report, and that contribute to the project successful implementation. (cis01.ucv.ro/resurse/84_fisa.doc, cis01.ucv.ro/resurse/113_fisa.doc.)

2008 - Member of the implementation team of the international research project VDF FC/21.10.2008 “Consultancy and Research Agreement.Concerning Obtain EU Regulatory Approval for Calcium Fructoborate and Conduct Mutually Agreeble Clinical Studies” for VDF future Ceuticals Inc., Illinois, USA (project manager Assoc Prof. Romulus Ion Scorei, University of Craiova, 2007-2008, contract value: 36.000 USA, (27.000 EURO). In this project I contributed to the elaboration of technical and scientific documents in and from English, documents that have been published in indexed data bases, as well as in the scientific project report, and that contribute to the project successful implementation. (cis01.ucv.ro/resurse/84_fisa.doc, cis01.ucv.ro/resurse/113_fisa.doc.)

2007-2008 - Member of the implementation team of the Leonardo da Vinci international research project “Creating and Observatory on Europe –Wide TAQC (Transparency of Academic Qualifications and Competences ) for Catching the MOLE( Mobility of Labor in Europe) and Filling in the GAP (Generalized Academic Policy)”, valoare 268.000 Eur, director

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

proiect Prof. univ. dr. Paul Rinderu.Valoare proiect 268.000 Euro. In this project I contributed to the elaboration of the project scientific documents and to the publication of the work “TAQC Workshop Proceedings”. (cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/; cis01.ucv.ro/resurse/113)

2006 - Member of the research team of the international grant ‘The Jewish Communities from Romania, during the Period of Second Word War ( The Forced Labour Regime” financed by the National Fund of the Republic of Austria , 2003-2006, proiect manager Prof. PhD. Ion Patroiu. .

In this project I contributed to the drawing up of scientific reports and to the publication of articles in the area of interest. (cis01.central.ucv.ro/lucrari_dr/docs/108_cv-ro.doc.)

2000 Sept.-2001 June - Fulbright Grant-teaching and research at Boston College, USA

- national: 4

2009 - Coordinator from the Department of English and German Studies of the cultural grant “I.D Sirbu-The writer’s posterity. 90 years from his birth.20 years from his death.”, financed by The Writers’ Union of Romania (WUR), total value of project 9000 RON. The project is on the WUR site; Approved cultural projects on semester I, 2009, position 21. Project manager: Assoc. Prof. Ian Lascu. In this project I coordinated the students’ activity of translating a few important I.D.Sirbu texts from Romanian into English; I also organized and participated in public readings in English by our students, members of the Intercultura translating center of the Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova. ( www.uniuneascriitorilor.ro/)

2008 - Member of the research team in the research project CEEX259/11.09.2006 cu titlul “Control and technological integration of intelligent materials and structures” CITMSI). Project value: 1593290 RON, proiect manager: Prof. PhD. Mircea Ivanescu; period: 2006-2008. In this project I contributed to the drawing up of scientific reports and to the publication of articles in the area of interest. (www.ccmr.ro/citmsi/index.php; www.ccmr.ro/; www.robotics.ucv.ro/ccmr)

2008 - Member of the research team in the grant contract Nr.27 GR/11/11.052007, type A, code 620, topic I , title “The competing approach of robotic systems plugin”; project manager: Prof.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

PhD. Nicu Bizdoaca; deployment period: 2007-2008.. In this project I contributed to the drawing up of scientific reports and to the publication of articles in the area of interest.

2005 - Member of the research team in the grant: “The history of Romanian diplomacy in the first half of the 20th century”; projrct manager Prof.PhD.Ion Patroiu. In this project I contributed to the drawing up of scientific reports and to the publication of articles in the area of interest. (cis01.central.ucv.ro/istorie/files/)

As an associate editor of RAMURI, I have constantly encouraged and promoted the publication of literary essays and literary translations offered by my students, not only in this periodical, but also in other important national literary publications.

As an essayist and literary translator I have participated in different national and international festivals, the most important being as follows:

- International Conference “The Meeting of Romanian Writers from Around the World”, Neptun

- Literature Festival “Bucureşti – Chişinău – Orheiul Vechi”, 20-21 June 2014, “Two states – one literature”, Writers’ Union of Moldavia

- Days and Nights of Literature Festival, Neptun, 2014

- Days and Nights of Literature Festival, Neptun, 2013

- Days and Nights of Literature Festival, Neptun, 2012

- International Writers and Translators' Center of Rhodes, Greece, 7-10 June, 2012 (presentation: Romanian Contemporary Poetry into English)

- Days and Nights of Literature Festival, Neptun,2011

-35th Belgrade Meeting of Translators, Belgrad, Serbia, 27-30 May, (presentation: ”My Experience of Translating Poetry” 2010)

- The International Conference: “The meeting of Romanian writers around the world”-Neptun, Romania,1999

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Section II. Scientific, Professional and Academic Accomplishments. Main lines of research.

This section is meant to illustrate that my professional, research and academic interests have been basically focused on British and American literary and cultural studies, my books, articles and papers showing concern for the following areas: Victorian (canonical) literature, literary criticism, postmodernist British and American literature, Anglo-Saxon civilization, translation studies. I have also been interested in comparative studies, particularly in the constant comparison of British, American and Romanian cultures. The interest for this topic was made manifest by my participation in projects which approached the problem of cultural and national specificity by means of literary translation.

In the period 2005-2014 , when my books on canonical Victorian writers were published, I was an active member of the research center Centrul de Cercetare a Identităţilor Lingvistice şi Culturale Europene (The Centre for the Research of European Linguistic and Cultural Identities) – CRELCI - (Research Centres Accredited by M.E.C.-C.N.C.S.I.S. – 2005), an institution of scientific research and professional activity coordinated by the Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova, which functioned within the Department of Anglo-American and German Studies, Director Professor Emil Sirbulescu, Head of Department1

1 Centrul de Cercetare a Identităţilor Lingvistice şi Culturale Europene (The Centre for the Research of European Linguistic and Cultural Identities) – CRELCI, este o instituţie de cercetare ştiinţifică şi pregătire profesională în cadrul Universităţii din Craiova şi îşi desfăşoară activitatea sub coordonarea Facultăţii de Litere. Centrul funcţionează în cadrul Departamentului de Studii Anglo-americane şi germane al Facultăţii de Litere, Universitatea din Craiova. Direcţia/direcţiile principale de cercetare: politici lingvistice europene (studii de lingvistică teoretică şi aplicată), studii de traductologie, cercetări literare (sociologia literaturii, literatură comparată, istorie literară, critică literară, teorie literară) - literary research (sociology of literature, comparative literature, literary history, literary theory), studii culturale/interculturalitate, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/cercetare/, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/, Adresa web: http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/identitati.lingvistice.si.culturale.europene/index_centru.html)

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Conceived to include several parts, out of which volumes I, II, III have already been published, our project Victorian Writers, enrolls in the main research directions of CRELCI: literary research (sociology of literature, comparative literature, literary history, literary theory), and is meant to be a thematic research of a selection of Victorian canonical authors in the form of introductory critical studies. While providing a critical introduction for the students of Victorian canonical writers’ main works, and for other readers who have been influenced by them, our studies also present our own original perspectives on some of the greatest Victorian writers of prose fiction, drama and poetry. An introduction for each writer outlines the personal, cultural and specifically literary contexts of his/her writing, while a concluding chapter offers up-to-date critical reflections on his/her work from the point of view of the themes highlighted throughout the section. We took up this project in the hope that our studies, complete with an ample bibliography, will prove stimulating for both beginners and advanced students of canonical Victorian writers.

Since the reading target of my publications obviously includes our own students, I followed, for the sake of a better reception and understanding, the following pattern: 1. General Information; 2. Biographical Information; 3. Major Works; 4. Critical Reception; 5. Selected Bibliography. In the 3 volumes published so far a special attention was given to the bibliography for each author, which was structured as such: Selected Bibliography: 1. Bibliography; 2. Collected editions; 3. Separate works. 4. Letters, Speeches, Readings; 5. Periodicals devoted to Dickens; 6. Biographies; 7. General Criticism; 8. Studies or Special Aspects of the Author’s Work; 9. Studies or Individual Novels.

For the sake of uniformity, in this theoretical presentation, we referred to the works, topics and characters of George Eliot whom we consider one of the most complex Victorian writers. Actually, in his book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages ,twentieth-century

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

literary critic Harold Bloom placed Eliot among the greatest Western writers of all time. Since concepts and perspectives from different research fields had been used, we thought it necessary to introduce subtitles for a better presentation of the notions.

II.1.Victorian canonical literature. Theoretical background.

II.1.1.The place of women in a patriarchal society

II.1.2. Woman’s status and roles – between subject and object

II.1.3. Woman’s image-between inferiority and oppression

II.1.4. Attitude to female body and mind- the dichotomy body / mind

II.1.5. Body, sex and gender-studies of gender

II.1.6. Femininity and sexuality (within Victorian boundaries)-references

II.1.7. Realism vs. idealism

II.1.8. Typological features of (female) Victorian characters

II.1.8.a. Types: social and literary concepts

II.1.8.b. Archetypes: psychological and literary concepts

II.1.8.c. Stereotypes: social and gender delineation

II.1 Theoretical background

It is generally agreed that one transcending aspect to Victorian England life and society is change, or more accurately upheaval. Consequently, essayists and novelists, instead of turning inside or escaping into fantasy, chose to directly address the pressing social problems of the day, which ranged from atrocious labour conditions and dire poverty to the issue of woman’s place in the world-what contemporaries referred to as “The Woman’s Question” - amply reflected in the writings of the period. In introducing and discussing the authors we attempted to highlight also other themes commonly found in the literature written during the Victorian Era, like

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

: colonialism, cultural identity, domesticity, imperialism, industrialization, orientalism and representation of race, travel/adventure novel/guidebooks.

In our books and articles on Victorian canonical literature we have employed and will employ in further projects several theoretical approaches from different fields, reference being made to George Eliot’s fictional work, one of the most complex and representative of the Victorian novelists. Mention must be made that some recent books have also been mentioned. These are recent works that have not been used in our analyses as they appeared after our own studies had been published; their presence in the Reference section suggest that they will be used in our further projects.

II. 1.1. The Place of Women in a Patriarchal Society

Victorian society was in its foundations conservative and coercive towards woman’s existence and rights. Its restrictions, to which Victorian writers alluded to in their description of Victorian society, lie as proof of woman’s oppression in nineteenth century England. We consider that Victorian society was best illustrated by the term “patriarchal” as described by feminist theorists. Patriarchal values have existed since ancient times, including Greek and Roman civilisations. At the core of the patriarchal society stands man as leader, the head of the family, who rules over woman and child. Greek philosophers considered woman dangerous and demonic as Frances Gray argues in her book Jung, Irigaray, Individuation (2008). Gray states that in The Republic, Plato “demonises the mirroring of women’s chaotic and uncontrollable desires and passions” (36). Irigaray mentions the ancients’ view on woman’s chaotic nature in her presentation of Plato’s Hystera (Speculum of the Other Woman 1985: 243-364). What is worth mentioning is that woman’s womb was called “hyster” which means chaos. Thus, it is in woman’s nature to be “chaotic.” Lord David Cecil, a representative of the so-called Humanist School of criticism, writing in reaction to contemporary taste, established a humanistic view of literature and promoted novelists on the grounds of their “knowledge of human nature” and “their creative imagination.” His is a coherent appraisal of the Victorian novel as a literary form, and he was one of the first critics to consider George Eliot as a kind of reference point for her age: “there is

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one sort of novel before George Eliot and another after her.” Totally assuming Cecil’s assertion, we thought it proper to refer in these theoretical considerations to Eliot’s work.

II.1.2. Woman’s status and roles – between Subject and Object

Woman’s status is outlined by the patriarchal order which enforces male authority on woman rendering woman’s social position as inferior to man’s. As a consequence, patriarchal society is built on differences between man and woman, the same differences appearing in Aristotle’s Politics. In her book Speculum of the Other Woman, Irigaray uses Plato’s metaphor of the cave in order to interpret it from a feminist point of view, introducing the perspective of the other. Irigaray underlines the fact that woman was perceived as other beginning with ancient times and that the dispute over the rights and freedom of woman has been discussed on numerous occasions. (The Speculum of a Woman 1985: 157). Irigaray’s theory, corroborated with other feminist, cultural and historical theories, was and may be applied to further research in order to demonstrate woman’s otherness which was a consequence of the patriarchal double standard of Victorian universe.

Woman’s lot in patriarchal society is examined by Simone de Beauvoir in her book The Second Sex where she concludes that the aim of feminist literature has not been focused on seeking “clarity and understanding” but rather on claiming the rights of women (The Second Sex, “Introduction”, 1953: 7). Beauvoir views women as occupying the second place in society as a result of the action of “strong environmental forces of educational and social tradition under the purposeful control of men” (1953: 9).Beauvoir presents man as the self and woman as the Other. Man is the right element, while woman is the wrong one. She presents the ancients’ manner of describing masculinity shaped as a “vertical” which symbolises righteousness, perfection, equilibrium; while femininity is displayed as an “oblique” which signifies immorality, imperfection and disequilibrium.

Each individual occupying a family/social position is expected to accomplish his / her duties as required by the patriarchal system. In this system women are supposed to marry and bear children. Marriage is a change of paramount importance in woman’s life, as Allan Johnson claims in his book The Gender Knot: Unravelling Our Patriarchal Legacy. From this moment

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she is perceived through the ‘mirror’ of marriage that limits her freedom of action, thought and enforces certain requirements on them (2005: 51). Patriarchal society is founded on the opposition between man and woman, masculinity and femininity, manhood and womanhood. These attributes are revealed by personality traits which may be stereotypes; male ones are aggressive, rational, strong, clear-headed, active, objective, dominant, decisive, and self- confident, while female ones are quiescent, irrational, weak, hysterical, subjective, passive, indecisive and lacking self-control (Johnson 2005: 86). The opposition between sexes has caused gender features which are assigned to each division – these roles are the expression of what is expected of individuals according to the status they hold in social relationships. These traits are part of the Victorian society’s description too; women are hysterical and irrational, while men are calm and rational.

Alongside gender characteristics, the dichotomy masculinity/femininity creates genuine images of women and men as a result of the social privilege and oppression they are subjected to. These images of men and women, cf. imagology, represent a social paradox – on the one hand, there are the sex opposites which dictate regulatory behaviour on the part of female and male actors, while there are representations of harmonious relationships between men and women who are able to complete each other without being concerned about who is the dominator. In Eliot’s novels we can find several conventional illustrations of such relationships between man and woman (Daniel Daronda, Middlemarch).

Michel Foucault discusses the two concepts from a legal perspective where the subject is opposed to object through the power it has as derived from the law (“The Subject and Power,” 1982: 785). In the patriarchal society, in the eyes of the law, it is man who holds the position of subject and woman that of the object. In Eliot’s narratives woman is usually depicted as the object with few exceptions. Woman’s desire to be the subject and not the object in a relationship may compel her to disguise herself into a new being. For instance, Rosamond Vincy is the object until she is in control of her matrimony which turns her into the subject that becomes an agency moulding the events on her behalf in order to accomplish her goal. The notion of femininity as masquerade appeared in the psychoanalyst’s Joan Rivière essay “Womanliness as a Masquerade”, published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 1929. The essay

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mirrors social positions towards gender in the period, embracing “the assumption that intellectual pursuits are ‘masculine’” (qtd. in Weedon 2000: 94). Woman assuming the role of man is incongruous with the established order of the patriarchal society. An important part of patriarchal culture is the fact that men get to compete over women, which places women “as objects to be competed for, possessed, and used” (Johnson 2005: 60), an example being Eliot’s The Mill on The Floss where Maggie Tulliver becomes the object of Philip Wakem’s and Stephen Guest’s pursuit.

II.1.3. Woman’s image-between inferiority and oppression

In Allan Johnson’s understanding, patriarchy stands for a system of relations among the institutions that, to some extent, rule the individuals’ lives – “the family, religion, and economy” (2005: 29). In his opinion, patriarchy exists because of, and due to, men and women. Men oppress women and women passively accept to be oppressed. We have applied Johnson’s definition of patriarchy as being a male dominant society in order to demonstrate that Victorian female characters live in a patriarchal society which forces them to behave, think and act according to the Law of the Father. The female characters which try to bend the patriarchal rules become social outcasts.

An important element of Beauvoir’s book is the examination of the female condition as that of oppressed woman. The French feminist considers that woman’s oppression is the result of man’s cunning plan to employ her faults against herself without her knowing. Moreover, man encourages his female counterpart to develop the flaws that strengthen his view as being superior to his female half. Beauvoir argues that he undertakes this action with the specific aim of maintaining the disequilibrium between the sexes. She indicates that woman’s seductiveness resides in her weak features that make her desirable to man; however, some women use their “feeble sex” to attract the strong male. Woman’s inability to understand universal laws as well as her lack of interest in scientific research metamorphose her into a marionette trapped within the constraints of a system ruled by male power. We have applied Beauvoir’s theory in terms of woman’s inferiority to man throughout our analyses as this issue represents an important feminist debate as well as a Victorian reality. .

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The implications that patriarchal society has upon the individual and the collective are represented by Jacques Lacan in his principle of the symbolic order defined as “a universal structure encompassing the entire field of human action and existence” in the International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (Mijolla et al., 2005: 1710). Lacan considers that the evolution of an individual is constituted of three important stages: the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. The last one bears no external influences, while the others are subjected to permanent changes. Irigaray uses the concept of the symbolic order as a means to classify the representation of the world. In her interpretation women do not possess any classification of their own as all the categorisations they use are masculine and part of patriarchal society. Thus, Irigaray assumes that because of the symbolic patriarchal order women rather resemble, than differ from one another. Lacan’s symbolic order is associated with the Phallus, which is essentially and utterly patriarchal as it signifies relations of power among and between men, who by holding the reins of power, exchange women as goods in a society dominated by the ‘Law of the Father’.

The male image is the dominant one in Victorian society where the ‘Law of the Father’ is fundamental and discriminatory, at the same time. This goes as self-evidence or “doxa” (Bourdieu 1995: 166) that has been used to describe the Law of the Father: “established cosmological and political order [that] is perceived not as arbitrary, i.e. as one possible order among others, but as a self-evident and natural order which goes without saying and therefore goes unquestioned” Patriarchal society is based on “identification patterns” that may show at national and personal or individual level. These identification features appear at the narrative level, too, under the form of tropes which, through their figurative meaning, underline the characters’ features and the narrator’s input. Leerssen argues in his article “Imagology: History and Method” that images are dependent on culture and communication for they can be described as tropes that work as discursive intertextual markers. Tropes function as mental images that assign certain typological descriptions encrypted by individual experience. Leerssen addresses imagology at collective level in discussing “ethnic stereotypes” which brought about “national character” that is as close to “society” as “soul” is to “body” (2007: 18). Therefore, elements of “national culture [held] a priori to be different from other cultures and singled out by the nation’s

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underlying characteristic individuality” (2007: 19). Leerssen’s theory was and may be further applied in our analysis of Victorian characters.

In gender studies imagology deals with an individual’s perception or self-perception as being female or male, encapsulating all the images to which gender categories of masculinity and femininity may correspond. Imagology applied to gender studies generated three types of images: first, the self-image that designates the different types of images that members of groups might have or envision of themselves; second, the hetero-image focusing on the image of the others, and third, the meta-image referring to how individuals think others perceive them. As regards the aspect of gender, imagology examines the manner in which the opposite sex and others perceive “one’s own sexual identity” as Ginette Verstraete argues (2007: 334).

There are three main approaches that the relation between gender and imagology introduce, and that we have been included in our analyses. Firstly, it is important to define what the meaning of a man’s or a woman’s proper behaviour in a certain society is – this refers to the boundaries that society enforces upon its members. Secondly, it is necessary to identify what connection may exist between gender and femininity, masculinity and sexuality; by using this approach we can classify these categories according to their importance in the Victorian age. Thirdly, it is essential to pinpoint how the aforementioned features are ranged “through images, discourses, social institutions” and especially through the intermediary of inner processes of “education, cultural consumption, and bodily behaviour” (2007: 329). In this manner we were able to analyse such images through the connections with the educational system, the exposure to culture and the behaviour of the body; these features were examined from the perspective of Victorian society’s expectations and their depiction in Victorian novels.

From a psychological point of view, Carl Jung considers images to constitute experience which consists of all mental images that are amassed and analysed by the human mind (.Jung 623). Individuals’ actions are stored by human mind which offers ‘mental images’ regarding previous actions. In patriarchal society, the actions of the members of society are controlled by rules that dominate members’ minds. Individuals living in patriarchal society use their ‘mental images’ and ‘experience’ in order to obey the laws imposed on them. This is the case of Victorian society;

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Eliot’s female characters are experienced women or gain their experience while living in the Victorian conservative society. Their presumed most important goal is to become good and submissive wives and to give birth to as many children as they can. One of George Eliot’s female characters, Princess Halm-Eberstein, though she appears only once in the plot of the novel, Daniel Deronda, underlines the fact that being a woman is even harder than being a man, for if a woman is intelligent and strong-willed, she has to disguise her true self in order to be let to live.

From a philosophical perspective, the issue of identity can be analysed depending on the types of relationships based on love between characters, male and female. The concept of love has four facets according to C.S. Lewis that he presents in his study Four Loves depending on the kind of love that is expressed in the narrative, i.e. the differences between these four types of love: storge, philia, eros and agape. The first one refers to the most natural type of love devoid of any interest which is affection or storge that Lewis classifies as “the least discriminating of loves” (Lewis 1960: 54). Storge is related to familial love. Hence, it may be related to the domestic roles that Victorian women were imposed to play in British society. It may also be connected to the maternal love that women were expected to show towards their offspring. However, Lewis emphasises the role of children in this love relationship as they may become “maternal vampire[s]” (1960: 39) forcing the mother to loathe her own child. Lewis depicts storge differently depending on the social environment where it exists. On the one hand, storge in a public dimension is viewed and criticised according to the social rules that are required to exist in such an open space; on the other hand, storge as domestic affection comprises maternal love and a very personal manner of expressing and showing that type of love. We have employed the concept of storge when analysing familial love in Victorian novels and established its importance in the process of building characters.

The second interpretation of love is the one that means friendship or philia that Aristotle considered a virtue; Cicero named it amicitia in Latin. Lewis claims that philia is not based on interest or instincts; it is “the least natural of loves”. He maintains that humans’ lives do not depend on philia but they do depend on eros. Philia could endanger human lot as (negative) emotions resulting from a relationship could bring about the end of the respective relationship. The main feature of philia, i.e. the disinterested type of love, lies at the foundation of the

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individuals’ transformation into superior entities according to Lewis’ mention of “gods and angels” (1960: 89). Lewis argues that in the history of humankind philia can be traced back only in the male line without the female because beginning with prehistoric times the male has been considered more important than the female and established their separate roles in family and community. The main principle in a friendship is to seek in somebody for something more than a friend, i.e. find common interests that can provide you a wide variety of actions. The notion philia was used in the examination of Victorian novels and their representation of women in order to help us achieve a complete analysis of the role philia plays in the interpersonal fictional relations. It is worth remarking that philia that exists between persons of different sexes may turn into eros very fast.

The third version of love is eros which designates the feeling of “being in love” (Lewis 1960: 131). Eros does not comprise sexual love from the beginning; the state of being in love may evolve to a superior stage which implies sexual intercourse. Lewis argues that Eros is nobler than Venus for the latter is more instinctual than the former which is more spiritual. In Eliot’s novels, both Eros and Venus appear, but the more appraised of the two is Eros which does not only limit itself to the physical existence of humankind. The opposition Venus / Eros seems to be similar to the dichotomy body and mind. Lewis describes three different views of the body: first, to the “ascetic Pagans” it was the “the ‘tomb’ of the soul”, second, to Greeks, it was magnificent, and third, St. Francis named “his body ‘Brother Ass’” (Lewis 1960: 142-3). However, Lewis draws attention to the fact that it may be perilous to consider only Eros for it could lead us to “permanently abolish the joke” (1960: 143). But, denying “this recollection of levity” could also be damaging as man’s role in the couple may turn into “the dominance of a conqueror or a captor, and the woman to a correspondingly extreme subjection and surrender” (Lewis 1960: 145). A relationship could change its focus from love to terror when the dominant subject, the man, feels he should show his power over his counterpart, the woman. Venus does not strictly regard satisfaction as Eros, which does not uniquely involve contentment. Eros may be short- lived for some and permanent for others. It is equally important regardless of the period of time it is active in people. Eros is representative of the four loves as it portrays the kind of love that Victorian woman would experience and some of the female characters discussed in our analyses

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do. However, this sentimental experience has to obey the norms of patriarchal society; that is why some of Victorian female characters are punished from a moral and ethical point of view.

The fourth type of love that Lewis examines is agape, which he translates as “charity,” which refers to the humane feelings that individuals should be able to exhibit to one another. Charity is not regarded as “natural love”, it is taught and learnt along the lifespan of individuals. It is related to Christian teachings of loving the other. It also represents the power to forgive those who have hurt us. In George Eliot’s novels, her lay religion of humanism could be called charity, but we should pay attention to the fact that George Eliot was interested in the result and not in the involvement of Christian teachings. Charity is directly linked to sympathy and sympathetic thinking. Although it is less ubiquitous, charity is as important as the rest of “the four loves” and was cultivated by the Victorians. Charity represented an important pillar of the moral Victorian thought as Victorian society was a highly-moralistic one that believed in leading a respectable life irrespective of one’s financial means. The Victorian pattern of moral life was first exhibited by the upper class and it was then imitated by the middle class. The middle-class lifestyle and education were mostly based on the model of the upper class. Middle-class girls were often sent to boarding schools which offered them better education than working-class girls were provided.

Since ancient times the image of woman has been disparaging as to Plato, woman or the feminine equals disorder and lack of reason; thus, in his scheme “disorder is undesirable and therefore unwanted, and women are always already considered to be inferior to men, they are the ‘natural’ repositories of men’s projections” (Gray, 2008: 100). Starting from Plato’s view on women, Irigaray concludes that women have always been considered the Other of men. In “God and the Jouissance of the Woman” Jacques Lacan states that woman’s existence is untrue as she is created through exclusion, through denial: (Lacan 1982: 144).Therefore, woman is barred from phallic jouissance but she has a complementary jouissance “beyond the phallus … There is a jouissance proper to her, to this “her” which does not exist and which signifies nothing. There is a jouissance proper to her and of which she herself may know nothing, except that she experiences it – that much she does know” (Lacan 1982: 145)

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In discussing Lacan’s and Freud’s views on femininity, Toril Moi terms jouissance as the “metaphorical ghost of femininity” since “[m]en become the norm, women the problem to be explained; men embody humanity, women remain imprisoned in their feminine difference” (2004: 844). Woman exists in the masculine symbolic which she may escape from and develop a feminine symbolic or imaginary of her own, but she will be excluded from or rejected by her community as it also happens in Eliot’s novels (The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede). Should she not choose to become a social outcast, woman is obliged to conform to the patriarchal laws by which society is ruled. Nevertheless, there may be exceptions to the rule and they emphasise woman’s struggle to gain her independence from man; thus, any female exponents that achieve the act of not conforming to man should be considered nonconformist. These females could be considered the feminine symbolic / imaginary as their actions propagate the feminine ideal. George Eliot’s novels introduce readers to Victorian patriarchal society where women were expected to be passive and compliant with the Victorian social norms. In Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy, Deirdre David argues that George Eliot had the dilemma of whether to comply with the patriarchal norms or to be a social outcast because of her immoral partnership with George Henry Lewes. As a consequence, her writing activity, whose authorship she tried to keep hidden, became known, and even appreciated for its value, and their relationship public.

In Johnson’s opinion intimacy is affected by patriarchy for the latter is structured on the differences between man and woman and on the power man can use against woman (2005: 37- 38). The attributes of the patriarchal system that Johnson presents are: coercion, control, force and violence. All these features are part of the system which basically induces the opposition between men and women. In this type of society oppression of women is ubiquitous as “force and violence’ are essential to this pattern. In patriarchal society hierarchy is most important for it establishes male domination over woman. In Eliot’s portrayal of nineteenth-century English society woman is subjected to man’s domination. In Daniel Deronda Gwendolen Harleth experiences life under the terror of her husband, Henleigh Grandcourt, although she has first deluded herself that she will be the dominant partner.

In his book Johnson presents the typical patriarchal society as characterised by three features: every patriarchy is composed of male domination, male identification and male centeredness.

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Firstly, it is male dominance which supports the idea that women are inferior to men. He argues that “men as a group become identified with superiority even though most men aren’t powerful in their individual lives. In this sense, every man’s standing in relation to women is enhanced by the male monopoly over authority in patriarchal societies” (2005: 6).

The second dominant feature of patriarchal society is male identification that refers to the use of the pronominal masculine singular form ‘he,’ when referring to important social positions such as doctor, or more importantly, religious icons, for example, God. In patriarchal society God can only be masculine. Johnson claims that male action is the main feature of a male-dominated society as only man can lead; the same views existed in the nineteenth-century society. (2005: 9). Because of the fact that the main social roles are male identified, there remain some activities that request female assistance, for instance teaching and child care. Victorian female characters are presented with the opportunity of becoming a governess or wife; unless their economic situation permits them, some of the female characters take this opportunity and find their happiness in their limited career opportunity, while others reject it from the start.

The third feature is male centredness which refers to the fact that “the focus of attention is primarily on men and what they do” (2005: 10). Johnson considers that “a male centre focus is everywhere” (2005: 12). He continues by citing from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own where she writes that women often perform as “looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man twice its natural size” (35). The image of imitator that woman is assigned stands as an example of the importance that woman has in man’s life – to be close to him and provide all the necessary objects he is in need of and to be the best companion man needs in order for the man to be highly thought of by other men. Johnson’s opinion is similar to Plato’s, previously mentioned. We can conclude that Victorian society is based on patriarchy having the same values as a patriarchal society; thus enforcing specific status and roles upon woman.

Male centeredness is connected to controlling every action around man’s existence. This is the trigger for confrontations between men and competitions against each other. Johnson regards competition as the dynamics that keep men moving, hunting and becoming superior whether they

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are the subjects of the action or not. He maintains that men develop obsession over controlling their lives and the lives of others, including women. Men who develop control issues want to get more control on others and on the manner in which the latter act and think. Controlling the others is deeply engraved in males’ mental structure which commands their actions; their mental structure is modelled according to the patriarchal society’s values. Johnson believes that men’s lives are directly linked to control for this underlines their superiority: (2005: 14). Men’s attempt to control the weaker, including women, is a characteristic of patriarchal society which is built on the male principle of reason; thus, the patriarchal system is an “unemotional” one which can dominate the emotional and feeble sex through its logical and righteous attitude. Controlling woman may be possible even after man’s death, as happens in George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch, as we have mentioned above.

Regarding control, Johnson considers that the system which controls us shapes our lives both internally and externally: males perceive control as a means to define their “sense of self, well- being, worth, and safety” (2005: 14). Consequently, they feel compelled to “organize” the aspects of their lives according to it. He sustains that one can control another in a relationship of control on condition that there are three main elements: the one that controls or “controller”, the one that is controlled or “controlled” and the “disconnection” that separates one from the other in order to consider him or her as the Other (2005: 14). Therefore, Johnson’s view can be used in our analysis of the dichotomy subject / object as we conclude that the objects, as opposites of “subjects”, seem to be empty. The emptiness does not come from their lacking any human features, but it comes from their lacking power, depth, and intricacy. We employed this perspective to analyse the female characters’ endeavour to become a subject, such as in Eliot’s Daniel Deronda where Gwendolen Harleth seems to be a subject until she makes a compromise by marrying Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt in order to provide a carefree life for her mother and half-sisters.

Patriarchal culture is built on the binary opposites male and female. It is natural in patriarchal society for men to be aggressive, competitive, and dominant and for women to be docile, compliant, and submissive. This sort of society values masculinity and maleness, while femininity and womanhood are constantly devalued. Patriarchal culture narrows down to the

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dichotomy between male and female; the existence of human race is dominated by the male component. Johnson views men who participate in patriarchal society as being “in an endless pursuit of and defence against control, for under patriarchy, control is both the source of and the only solution offered by their fear” (Johnson 2005: 54-55). He considers that by making use of power men institute “a religion of fear” (2005: 55), which together with control block the members’ ability of the two genders to become sexually intimate (2005: 56).

Johnson considers that obeying the regulations of patriarchal culture is, in fact, accepting the terms of a system of values which is based on negative and positive encouragement as a result of the individuals’ actions, irrespective of their gender. The most important feature of their existence is the emotional side which shows that living in a patriarchal society means being aware of what the representative of both genders are required to do and that is “to learn the rules that regulate punishment and reward based on how individuals behave and appear” (2005: 41). Patriarchal society is centred on controlling not only people and their lives, but also their manner of thinking, believing and feeling. This type of society has created its own culture which perpetuates privilege and oppression against women’s existence alongside “unequal distributions of power, rewards, opportunities, and resources” (2005: 41). As Johnson sustains patriarchal society is set up on the inequity of power between sexes establishing male privilege over the female members of society.

Every society is composed of individuals who have their own self. The existence of the self is based on “the assumption that there is a reciprocal relationship between the self and society” (Stryker 1980, quoted in Stets and Burke 2003: 128). Stets and Burke claim that the self has a dual character as it refers both to individuals and society. The self is related to the individual’s mind and language. The former represents the individuals’ ability to think, while the latter represents communication through words that are perceived by Stets and Burke as symbols (2003: 130)

In analysing language from Wittgenstein’s and Irigaray’s perspectives, Moi claims that “[i]t is quite possible that in some cultures women are trained to listen for certain kinds of sense that men are not trained to listen for” (2004: 866). With regard to the Victorian society, we consider

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that in a patriarchal society woman’s inferior status requires her attention to man’s needs. We applied Moi’s theory in our analysis of Victorian characters that, due to their status and roles, are forced to pay attention to what their male counterparts declare.

Stets and Burke define several concepts related to the self: self-concept, i.e. the manner in which individuals perceive themselves; self-evaluation, i.e. it is related to the individuals’ self-esteem. The concept of self-esteem has a twofold dimension: inner or efficacy-based and outer or worth- based. The former relates to the way individuals see themselves and the latter to the manner in which individuals are welcomed by and considered and valued as members of the community.

The issue of the self was analysed by psychoanalysts, too. One of them was Carl Gustav Jung who considered the self as an archetype that has the ego in its structure (1959, par. 257: 167). Jung’s vision of the self as archetype represents the unity between the conscious and the unconscious that undertake the process of individuation in order to form a whole personality (“Transformation Symbolism in the Mass” in Collected Works 11, par. 396). The self may be perceived from a two-fold perspective: the personal entity that each individual recognises as his / her own personality and the highest patriarchal image, i.e. the father who leads the family and society alike. In Eliot’s novels, the self is portrayed in these two manners, i.e. the female characters are under the protection and guidance of their male counterparts. The process of self- becoming is called by Jung “individuation” which has in its core the ego that represents the basis of an individual’s personality. Jung considers that the process of individuation connects the individual to society, as the self is an archetype, a collectively-recognised construct.

The new whole is, in fact, our personality whose core, the ego, is the essential part of our being. The ego is essential because during the process of individuation it remains the essential part of the growing personality. In our analyses we could and will use three other psychological archetypes as well: animus, anima, and shadow.. By applying Jung’s theory of the self to the Victorian age and the double standard imposed by the patriarchal society, we can argue that the male ego was shaped in a domineering manner while the female ego was shaped in a submissive manner, mainly as a consequence of instilling patriarchal values within an almost inexistent system of education for women. This theory explains the fact that female characters are

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submissive and passive, while male characters are dominant. The different manner in which the male and the female egos are presented in the analyzed novels is related to the different social standards – which are also class based – that the two have in the Victorian society.

As regards the double standard, Moi considers that nineteenth-century views were built on a “general thesis of male variability and female stability” (1999: 17) for man has easy access to public life and freedom of movement, hence his “variability,” while woman is (compellingly) kept in a restricting environment that narrows her freedom of action.

Inherited social positions suppose that the individuals who are members of higher social classes exhibit high self-esteem. Stets and Burke claim that “the desire for self-esteem may be what motivates people to create and maintain situations and relationships that verify one’s identity” (2003: 132). The self is also connected to the individual’s identity and the type of identity one builds for oneself in a community. However, every identity has a counter identity such as one who is a husband has a wife to accomplish his identity as a husband. The concept of identity is composed of two sub-concepts: agency and social role. The former refers to the individual’s choices and decisions which complete one’s role; the latter regards the individual’s social roles and positions. The encounter between individuals / identities “means addressing both social structure and agency” (2003: 134). In other words, individuals who meet make their decisions which affect their social roles and positions. In Victorian novels, female characters’ actions bring upon social and economic consequences as they are part of communities which are regulated by written and unwritten laws.

Identity triggers a certain type of behaviour which is related to the social expectations that an individual’s social role and position also cause. There are social expectations that define one’s social role and position. Besides identity, the social titles that one has or has inherited bring about a certain type of expected behaviour which can be successful, if the expectations are met, or unsuccessful, if the expectations are not met. In the Victorian age conformists would meet the expectations; however, in their novels, Victorian writers include social changes and individual decisions that bewildered their conventional contemporary readers.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

As part of society, individual identities comprise cultural meanings according to Heise and his colleagues who named this premise the affect control theory. Culture-based identities are shaped and mirror the customs and conventions that a society imposes on its members. Eliot’s female characters are represented according to the norms of Victorian culture which supposed them to be submissive, morally and ethically responsible, to achieve different roles in society, and accomplish their duties within their families both before after marriage. For instance, in Eliot’s novels, marriage brings with it changes, both social and personal, as Victorian women changed ownership. Women were perceived as property by Victorian men, the wives were supposed to obey, follow and fulfil their husbands’ commands and wishes. Victorian women, as presented byVictorian fiction writers lack freedom, equal education and free access to society without being associated with their husbands.

II.1.4. Attitude to Female Body and Mind- the dichotomy body / mind.

‘[T]he mother’s body is therefore what mediates the symbolic law organizing social relations and becomes the ordering principle of the semiotic chora.’ (Kristeva 1984: 27)

The distinction between object and subject continues at another level – the dichotomy body / mind. The female function representing the object is completed by the body, while the male function indicating the subject becomes even more powerful with mind bracketed to it. Body is inferior to mind as mind controls things and actions meanwhile body accomplishes actions.

In her book The Sociology of the Body, Kate Creegan presents the body as abject and submissive. The body is collectively hesitant; it is directly connected to the individual’s life and to “individual experience within a wider social complex” (2006: 7). Creegan considers that “the abject body is the product of the power of spiritual and / or psychological systems to make and unmake the corporeal world […]. It is at once a site of attraction and revulsion” (2006: 11-12). The abject body is also at the mercy of a wider set of rules, which are inculcated into the individual as a means of other-regulation through self-regulation. Creegan’s input on the body as abject is related to the Christian tradition where the body is the tool that individuals use when they sin. In the Christian tradition the body is damned to suffer the actions of the mind. From this point of view, body and woman are akin.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

As previously mentioned, in Victorian society woman was viewed as inferior to man, both sexually and mentally. George Eliot presents Victorian woman as being imprisoned in a metaphorical cage by the patriarchal rules that dominate the community. In his book, Discipline and Punish the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, imagined a correctional institution, based on Jeremy Bentham’s concept called ‘panopticon,’ whose structural plan the British liberal and social reformer designed. Foucault mentioned it when he discussed the status of the correctional system in France in his book Discipline and Punish

The body represents the physical element of the human being and it is the first to suffer any kind of oppression. Punitive oppression, as presented by Foucault, is focused on the body and its strengths that he refers to as “‘political economy’ of the body”: irrespective of the methods used, it is the body that is aimed at together with “its forces, their utility and their docility, their distribution and their submission” (1977: 25). In Victorian novels it is the psychological coercion that is more present than the physical one. The state of oppression may induce the want of independence and freedom from entrapment. However, escaping from imprisonment may propagate dangerous social movements. For instance, in George Eliot’s novels, female characters are reprimanded for their disobedient actions and are socially and financially sanctioned for their misbehaviour.

We consider that Foucault’s description of the correctional system may also be applied to the Victorian patriarchal society. The body that Foucault mentions may be the female body which is docile and submissive under man’s force and violence. Woman’s imprisonment may consist of less harmful conditions if she leads her life under patriarchal rule We see Foucault’s depiction of “the carceral network” as a possible metaphorical portrayal of the patriarchal society which incarcerates the female body and constrains woman to act in accordance with patriarchal laws. (Foucauld, 1977: 304). Woman’s body is under the careful observation of the Victorian patriarchal society which works as an “apparatus of punishment”, where a new type of economy was established as economic progress rose much above previous levels. The terms “economy of power” may pinpoint social control employed by Victorian men in order to be able to have power over others, i.e. women, weaker men and children. Men represented “the normalising power” of the social environment.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

We also think that for an analysis of Victorian society the terms “habitus” and “body hexis,” introduced by Pierre Bourdieu, are useful tools. Habitus incorporates the social, cultural and physical practices of a community that define it since Bourdieu’s concept is related to that community’s “collective history” “products” by using “the objective structures [such as] language, economy,” (Bourdieu, 1995: 85). It is through repetition and recurrence of events that the habitus is instilled in the routine activities of a group, irrespective of the age it lives in. Therefore, habitus is related to the conformist individuals who abide by their group’s norms, thus, enforcing them again and again. The factors that form a habitus are connected to social relationships, accomplishments, aptitudes and bonds one gets beginning with birth, either by formal or informal processes. These factors are exhibited in different fields of cultural knowledge or practice / “field of practice” (Bourdieu). In the Victorian age written and unwritten laws subsisted due to the fact that those norms kept regulating the nineteenth-century British society for most of its members acted according to them, while those who did not were simply social outcasts or non-conformists. It is the style of the latter that Bourdieu calls ““personal” style, the particular stamp marking all the products of the same habitus, whether practices or works, is never more than a deviation in relation to the style of a period or class so that it relates back to the common style not by its conformity […] – but also by the difference which makes the whole “manner” (1995: 86). Hence, habitus can be linked more to the female mind than to the body as woman is man’s subject in private sphere and public sphere as well. A perilous instance for the Victorian society is represented by the individuals that have a different “style” which endangers the order enforced through the “Law of the Father” since they are exponents of a type of thinking which can break the social equilibrium. Bourdieu mentions that such non-conformity only proves the rule(s) of that society for it is the norm that is observed at the end and not its exception. Bourdieu termed the expertise one may possess in any field of practice as cultural capital. By using the habitus, Bourdieu intends to set up “the theory of practice, or, more precisely, the theory of the mode of generation of practices, which is the precondition for establishing an experimental science of the dialectic internal or, more simply, of incorporation and objectification” (Bourdieu 72). We applied the notion of habitus in our examination of the manner in which the female self is represented in Victorian novels and the way in which gender is performed.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

On the other hand, the body is best analysed through the use of “body hexis,” about which Bourdieu argues it underlines the individual’s social exposure to and familiarity with social connotations of human body position and movement. (Bourdieu, 1995: 87). It is the body, its movements and their meaning that the “body hexis” refers to. It also emphasises the respective society’s norms as Bourdieu mentions it functions at “the individual and systematic” levels having “social meanings and values.” The body hexis includes all kinds of actions that the human body or parts of it is/are involved in; as a consequence, the interpretation of the human body’s movements and / or (re)actions is strictly related to the individual’s personal experience. In our analysis of Victorian novels we used the action of body hexis to interpret the female characters’ body (re)actions that accompany their words.

Bourdieu considers that the dialectical relationship between the body and the space it inhabits may help one understand others: (Bourdieu: 1977: 89). The body has to obey the rites and rituals of the society it is part of; the social structures facilitate its access to the surrounding world. In Victorian novels the female body is attentively observed in order to permit readers to recreate the plot’s atmosphere. The description of the body is another important narrative feature that the narrator employs in order to draw attention to a specific female protagonist. In Eliot’s Adam Bede, Hetty Sorrel is a very beautiful young woman who makes not only men, but also women turn their heads. The narrator underlines her beauty to the detriment of her moral education in order to emphasise the role of education in the life of women.

In Bourdieu’s opinion, the body has its own language that it uses in the social environment.. (Bourdieu, 1977: 120). Body language is the most important medium that both man and woman make use of when they are in each other’s company. Body language may strengthen a message that is firstly transmitted through words. For example, in chapter 23 of George Eliot’s Adam Bede there is a scene where Dinah and Hetty are in a room and their actions or language of the body imply a dichotomous image of femininity: Dinah meditates by looking out of the window, suggesting that she thinks of others; while the second admires herself in the mirror, an attitude that can be seen as emphasizing the fact that she only thinks of herself. Thus, the narrator portrays them as opposites without characterising them directly; they are placed in their habitus and the bodily hexis’ features outline their personalities. Rosamond Vincy employs her beauty

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

and charm in order to marry Dr Lydgate. Afterwards, she communicates with her husband through words in such a manner that she succeeds in persuading him to leave Middlemarch.

Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is applied by Toril Moi in feminist theory. Therefore, Moi considers that, from a feminine perspective, habitus should be determined as gender and, thus, it should be employed to define the “whole social field” (1991: 1035) rather than a specific field, i.e. education, art. Therefore, Bourdieu’s notion of habitus can include several features related to gender: body and mind and the way they function in a certain type of society that instils certain sorts of actions. Bourdieu views women as cultural ‘objects’ possessing cultural capital, traded as commodities among men. Creegan claims that his theories can be applied in order to illustrate that women of all classes do make use of and set up their femininity as cultural capital over which they maintain control.

We should also like to emphasise that the fact of living in a community is related to that group’s cultural background commands specific and adequate social behaviour; for instance, in the Victorian age men were considered the only decision-makers in society. Creegan cites Mary Douglas’ theory regarding cultural themes that Douglas considers “are expressed by rites of bodily manipulation […] the rituals enact the form of social relations and in giving these relations visible expression they enable people to know their own society. The rituals work upon the body politic through the symbolic medium of the physical body” (Purity and Danger – an Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo 2002: 129, qtd. in Creegan 2006: 101). The female mind is easily manipulated when her body is subjected to the regulatory norms of the patriarchal society. In the Victorian age touching a woman would be possible for a man only if they were married or if she would request or be given an arm to hold on.

Among Victorian writers, George Eliot was interested in the evolution of language as she found three similar stages to society in their evolution. Julia Kristeva’s theory, according to which language defines our society, assisted us in interpreting the importance of language in Victorian novels since there are instances when her characters, male and female alike, find themselves unable to speak under certain circumstances.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

According to Kristeva the evolution of the human being is marked by the progression of the infant’s undeveloped mental condition that she defines as “the chora” (1984: 26), which symbolises the self, to express the innate traits that will be the core of the child’s personality. The moment the child comes into contact with language, reaching the stage termed the Symbolic, the surrounding world is all about orderliness and coherence; the child recognises himself or herself as a distinct creature, while Kristeva views the process changing, i.e. “the emanations of the body as other than the self”, and affecting the self (1984: 95). Towards the end of the evolution from the stage of being unable to communicate through words to speaking, the child has become a subject and, therefore, penetrated the land of the social. Depending on the gender of the child, in other words on condition it is a he, the status of subject, as dominator, will develop from making decisions as a child and later as man in a patriarchal society. By reaching the stage of the Symbolic, the child enters society from a communicative manner; both boy and girl speak the language of patriarchal society governed by the Law of the Father that generally represents oppression and repression. We have already presented Jung’s opinion on the self that he perceives as a part of the process of individuation. We consider that the two theories can be used together as Jung’s theory deals with the psychological side of the self, while Kristeva’s tackles the linguistic interpretation of the self.

An important trait of the female body and mind dichotomy is the corrupted or polluted body; the body which does not abide by the patriarchal rules anymore and which could become perilous to other members of the community, as Mary Douglas sustains (2002: 140, Creegan 2006: 98) In Eliotean novels there are several female characters that endanger the patriarchal rule by their actions – Maggie Tulliver is an important example as she reaches the highest level of non- conformism that patriarchal society rejects and, most likely, punishes. In the eyes of patriarchal society, Maggie represents the polluted body even though that is not true. The polluted body symbolises a small part of that society; the danger that the society will be infected in its turn seems tangible (Douglas 2002: 165, Creegan 2006: 103). The physiology of the body relates to its mortal / physical aspect, which is the first one to be polluted. In Adam Bede Hetty’s body and beauty seem more important to her than her soul as she is not interested in Dinah’s moral and religious teachings that the latter states whenever she needs to make reference to them. She acts

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

only according to her body’s needs and her hopes of social bettering, not her soul’s; that is why, she is likely to be punished for her deeds. In order not to be socially reprimanded, she abandons her new-born baby without any feeling of remorse.

II.1.5. Body, sex and gender-studies of gender

The body represents the entity that contains another important aspect of our analyses, i.e. sex and, its cultural understanding, gender. A major feminist theory concerning the female body and mind belongs to Judith Butler and appears in her book Gender Trouble. Butler’s theory is based on the distinction between the terms “sex” and “gender” which makes the difference between anatomic sex and the cultural perception of sex. To Butler, the gender of an individual triggers certain expectations as regards the way in which an individual is perceived by the community. (Butler,1990: 164 ) The body, be it of any gender, seems “to be a passive medium” in the society, which means that it may be used and modified as suits the cultural background. The body is culturally specific for it functions according to cultural theories external to that body. Butler considers that if language is ‘performative’, then gender should be too. If performatives in language games supply meaning for individuals, and that language is ‘written’ on the social body, then one can bring one’s body into being through language (Butler,1990: 118).

Although the body is an entity, it can be outrun by one of its organs, the phallus, i.e. the symbolic penis. The phallus may also symbolise the ‘erotogenic investment in all organs of the body’ (Butler, 1990: 122). The phallus represents masculinity, i.e. patriarchal rule. As a consequence, the body is ruled from a political point of view. The gendered individual, irrespective of gender, is part of dichotomies which lead to the double standard that man is usually the beneficiary of due to his position of master. The body is constructed socially and culturally according to specific patriarchal rules. Harraway maintains that the body as perceived in society is guided by imposed limits that are changed constantly. (Harraway, quoted in Creegan 2006: 200-1)

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

We should also like to emphasise the historicity of the concept of the female body as presented by Susan Bordo in her book Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body (1995) who argues that the human body, similarly to social objects, is set up within and interpreted through different theories that hold social bases. This is why Bordo perceives the body as a construct. It has always been a social construct depending on the cultural meanings the body has: (1) the promise of transcendence of domestic femininity and admission to the privileged public world; (2) the symbolic and practical control of female hunger (read: desire), continually constructed as a problem in patriarchal cultures; (3) the symbolic recircumscription of woman’s limited ‘place’ in the world; and (4) the tantalizing (and mystifying) ideal of a perfectly managed and regulated self, within a consumer culture which has made the actual management of hunger and desire intensely problematic. (Bordo 1995: 68)

The term ‘female hunger’ relates to the food restriction and self-restriction Victorian women were subjected to in order to please men. This desire also refers to the sexual want that it was presumed in the Victorian age that only men could experience. In Eliot’s novels, the issue of sexuality is only subtly presented and hinted at (Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda). Bordo’s perception of the body is linked to the historicity of the body as all the points refer to social and historical changes in society that modelled the public’s opinion on the female body. The historicity of the body is demonstrated by the tense used in the fourth point, i.e. Present Perfect, which underlines the consequences and possibly presence of the mentioned actions. Therefore, the body has been socially and culturally constructed, as Bordo maintains, beginning with antiquity up to nowadays. The body also represents the medium through which the individual lives his / her life from a social and political standpoint. The body is the “metaphor” of any society and its culture. In the Victorian society the female body was considered as an “adornment” necessary to men for exhibiting it in the society as an embodiment of their wealth and power of attraction. Bordo considers that the female body during the Victorian age was trained to use self-denial in order to eliminate any frivolous, sexual thoughts which were not thought of as acceptable by Victorian patriarchal society. She also argues that Victorian women’s slender bodies were not natural; their slenderness was imposed and obtained through the use of corsets which constrained women and their bodies at the same time.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

The body is linked both to the subject and to the object, but it is the first perspective that Toril Moi examines in her essay “From Femininity to Finitude: Freud, Lacan, and Feminism, Again” as she argues that “the relationship between body and subjectivity is not arbitrary, it is contingent ” (Moi, 2004: 869). It is the this relation that is present in Eliot’s narratives as the female body is mirrored according to its status in the Victorian society where it was expected to be dressed and to conduct in certain ways, i.e. the acceptable ones.

Irigaray conditions the importance of the body on its power to charm someone. In this situation it becomes an object, as it can only be perceived from the outside: . (Irigaray 1974: 65) the “mirror” is the tool that metamorphoses woman into Other. This tool may be employed as a positive stimulus and not as a tool of repression. Although Irigaray considers the mirror to be indispensable sometimes, she maintains that it should represent a tool and not an aim for male enforcers. The French feminist critic draws a parallel between mirror and “gaze” as they can act as inflictors upon female representatives of the society. The negative meaning of the last sentence in this quote suggests the fact that the mirror, similarly to the “gaze”, does not “support” the female embodiment but “undermine[s]” it. We believe that Irigaray’s viewpoint on the body can be used together with Peter Brooks’ concept of the “vessels”. The image of the female embodiment is full of stereotypes; which we tried to identify in Eliot’s novels. Eliotean narrative abounds in ethical and moral teachings that readers should employ in their personal lives. The Victorian society based its existence on several systems such as the ethical and the moral ones. Barbara Brook quotes Moira Gatens’ statement on social values that are linked to the “genealogies of female experiences and female bodies” (Gatens: 105, qtd. in Brook: 91). Ethical systems are of paramount importance in the constitution of society, just as the other systems that compose society (social, political, religious). The historicity of a society includes ethical teachings that are transmitted within the social environment. As we have previously mentioned Victorian society perceived morality and ethics as chief elements of human existence. This paradigm is also present in Victorian novels where the moral and ethical systems of patriarchal society condemn some actions of female characters. The female body is linked to the deeds of the female mind that is responsible for its current and future actions. The female body has to answer for its acts from the moral and ethical standpoints.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

The female body and mind appear as components of the public / private dichotomy, the public sphere designating man and the private one woman. Brook claims that this division between the two opposite spheres has been disapproved for several centuries by sociologists and feminist critics as it has impeded women to acquire “equal status in the law and political arena” (Brook, 1999: 93). In the eyes of the law woman was considered inferior to man, thus by marrying her he acquired access to and property of her. It was considered acceptable on the part of man to be the subject and woman the object as woman’s role was to assist the husband in realizing “his personal and sexual freedom”. The public figure of the Victorian society was man who could have the role of husband, father or brother. He was in control of woman’s life. The social interactions that the Victorian woman had were supervised by man, thus they were not public in essence as her male guardian could at all times interfere. In the nineteenth-century British literature the public / private chasm can be noticed in numerous novels such as Jane Eyre, North and South, Wuthering Heights, and Middlemarch.

The Victorian woman could be part of public life, only in one case when she was not a respected member of the society as Margaret Thornton claims in her book Public and Private: Feminist Legal Debates: “[c]onventionally, a “public woman” was a prostitute, a figure of derision, in contrast to a “public man”, a figure of approbation who acted in and for the universal good” (1995: “Introduction” 13, quoted in Brook 1999: 104). In Victorian narrative there are several instances of the “fallen woman,” the stereotypical image of the prostitute or woman who disobeyed the ethical and moral rules of the Victorian society (Dickens, Eliot).

II.1.6. Femininity and Sexuality within Victorian Boundaries

Woman’s life and femininity, in general, were downgraded by the influence of male dominion in the Victorian age. As a consequence, the rules (boundaries) that woman had to abide by applied to woman’s body and mind as well. In a patriarchal society, Brook considers the female body is perceived as a legal, sexual entity which becomes the other, being the property of man: “[t]o draw attention to the sexed body in the legal context seems immediately to position women as the sexualised other of the public and private good: it is a sexed body out of place, beyond the confines of the male contract” (1999: 104).

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

The legally sexed body refers to the situation of the Victorian married woman who had no rights over her former property as her husband got possession of her dowry. The legal context of a male/female relation is marriage. In a marriage man is considered to be the subject and woman is the object.

The female body and mind are part of the female social performance. A woman who holds the role of performer has been thought of, in western society, as being promiscuous and sexually available. In the Victorian age only accomplished women artists were free of promiscuity. Female artists, as women in general, depended on the male figures of their families.

Butler argues in her book Bodies That Matter that “performa[nce] must be understood not as a singular or deliberate “act”, but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names” (1993: 1). In other words, the performance of gender emerges as a result of performative acts which through repetition strengthen a person’s image as male or female member of a certain community.

The performance of gender is present in everyday life and it is featured under the form of “unacknowledged, unself-conscious acts” that, by being repeated, compose the body’s reality as feminine or masculine (Brook 1999: 114).

However, performative acts can be used in a negative manner if the community emphasises the unwanted behaviour on the part of female members of the community. Therefore, the stereotypes associated with woman in history until recently have placed the female body and mind under a negative perspective. The vulnerable hysterical, even irrational woman has to be guided and controlled by the patriarchal society so that she may accomplish her daughterly, wifely and motherly duties. This is the case of Mirah Lapidoth in Eliot”s Daniel Daronda, who thinks of committing suicide as a way to escape the continual pressure put by her father.

In patriarchal society woman’s existence depends on her ability of slightly changing her behaviour, ideas and actions in order to obtain similar privileges as man and Joan Rivière calls this manipulative technique the multiple female facets. Brook presents Joan Rivière’s interpretation as referring to the extent in which woman is able to employ her feminine charm in

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

order to get access to power; thus, she may transform herself into a masculine character that has the phallus, in contrast to man who is the phallus (1999: 115). Consequently, the female mind is related to gender, as it can control the body’s appearance. Femininity, the attribute of female body and mind, is viewed by Rivière as a concatenation of acts and performances (Brook 1999: 116). Femininity, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, represents the quality of being female; it reflects the cultural side of the body. Femininity is an acquired cultural quality that Butler relates to sexuality. The feminist critic claims that the sexual desires are located in the sexual organs, which “become conceivable foci of pleasure” as they are the ideal symbols of “a gender-specific body” (1990: 70).

Toril Moi addresses the issue of femininity from a Freudian perspective: hysteria. She claims that woman is not difficult to comprehend as man is not either: “[i]t is time to give up the fantasy of finding the key to the “riddle of femininity.” Women are not sphinxes. Or rather: they are no more and no less sphinxlike than men. There is no riddle to solve” (2004: 850). Woman should be perceived as a whole – a human being that lives in society together with another human being, man.

The body is one of the focal terms of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, volume I. Foucault enquires into the Victorians’ view of sexuality and its development in the social mind and its oppression. As regards repression, Foucault maintains that the act of repression of sexual drives leads to “an injunction to silence, an affirmation of non-existence, and, by implication, an admission that there was nothing to say about such things, nothing to see, and nothing to know” (1990: 4). Repression may steer the relationship between sex and power. Foucault views language as the tool which is used in order to transmit transgressive sexual meanings that may represent the manner in which individuals can disobey the patriarchal law. In patriarchal society, the subject of sex is considered taboo; that is the reason why it is suppressed, as argued by Foucauld. (Foucauld, 1990: 6), who presents sexuality through its development along the centuries beginning with the seventeenth century which was a turning point, i.e. from that time on sex was referred to in a more evasive manner as it would become more difficult to utter the word, as a consequence of the influence of Puritanism on lay society. As a result, sex-related topics were banned from speech as a repressive method. We can deduce, from Foucault’s direct

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

allusion, that by being prohibited from the level of language, it meant that sex did not really exist. This is the point where Foucault begins his thesis: the discursive level. Interaction between parents and children, teachers and students became restrictive in its turn which caused restriction at economic, political and social levels too. Foucault views discourse as the connection between body and soul: “[…] beneath the surface of the sins, it would lay bare the unbroken nervure of the flesh […] sex was taken charge of, tracked down as it were, by a discourse that aimed to allow it no obscurity, no respite” ( Foucault, 1990: 20). The political economy of the body is in direct connection with the punitive oppression. Therefore, the female body is under the influence not only of the social and cultural environments in the Victorian society, but it is also exploited by male action from a political point of view. As a consequence, woman as object is subject to man’s power, as the majority of Victorian female characters demonstrate.

Sex is directly linked to Christian precepts which were deliberately employed to produce “effects of mastery and detachment, to be sure, but also an effect of spiritual reconversion, of turning back to God, a physical effect of blissful suffering from feeling in one’s body, the pangs of temptation and love that resists it” (Foucault, 1990: 23).

In the nineteenth century school was the institution which imposed a forced taciturnity on sexual topics regarding children and adolescents. The outcome of this ban developed into a gradually increasing interest in the topic of sex on the part of medicine through the “nervous disorders” and psychiatry which was on its way “to discover the aetiology of mental illnesses” (1990: 30). Foucault considers that sex became part of public discourse for it attracted much attention in different fields such as economy, pedagogy, medicine, and justice which “incite, extract, distribute, and institutionalize the sexual discourse” (1990: 33).

Sexual politics was governed by three chief systems, according to Foucault – “canonical law, the Christian pastoral, and civil law” (1990: 37). The major relationship these structures focused on was the marital relationship. It was ruled by strict laws concerning the responsibilities and abilities the two spouses were supposed to fulfil and have, along with the constraints and abuses that, usually, the female counterpart had to tolerate. Marital values and limitations represented important consequences of Puritan influence in lay society’s lifestyle. Puritanism imposed a

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

desired conduct upon its believers; that conduct included the laymen’s private lives, even marital relations. Sexuality was to acquire power in the public discourse but also in the marital relation. The social supporter of sexuality was the bourgeois society, which instead of imposing any sort of boundaries enhanced its variety and, thus, “the sexual mosaic” appeared. The French philosopher argues that sexuality helps at identifying individuals (1990: 47). Foucault examines the French liberal society which had a slightly different culture regarding sex. However, we can associate Foucault’s description with British man’s view of sexual intercourse. Unlike woman, he was interested in controlling even this area of their relationship. Control can transform into perversion. Perversion was a major factor in the type of sexuality instilled by the bourgeoisie which transformed sexual topics into discursive norm. Hence, perversions inundated the psychic by conquering the body; they dispersed rigid lust (Foucault 1990: 48).

In his book, Foucault sustains that, in France, actions were taken to ensure “the moral cleanliness of the social body” (Foucauld, 1990: 54), while in Victorian society, individuals who disobeyed the norms were similarly repressed through social ostracism and / or exile. The social body was ruled according to the historical and biological rules that directed the individuals’ actions. Foucault considers that sex was the centre of attention as it elicited the truth from the female characters (1990: 56). In order to reach the stage of truth, the female character’s body should be strongly connected to its soul. Thus, the stage of confession would be reached and truth would be produced. Confession may free one’s self from the evil influence on the female character’s soul, but the female protagonist becomes the prey of patriarchal rule as Foucault argues that although avowal unchains one, it also limits one’s freedom of speech as the truth uttered may represent a weakness that can be used against the utterer. (Foucault 1990: 60).

Confession is connected to discourse as sex is converted into discourse. Foucault claims that, at the level of discourse, in a confession the one that speaks is also the subject of the assertion and that confession metamorphoses the grammatical subject of the statement into the subject of the one that receives the information. From a Christian point of view, confession brings redemption for the one that makes it, provided there is sincere regret on the part of the utterer (Foucault 1990: 61-2).

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

In the nineteenth century sexuality started to be studied under the form of a science, “scientia sexualis” as opposed to the art called “ars erotica”. Despite its scientific title, “scientia sexualis” was focused on the Christian precepts regarding confession and its rites. The paramount characteristics of this sexuality, as described by Foucault, are connected to discursive prerequisites that ought to construct its veracity. As a result, this type of sexuality assisted the creation of discourse as history or ‘a history of discourses’.

Sex is related to “confession and integration into a field of rationality” (Foucault 1990: 69) – it implies truthful discourse even though the subconscious may know more than the conscious mind and, respectively, subject. The discourse of sex consists of a subject and the truth he / she may not be aware of consciously. Sex, thus, becomes the link between the conscious and unconscious acts of an individual that Foucault defines as “causality in the subject” (1990: 70) which approaches power as method in this sort of discourse. As we have mentioned before, the notion of subject also refers to the dominant position of a master, the dominant subject who, by using certain information, can transform another individual into his / her slave as happened in the Victorian age when men could use their public and political domination on women both in the public and private spheres.

An important side of the discourse of sex is composed of the dichotomies which emphasised the lack of reason when human actions stem from and are supported through sexual desire (Foucault 1990: 78) Foucault traces the discourse of sex back to the ancient Greeks, including the connection with the dichotomy body and mind. Sexuality is not only related to confession but also to repression as appears in the juridical discourse that Foucault focused on in his research. He establishes several characteristics of repressive law, such as “negative relation” and “insistence of the rule” (1990: 83). The former centres on limiting the effects of power and sex, while the latter portrays sex in relation to power dualistically: “licit and illicit, permitted and forbidden” and establishes a set relation between sex and law (1990: 83). These aspects of law underline its tyrannical character when enforced on unwilling subjects and, ultimately, the fact that power is the controlling factor through linguistic or discursive means that sex produces. Sex also creates the rule within the discourse since the discourse of sex, from a juridical point of view, is ruled by the legislator, as Foucault argues. The female body and mind are restricted by

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

religious rules that Victorian society took up and transformed into moral precepts. The religious laws imply prohibition similarly to power which governs sex through prohibition (Foucault 1990: 84).

Power suppresses sex by banning it; therefore, sexual desire becomes inactive. The individual’s existence is controlled through “nullification” as “darkness” stands for secrecy; therefore, one cannot show her / his real self and thoughts in a restrictive society. As a consequence, the constraint imposed upon sex is realised by imposing it as a taboo. In Victorian society the immoral conduct of a young, unmarried lady was considered inadequate and treated as taboo.

Victorian patriarchal society built its highly moral standards out of the religious laws which supplied it with the necessary uniformity. The feature of uniformity was established through the use of “law, taboo and censorship” (Foucault 1990: 84). Law punished illegal actions, taboo nullified the members of the community from the social, religious and moral points of view, while censorship created the hindering mechanisms that stopped transgressive actions and obliged the individual to abide by the patriarchal laws. Transgressing patriarchal laws is as severely condemned by Victorian society as committing crimes.

All individuals, regardless of their gender, are subject and subjected to the law, at the same time. Individuals have rights and responsibilities as well. In Victorian novels female characters are discriminated against for they only have duties towards their family and community. As Foucault remarks, the subject of the law is also the subject that completes the action. Therefore, the female character can be the subject, but the subject of a submissive action. It is the husband who wins the appraisals of patriarchal society not the wife, who receives the society’s opprobrium. When facing the law the female character is a passive subject. However, there can be exceptions to the rule. In the same novel, another female character employs her enchanting physical appearance to seduce her suitor into marriage. Foucault mentions this circumstance by stating that “sexuality is not the most intractable element in power relations, but rather one of those endowed with the greatest instrumentality: useful for the greatest number of manoeuvres and capable of serving as a point of support, as a linchpin, for the most varied strategies” (Foucault, 1990: 103). The element that disseminates power, discourse, may be differently employed; first, as a mechanism

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

through which power propagates, second, as a consequence of the ruling of power, and third, as a point of opposition. The threefold function of discourse underlines the malleability it is endowed with as it can be useful or, on the contrary, it can constitute an impediment. (Foucault 101)

In the Victorian novels, discourse is the means through which female characters are ruled and portrayed as representing the object in the sex relations between male and female characters. Discourse can be the channel through which power exhibits its force onto its objects, the outcome of an action undertaken by power onto its objects, and, lastly, the last resort that objects employ when facing subjects. We attempted to apply Foucault’s theory of the body as a sexual tool in our analysis of the depiction of the female characters’ body. The image of the female body is related to the manner in which woman is perceived throughout Victorian novels that present both feeble and strong women, thus emphasising the dichotomy body and mind.

II.1.8. Typological features of (female) Victorian characters

As previously stated, the self appears through a process called individuation and is a lifelong practice that is achieved in a two-fold manner: consciously and unconsciously. Victorian literature abounds in typological portrayals of British society as novels written in that age depict all sorts of characters of all social classes even though there is a predilection for middle-class characters. Due to the development of psychology into several branches as regards human typology, interpretation of archetypes and social representations, on the one hand, and of archetypal criticism in literature, on the other hand, we consider that typological features of characters should be studied in three stages – types, archetypes and stereotypes. This classification may assist us in examining for example “the typical human drama”, as Henry James named George Eliot’s depiction of Victorian contemporary life.2

In analysing female representation we considered it paramount to include the social conventions that Victorian women had not only to be aware of but also enforce through their roles in British society. In order to emphasise the importance of woman’s role in Victorian society, we will first tackle the issue of literary types that we will connect to social types, archetypes and stereotypes,

2 quoted from Galaxy, March 1873: 428, “George Eliot’s Middlemarch”: 581 62

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the analysis comprising elements that may help us establish the narrative relationships that underline the importance of actants in the fabula. We may employ Mieke Bal’s actantial model, inspired from Greimas: addresser, addressee, subject, object, helper, and opposer, on the one hand, and the three-based actantial model: subject, anti-subject, and opponent, on the other. Irrespective of the actantial model that is used, the actantial status of actors may suffer changes that are the consequences of the plot development which can trigger alterations for actors, be they fictional people or objects (for instance, the mill in Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss). That is why there can be instances when the female characters’ status, from a narrative point, is changed from object into subject. This narrative metamorphosis affects not only the respective female characters’ actions but also the other characters, both male and female, with which the former are connected in the narrative line.

II.1.8.a. Types: social and literary concepts

From a social point of view, the type refers to “a collective norm of role behaviour formed and used by the group: an idealised concept of how people are expected to be or act” (Klapp 1962:11). What is defining in social types is the consensus that underlines the common social thinking which introduces fine discriminations by placing the individual in the social system that he is in control of through cultural inputs. In his book Heroes, Villains and Fools, Klapp delineates social types and divides them into three main categories that can apply to novels too: hero, villain and fool. The first one regards the positive type that can grow into a cult, while the last two define negative models of the type.

In his Dictionary of the Social Sciences, Reading considers that social type is “an objective description of the characteristics of a category of persons” (1977: 196). From these definitions we consider that the concept of social type assists us in examining an individual’s traits by underlining her/his peculiar features. From this perspective, social types can be misinterpreted as stereotypes. However, Klapp considers stereotypes are not reliable concepts as they are biased, while social types identify an individual’s realistic characteristics. Another conceptual opposition exists between roles and types from a social point of view. Social roles are “set[s] of expected behaviour patterns, obligations, and privileges attached to a particular social status” (Robertson

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

1987: 91), i.e. they regulate the social structure and relations, while social types are culturally bound (Almog 1998). Social types are influenced by subcultural inputs through the connections the individual has in his social circle. Social roles have institutional value as they are promoted through social structures that are acknowledged as institutions; the best example is marriage from which more social roles derive: wife, husband, mother, father, daughter, son, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin. Unlike social types, roles are considered to be temporary as a daughter can change her role into a fiancée and then wife. But this opposition also refers to the fact that a type is individualised through her / his personality. Social roles may lead to an individual’s isolation if she/he cannot deal with the social pressure as the role is defined by the social consensus: “the role consensus […] [is] developed into a social type” (Klapp 1958). Eliot’s novels are replete with examples of female characters that have difficulty in performing their social roles.

The Victorian novel included typological embodiments of various social classes’ representatives, such as landed gentry, upper and lower middle class women. Literary types of characters show the specific traits of the social class they belong to. Representation of literary types consists of exploring human nature with all its specific attitudes and typical actions and reactions that occur in a character’s evolution. Readers can recognize these types because they have been used since ancient times and literary representations become part of the readers’ culture and their reading experience.

Literary types represent individuals as well as the groups or social classes they are part of; types of characters reinforce the groups’ characteristics that are a point of reference of the Victorian novel as social issues regarding all social classes are portrayed. A character can be depicted as hero, martyr or villain depending on the typical attitude and features that are presented in a direct or indirect manner. Literary types are fictionalised imitations of real people leading real lives. The use of literary types permitted writers to include moral characteristics of attitudes by depicting typical situations, i.e. immoral intercourse between male master and female servant or a wife’s disobedience of her husband’s wish.

II.1.8.b. Archetypes: psychological and literary concepts

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

As previously mentioned we have used in our analyses psychological and literary archetypes. The former may enable us analyse, for example Eliot’s female protagonists’ conscious and unconscious. We consider them useful for we may examine the female characters’ conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings in order to understand their actions and their reasons for acting in a certain manner. Victorian characters discussed mirror literary archetypes that assisted us in our interpretation as archetypes designate symbols that are employed by narrators to set the “rhythm” and “pattern” of narratives (Frye 1951: 508) Some Victorian writers used symbols from various domains including Biblical ones that emphasise their strong evangelical education, exhibited through emblematic characters and / or images such as Isaiah’s prophecies in George Eliot’s Silas Marner – the burden on the backs of Silas– and in Middlemarch – the man Dorothea Brooke glimpses from her window, who symbolically wears her burden on his shoulders, of the “Old Testament”, drawn from Pilgrim’s Progress. By using these Biblical insertions, Frye argues that the novel’s plot is built around the personality of the characters who, in certain situations, exhibit their social masks or personae, as Jung names them. The anima and the shadow appear mostly in romances as this form of prose fiction deals with the life of the individual unlike the novel which portrays society as whole. That is why Frye maintains that the novelist needs a “framework for a stable society”. Such a stable social background is offered by writers as Dickens and Eliot among others when they depict Victorian society as a whole and the life of a smaller community or even family in the foreground.

Archetypes are defined by Carl Jung as “the foundation stones of the psychic structure, which in its totality exceeds the limits of consciousness and therefore can never become the object of direct cognition” (Aion 1951:20). Archetypes are part of the collective unconscious which consists of a series of images that sum up the collective experience in typical situations, but that can appear in an individual’s life. Among these archetypes Jung mentions the shadow, the anima, the animus and the Self. The shadow uncovers the “dark aspects of personality” (Aion: 8) as it has its origins in the “personal unconscious” (Aion: 7). It is linked to the individual’s emotions that the other triggers. The shadow underlines “the emotional nature” of the individual that is difficult to control unless the individual is able to achieve moral introspection of her / his actions.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Psychological archetypes may be used to identify influences on an individual’s psyche depending on his / her gender – anima is the female element of a male individual’s unconscious, while the animus is the male element of a female’s unconscious. The anima and animus characterise a person’s autonomy and unconsciousness under the impact of the male or female type of thinking and acting – anima affects male subjects emotionally, while animus influences female subjects when they are in search of power, be it social or financial, for themselves or for others.

It is the difference between the personal and collective unconscious that distinguishes the shadow, on the one hand, and the anima and the animus, on the other. Thus, the difference can be found at the personal level – in this way the individual can become aware of its existence with serious moral effort, as Jung argues; while anima and animus exist in the collective unconscious that cannot be recognized. Another important distinction lies in the context when these archetypes appear: the shadow is present when the individual relates to others or “a partner”, while the anima and animus appear only when the individual is involved in a relation to the opposite sex” (Jung 1951: 22).

The interpersonal relationships between men and women can be affected by anima and animus in such a manner that there can be negative as well as positive features. As regards the former, Jung mentions animosity as a powerful stimulus for both anima and animus, while the female subject voices her opinions and interpretations irrespective of the fact that she can argue them or not. For the latter, the two gendered archetypes can incorporate in the self of the individual. The anima becomes “the Eros of consciousness” and the animus plays the role of “Logos”. Thus, both male and female receive their gendered counterparts’ traits that can help them in their social roles as man’s consciousness acquires abilities of connecting and relating to others, which are usually thought to be female features, while woman’s consciousness gets the necessary means for thinking, rumination and self-knowledge, which are considered to be male features. In Eliot’s novels there are several pairs of male and female characters that exhibit the anima and the animus archetypes.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

The images of characters that Victorian writers use in their novels are usually the result of the collective thinking and behaviour that influence the characters’ actions with a direct consequence on the plot and its moral teaching. One such image is the “Father” that Jung defines as “the sum of the conventional opinions” which is paramount for “female argumentation” (1951: 15). In Jung’s opinion, females’ thinking can lack strength unless they have a father figure that they can use for comparison when they choose suitable husbands. In Eliot’s novels, the father model bears weight in the education of female characters and their life choices as her novels present the patriarchal paternal model.

The life in a community or society triggers compromises between the self and the society, which arise within the process of civilisation and education; thus, the persona appears. Society has expectations from every individual to play her/his distributed role as well as possible. Even though people may choose what they do, their social roles are already distributed by society depending on their class, social position and skills. The archetype of persona has some individual features; however, it is stimulated by social conventions as it is a necessity when individuals want to conceal their real selves, feelings or thoughts. Persona may be considered the veil of appearance that one notices in an individual in social contexts or meetings. Persona is for Jung what the ‘masquerade’ is for Joan Rivière.

II.1.8.c. Stereotypes: social and gender delineation

Representation of social groups and their members is achieved in three ways depending on the referent that is used in the process of characterisation: group schemas, group prototypes, and exemplars. Schemas, as mental structures, deal with the description of a concept, its traits and characteristics; group schemas designate views about the features of a social group. Schemas work at the individual level where one can ignore insignificant facts in order to get the gist and are useful as they confirm existing stereotypes. However, schemas can undervalue the importance of information as they can be used to make predictions. Gender schema theory (Bem, 1981) underlines the importance of the social environment that children imitate and it is through imitating the adults’ actions that children “adopt and exaggerate distinctions between the sexes”. “Gender schemas become part of self-identity, influencing children’s preferences, attitudes, and

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

behaviour as they strive to act socially appropriate” as subjects of male and female genders. Gender schemas introduce various traits for male and female that delineate maleness as having significant physical power that helps males be active, while femaleness’ main characteristic is passivity which underlines the “nicer, softer” nature of female exponents” (Rudman, Glick 2008: 59-60).

Stereotypes are the last stage of social representation of individuals that we analyse in order to accomplish a complete picture of the image(s) female characters are assigned to bear in Victorian novels. Stereotypes are images established in the collective memory of society and should be distinguished according to the perspective they are perceived from, i.e. individual and collective. The difference between individual and collective perspectives underlines the paramount importance of “shared social beliefs” which surpasses individual beliefs” (Stangor, Schaller 1996: 5). It is the common social beliefs that mould social behaviour which almost certainly influence individual behaviour as a result of peer or social pressure. These beliefs act not only at social level but also at cultural level as stereotypes spread in a cultural space, almost obeying that culture’s rhythm of life. That is to say, we cannot analyse, for instance, Eliot’s novels if we do not fully understand the conditions of Victorian women and if we do not grasp the important terms that were used by the implied author in order to suggest the real conditions of Victorian women.

Stereotypes are cognitive elements that help us order information, create “short cut[s], make general assumptions, and reveal moral assessments and principles” (Dyer: 1). Stereotypes do not only represent, but they also categorize individuals through the use of patterns of behaviour and “typifications” (Dyer: 1). The main role of stereotypes is to instil clear boundaries in order to create outlines. Dyer considers that the importance of boundaries for stereotypes is significant as they tend to set up boundaries where they do not exist. Stereotypes tend to describe negative images that underline one’s isolation.The social representation that stereotypes constitute is the result of the inputs that individuals perceive; consequently, stereotypical information is “interpreted”, “encoded in memory”, reclaimed in order to be used in typical situations” (Dyer: 5). These typical situations and the stereotypes that are used determine the information that is encoded and later remembered; in this way, one can analyse the effectiveness

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of stereotypical representation. Stereotypes can suffer changes that can be imposed by the situation itself or by social conditions.

Stereotypes work at different levels: direct which involves the individual approach and indirect which includes the cultural approach. The former underlines the individual’s direct contact with information, while the latter emphasises the importance of the source of information, amongst which we can enumerate family, peers, and teachers, social and political figures. The latter also highlights the importance of information transmission medium, i.e. language through which labels can be used in order to refer to certain social and ethnic categories. This categorization assists us in the process of character classification for we find out information regarding characters in a direct or indirect way, i.e. from the direct intervention of characters or from other characters and the narrator. A source of paramount importance in the process of female education in the Victorian age constituted the conduct books. Those guide books depicted female education in the stereotypical image of home-bound education for women which omitted important social issues in the process of education. For instance, women were taught to be dependent on their families, especially patriarchal figures whose decisions must not be discussed as men know better than women.

We consider that stereotypes can be perceived from a cultural perspective as individuals from one culture usually share the same beliefs that lead to the stereotypical images of social roles of the members of their society – men, women, sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers. These stereotypes are called consensual as they also include elements of myths, religions, and traditions. A consensual nineteenth-century stereotype is the image of woman as being feeble, dependent on man and lacking any power in the face of patriarchal society.

Stereotypes are also enforced through social norms that constitute a social system, imposed by patriarchal society, which generally underline the gaps between social classes and social positions between the less privileged and the privileged ones. Social norms and roles intertwine with the cultural ones that mould people’s perception of facts and of social groups. Thus, there are certain gender roles that individuals of certain gender ascribe to as a result of traditional thinking. By the act of sharing stereotypes, social groups are formed that have certain patterns of

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behaviour that underline “the power of consensual stereotypes to influence normative behaviours” (Stangor and Schaller 1996: 13). In a patriarchal society normative behaviours are the basis of society which directs its consideration towards enforcing and using stereotypical images in order to induce expected gender-oriented behaviour through which both men and women are compelled to adhere to its patriarchal rules as they do not wish to be social outcasts. The stereotypical behaviour affects the performance of characters as their actions can become predictable or unpredictable. Irrespective of the course of action chosen by community’s members, their actions will validate and maintain stereotypes. It is this situation that several critics, among whom we mention Deirdre David, Gilbert and Gubar condemn Eliot’s use of stereotypical characters.

The act of expressing consensual stereotypes that are both accepted by a group’s members as by members of other groups triggers acceptance of both cultures as their representatives do not focus on differences but on similarities or other areas that are important to both parties. The novel that presents best this situation is Eliot’s Daniel Deronda where the Jewish culture is present through the characters of Mirah and Mordecai whose reunion symbolises the reunion of all Jewish people under the same name in the same state. Daniel Deronda, who is directly connected to both Mirah and Mordecai, is the representative of the dominant culture, the English one, which relates to an inferior culture, the Jewish one.

There are some stereotypical inaccessible functions that a female character may find overwhelming in Victorian society: sexual intercourse, social influence and creative work (Booth 1992: 57). Rudman and Glick signal the risk of using self-stereotypes during the process of acquiring roles; they consider that certain male roles are simply “perpetuated” as such because there is a social consensus related to what woman can do and what she cannot (2008: 133).

Gender stereotypes are extremely visible in one’s social status, be it attributed or self- acquired. Thus Rudman and Glick consider that “gender socialization processes cause men and women to internalize different expectations for their behaviour, including the expectation that men should be status seekers, whereas women should be nurturing” (2008: 135) .

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

It is important to emphasise the binary relationship subject – object, from a narrative point of view, which is at the centre of our analysis as in Victorian novels it was customary to portray female characters as sexual commodity or totally dependent on the patriarchal manner of thought. We have used this dichotomy in our literary explorations in order to establish the relations among the characters. The subject and the object are central to the narrative and any changes or transformations that they suffer trigger changes to the plot.

Gender roles can easily generate gender stereotypes that emphasise man’s status over woman’s as man’s role “demand[s] greater agency” while woman is required to possess “nurturance” features that underline her “lower status”. Gender stereotypes are not only socially disseminated, but they are also consistent in different cultures (Rudman, Glick 2008: 88, 103).

II.2. Literary Studies. Published books.

II.2.1. Victorian Writers, vol. I ( Craiova, Editura Universitaria, 2005 ), pp.258, ISBN 973-743-206-

II.2.1.a. Introduction. The Victorian Age (.pp.5-11) II.2.1.b. Algernon Charles Swinburne (pp. 11-83) . II.2.1.c. Edward Lear . . . . .(pp. 84-118) II.2.1.d. Leslie Stephen. . . . . (pp.119-152) II.2.1.e. Matthew Arnold. . . . . (pp.153-193) II.2.1.f. Oscar Wilde . . . . . (pp.194-255)

II.2.1.a. Introduction. The Victorian Age Since it was the first volume, we thought it necessary to point out some general trends of the Victorian age: its scientific progress, its peaceful character (except of a few colonial wars), its material and intellectual developments. The conclusion is that 19th century England witnessed political, economic, intellectual and scientific changes unparalleled in British history. As far as

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literature is concerned, the Victorian age included a wider variety of distinguishing characteristics and viewpoints, its literary production was immense and the general literary level was very high, but except in the novel, the amount of actual innovation is by no means great. Writers were as a rule content to work upon former models, and the improvements they did achieve were often dubious and unimportant. For Ileana Galea a definition and interpretation of Victorianism is “doubtless difficult “: it implies to consider “a diversity of views “which in the reception of contemporary mind signifies a much more complex entity “resulting from the interaction of polarities that make up the cultural history of the age” (Galea 1996:6) whereas Mircea Mihaies describes Victorianism as “a cultural concept…an open one, accepting different definitions and multiple meanings. As a structured cultural ideology, Victorianism is the conjunction of Utilitarianism and Evangelicalism” (Mihaes 1998:7).

The aim of this first volume is to emphasize that it was an age of extraordinary complexity and variety of viewpoint as the writers included here fully demonstrate: Oscar Wilde –poet, playwright, novelist; Mathew Arnold –poet, literary critic; Leslie Stephen – philosopher, historian, biographer and literary critic; Algernon Charles Swinburne – poet, playwright, essayist; Edward Lear – author of humorous literature.

II.2.1.b. Algernon Charles Swinburne (pp. 11-83) In Section I it is analyzed Swinburne’s literary personality as a highly original and skillful author, one of the most accomplished lyric poets of the Victorian era, who explores “unusual areas of experience”, as well as the contemporary reception of his works. His famous volume Poems and Ballads (1866) openly contravened the high Victorian moral norms and turned him into a preeminent symbol of rebellion against the conservative values of his time, because his verse approached often pathological sexual themes that were more often than not too explicit . The Victorian reading public was split; some took delight in his verse, others were horripilated, but approaching sexual love in an aggressive, cruel, even demonic manner became the major trend of Swinburne’s picture as both a writer and a person. However, Swinburne’s poetry witnessed different trends of criticism.

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Swinburne is associated with the Aesthetic Movement; the notion of art for art's sake usually meant that art should avoid social, political, and moral themes and concentrate instead on creating beauty. The context that enables us to understand this concept derived from the ideas of Kant, is provided by M.H Abrams in his enormously influential book The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. NY: Oxford UP, 1953.

Placing the idea in the context of earlier theories of art and literature, Abrams points out that by the end of the eighteenth century "some critics were undertaking to explore the concept of a poem as a heterocosm, a world of its own, independent of the world into which we are born, whose end is not to instruct or please but simply to exist” (Abrams 1953: 34).

The section concludes that during his Swinburne’s life, Poems and Ballads, was considered the best as well as his most typical lyrical accomplishments, whereas his work in other genres was more often than not neglected. Still, one may assert that new assessments of his writings, taken as a whole, have been advanced since mid-twentieth century, period in which critics have signaled literary pieces of genuine force and beauty to be found in different periods of his artistic creation.”

This chapter is structured as follows: Part I—General Principles; 1. Le Beau Serviteur du Vrai; 2. The Nature of the Poet and the Subject of Poetry; Part II—Lyric Poetry; 3. Passion and Imagination; 4. The Music of Poetry; Part III—Dramatic Poetry; 5. General Principles of Dramatic Poetry; 6. Tragedy, Comedy, and the Historical Drama; Part IV—Conclusion; 7; Selected Bibliography: I.. Bibliography. II. Collected Works. III. Selected Works. IV. Separate Works. V. Biographical and Critical Studies.

. II.2.1.c. Edward Lear (pp. 84-118)

Edward Lear is discussed in the context of the aesthetic experience of Victorian nonsense as one of the predecessor to the twentieth – century avant-garde of dadaism, symbolism and surrealism that focuses on automatic writing and the unconscious. This section is structured as follows: 1. Life; 2. The artist, topographer and letter-writer; 3. The nonsense poet;4. Selected Bibliography: I.. Bibliography. II. Collected Works. III. Selected Works. IV. Separate Works, V.Letters. VI.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Biographical and Critical Studies. The context that enables us to understand the concept of “literary nonsense” is provided by significant studies on the subject, of which we mention: Cammaerts, Emile. The Poetry of Nonsense, London: Routledge, 1926; Freye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays,. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957; Lecercle, Jean- Jacques. Philosophy of Nonsense: The Intuitions of Victorian Nonsense Literature,. London, Routledge, 1994; Lehmann, John F. Lewis Carroll and the Spirit of Nonsense,. Nottingham: University of Nottingham, 1972.

II.2.1.d. Leslie Stephen (pp.119-152)

Leslie Stephen is discussed in the terms of the part he played in English literary and cultural history as a distinguished man of letters, and first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography (he was the author of as many as 378 of its original biographies.)

Stephen was among those writers who, particularly in the area of the ethics, followed in drawing out the consequences of evolution. His contribution is represented by The Science of Ethics (1882). a book which worked out an ethical view determined by the theory of evolution. He followed Mill and Darwin as an ally of the empirical and utilitarian creed; but he came to see that more extensive changes were necessary. Spencer's compromise between hedonism and evolutionism failed to satisfy him, and he found the ethical bearing of evolution better expressed by the conception of social vitality than by that of pleasure. The great merit of the work consists in its presentation of the social content of morality in the individual mind as well as in the community; but it does not sufficiently recognize the distinction between the historical process traced by the evolution theory and the ethical validity which evolution is assumed to possess.

He is well known too because he features in the work and biographies of his even more famous novelist daughter, Virginia Woolf, particularly as the inspiration for Mr Ramsay in her novel To the Lighthouse.

The context that enabled us to understand his contribution as an English critic, man of letters and biographer was offered by Noel G Annan’s book. Leslie Stephen: The Godless Victorian. Rev. ed. of a 1951 account. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984, and by other significant studies:

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Fenwick, Gillian. Leslie Stephen's Life in Letters: A Bibliogrphical Study. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993, and Bicknell, John W. Selected Letters of Leslie Stephen, 1882-1904. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996.

This section is structured as follows: 1. Introduction; 2. Biography; 3. The biographer; 4. The Man of Letters; 5. Conclusion; 6. Selected Bibliography. I. Collected works. II. Selections. III. Separate works.

II.2.1.e. Matthew Arnold (pp.153-193) Matthew Arnold is discussed in the context of Victorian critical theory which reflected the ideological upheaval that was present within society as a whole. In England the thirties and forties of the 19th century can be described as an age of transition. This, it has been objected, is true of any period; but these two decades fit particularly well John Stuart Mill's description in his Spirit of the Age (1831): “Men have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones’, and that ” the old order of things has become unsuited to the state of society and of the human mind” (Wellek 1965: 86-92). New advances in empirical sciences such as biology and geology gave rise to questions about the nature of reality and previous ideas about religion and truth were called into question. Increased overcrowding, poverty, and disease, in addition to a climate of materialism and mechanization resulted in a generalized cultural feeling of anxiety. Given this milieu, the proper function of literature and of criticism became a subject of widespread debate. Critics of the day examined literature in relationship to other modes of discourse, such as science, religion, and art.

According to Alba H. Warren, Jr., the post-Romantic critics “recognized few common aims” (Warren 1950: 3-34). Terry Eagleton explains that Victorian literary critics were conflicted with respect to their role in the culture of the time, stating that “either criticism strives to justify itself at the bar of public opinion by maintaining a general humanistic responsibility for the culture as a whole, the amateurism of which will prove increasingly incapacitating as bourgeois society develops; or it converts itself into a species of technological expertise, thereby establishing its professional legitimacy at the cost of renouncing any wider social relevance” (Eagleton 1984: 45-67). Matthew Arnold, perhaps the most influential critic of the Victorian era, saw cultural

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

expressions such as art and literature as having an important impact on the overall well-being of society. He felt that great literature conveyed deep and everlasting truths about the human condition. These works, combined with detached, objective criticism, would naturally move culture toward intellectual, moral and spiritual perfection. Arnold also attempted to address societal anxieties regarding new science and the threat to religion by proposing that people look to poetry for inspiration and as a buffer of sorts from bleak reality. In the view of Patrick Parrinder, it was Arnold who “bore the brunt of propagandizing for literary culture in the Victorian age. He saw literature as embodying the spiritual life of modern society and taking over the edifying and consoling functions of religion.” (Parrinder 1991:117). T. S. Eliot, however, claims that Arnold's work as a critic is weakened by his “conjuring trick” whereby he considered poetry as substitute for both religion and philosophy. Eliot posits that Arnold's reputation as a literary critic is overblown and unsubstantial, a viewpoint that Lionel Trilling challenges in his essay, “The Spirit of Criticism” (Harding 208).

We consider that one of the most important recent contributions to nineteenth-century cultural analysis is Peter Melville Logan’s book Victorian Fetishism. Intellectuals and Primitives, Suny Press, 2009, where the author effectively analyzes fetishism’s centrality to literature, anthropology, and psychology by demonstrating that nineteenth-century writers and social scientists strenuously defined culture in opposition to fetishism. Logan argues that fetishism was central to the development of cultural theory in the nineteenth century. From 1850 to 1900, when theories of social evolution reached their peak, European intellectuals identified all “primitive” cultures with “Primitive Fetishism,” a psychological form of self-projection in which people believe everything in the external world—thunderstorms, trees, stones—is alive. Placing themselves at the opposite extreme of cultural evolution, the Victorians defined culture not by describing what culture was but by describing what it was not, and what it was not was fetishism. In analyses of major works by Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, and Edward B. Tylor, Peter Melville Logan demonstrates the paradoxical role of fetishism in Victorian cultural theory, namely, how Victorian writers projected their own assumptions about fetishism onto the realm of historical fact, thereby “fetishizing” fetishism. The book concludes by examining how fetishism became a sexual perversion as well as its place within current cultural theory.

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This section is structured as follows:1. Introduction; 2. Biographical information; 3. The poet; 4. The literary critic; 5. The social critic; 6. The religious critic; 7.Arnold’s legacy; 7. Conclusion; Selected Bibliography: I.. Bibliographies. II. Collected editions. III. Poetry. IV. Separate Works. V. Letters; V. Biographical and Critical Studies.

II.2.1.f. Oscar Wilde (pp.194-255)

The range of approaches to Wilde is exciting. Queer theory and post-structuralism, theater history and Irish studies, feminist theory, biography, genre studies, and the intellectual and formal trajectories of aestheticism, modernism, and postmodernism make Wilde a kaleidoscopic figure. In his book Sexual Dissidence. Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault, Jonathan Dollimore mentions that contemporary cultural studies are concerned with several of the binaries which powerfully organize our cultures: natural/unnatural, masculine/feminine, hetero/homosexual, and, as regards the way in which Wilde’s transgressive aesthetic can be related to contemporary theoretical debates, the subject may be approached in three respects:

- first, the dispute about whether the inversion of binary opposites subverts, or, on the contrary, reinforces the order which those binaries uphold;

- second, the political import¬ance—or irrelevance—of decentring the subject;

- third, post-modernism and one of its more controversial features: the so-called disappearance of the depth model, especially the model of a deep human subjectivity, and the cultural and political ramifications of this (Dollimore 1991:64).

This section is structured as follows:

Part I. Context: 1. Biography; 2. Wilde and the Victorians; 3. Wilde and the Dandyism of the senses; Part II. Wilde's Work: 4. Wilde as poet: 5. Wilde the journalist; 6. Wilde as critic and theorist; 7. Wilde's fiction(s); 9. Wilde's comedies of society Peter Raby; 10. The Importance of Being Earnest; Part III. Themes and Influences: 11. Wilde's sexual identities; 13. Wilde's plays: Selected Bibliography: I.. Bibliography. II. Collected Works. III. Selected Works. IV. Separate Works. V.Biographical and Critical Studies.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

II.2.2. Victorian Writers, vol. II (Craiova, Editura Universitaria, 2006),

pp.227, ISBN 973-742-272-4; 978-973-742-272-9

II.2.2.a. Introduction- (pp.5-15) A few considerations on the novel.

II.2.2.b. Anthony Trollope- (pp.15-55)

In this section it is emphasized that, despite the views of his contemporaries, who partly challenged his literary reputation, Trollope's work is now regarded as among the best produced in the nineteenth-century, and his fiction is frequently compared to that of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and George Eliot. Many late-twentieth-century critics focus their attention on the quality of Trollope's early, Irish novels .Thus, Owen Dudley Edwards, in his article “Anthony Trollope, the Irish Writer,” (Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 38, No. 1, June, 1983, pp. 1-42) offers a detailed survey of Trollope's Irish novels and studies the way in which these works influenced Trollope's later writings. Peter Allen, in his essay “Trollope to His Readers: The Unreliable Narrator of An Autobiography,” in ( Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter, 1996, pp. 1-18), examines Trollope's An Autobiography as an extension of Trollope's social persona, viewing the work as a type of communication addressed to a particular audience. In “Trollope's Metonymies” ( Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 37, No. 3, December, 1982, pp. 272-92), Miahael Riffaterre examines Trollope's use of metonymy, demonstrating that metonymies in Trollope's novels are primarily comic devices used for descriptive purposes. This dual function, Riffaterre states, is typical of the type of contradiction that is one of the hallmarks of Trollope's style. As a conclusion, we may say that after more than a century of criticism, much remains to be said about Trollope's writings.

II.2.2.c. Elisabeth Gaskell- (pp.55-97)

The theme of love is intertwined with that of femininity in most of Elisabeth Gaskell’s novels discussed in this section. The author portrays femininity in her urban-industrial novels that present female characters living in a hostile environment which includes the patriarchal family. In her writings she depicts the ascending urban life and the life of the working class. Her female characters appear in the social and material spaces that introduce readers to the life of the

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working class, not only women. Women here too appear as fulfilling their domestic duties. Thus, they are entrapped in the social space and their domestic duties.

The section examines the maturation of the main female characters in Mary Barton (1848), Cranford (1851), Ruth (1853), North and South (1855), and Wives and Daughters (1866). The changes in society brought about by the Industrial Revolution make it vitally important that there are other characters who, by word or example, will provide models of behavior and values for the girls to observe and adopt in order to successfully navigate the changing future.

One may conclude that it is more than probable that readers turn to her stories for correct pictures of simple everyday life that must fade in the swift succession of years. She has been compared to a naturalist who knows intimately the flora and fauna of his native heath. Critics agree in placing the novels of Elisabeth Gaskell on a level with the works of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë.

II.2.2.d. George Gissing-(pp.97-138)

In this section George Gissing’s work is assessed in the context of nineteenth century realism and naturalism. It is emphasized that most of George Gissing's 23 novels have a certain air of autobiography, and starting with Workers in the Dawn (1880), almost all of his fictional works are set in his own time period of late-Victorian England, and five of his first six novels focus on the working-class poor that Gissing would have encountered frequently during his early writing career. The techniques employed in his novels, especially the early ones, owe much to the Victorian conventions; deeply influenced by the work of Charles Dickens, he approached poverty in a solemn manner, finding it both lamentable and execrable.

While most recent criticism focuses on Gissing's works as biographical narratives, Lewis D. Moore’s book The Fiction of George Gissing, Amazon, 2008, approaches Gissing's novels as purely imaginative works of art, giving him the benefit of the doubt regardless of how well his books seem to match up with the events of his own life. By analyzing important themes in his novels and recognizing the power of the artist's imagination, especially through the critical works of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, Moore reveals how Gissing's novels present a

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lived feel of the world Gissing knew firsthand. The author asserts that, at most, Gissing used his personal experiences as a starting point to transform his own life and thoughts into stories that explain the social, personal, and cultural significance of such experiences.

II.2.2.e. George Meredith- (pp.138-183)

The section points out that George Meredith is best known as a novelist, but his career suggests that he considered poetry a higher art form than prose, and he hoped that later readers would appreciate his experiments and innovations more than his contemporaries did. Noted for their wit, brilliant dialogue, and aphoristic quality of language. Meredith’s novels are also distinguished by psychological studies of character and a highly subjective view of life that, far ahead of his time, regarded women as truly the equals of men. His best known works are The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) and The Egoist (1879). Contemporary critics are still much interested in Meredith’s work. A good example is Pauline Fletcher’s essay Trifles light as air in Meredith's Modern Love (Fletcher 1996: 87-99) where she focuses on the parallels between Modern Love and Shakespeare's Othello in order to highlight Meredith's development of psychology and character. In this essay, the critic refers to the individual sonnets comprising Modern Love as sections of the larger poem.

II.2.2.f. Robert Louis Stevenson (pp.183-225)

In this section it is emphasized that although Robert Louis Stevenson was a late Victorian, his work - especially Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - still circulates energetically and internationally among popular and academic audiences and among young and old. Admired by Henry James, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jorge Luis Borges, Stevenson’s fiction crosses the boundaries of genre and challenges narrow definitions of the modern and the postmodern.- - and how Stevenson encourages expansive thinking across texts, times, places, and lives. This section is structured as follows: 1. Life; 2.Novels; 3.Short story collections; 4.Other works; 5.Conclusion; Selected Bibliography: I.. Bibliography. II. Collected Works. III. Selected Works. IV. Separate Works. V.Biographical and Critical Studies.

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R.L.Stevenson’s work may very well be interpreted by using the Dual brain theory presented below.

Variant versions of dual-brain theory circulating during the nineteenth century posited that the left and right hemispheres of the brain could function independently; according to this theory, everyone has two perfectly formed brains, each of which can substitute for the other in cases of unilateral brain injury. In the nineteenth century as now, the left brain was seen as the logical seat of reason and linguistic ability, contrasting with the emotional right brain.3

Critics agree that most versions of dual-brain theory mediate Victorian race and gender biases. The left brain was associated with masculinity, whiteness, and civilization, while the right brain was the supposedly inferior or feminine seat of emotions, instincts, and the unconscious (Harrington 100).

Consequently, the right hemisphere supposedly dominated in brains of women, savages, children, criminals, and the insane. While Jekyll exhibits left-hemisphere attributes (masculinity, whiteness, logic, intelligence, human ness), Hyde embodies right-hemisphere traits: femininity, racial indeterminacy, madness, emotion, and animality. Figuratively speaking, then, Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde performs a fictional corpus callosotomy, splitting the nerve fibers that connect two brain hemispheres, thereby giving each hemisphere an independent and unchecked life of its own.4

This figurative procedure exemplifies the surgical precision that Stevenson deemed necessary for the creation of believable fictional characters. The author confessed shortly before his death that “psychical surgery is, I think, a common way of ‘making character’: perhaps it is, indeed the only way . . . knife in hand, we must cut away and deduct the needless aborescence of [a character’s] nature.”( Stevenson 1985: 193).

3 Theories of bilateral hemisphere asymmetry have changed little in the past one hundred years, with some prominent exceptions. For instance, scientists now think that linguistic functions and mathematical reasoning may involve both hemispheres to some extent, and that women are predominantly left-brained. See Sally P. Springer and Georg Deutsch, Left Brain, Right Brain: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience, 5th edn. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1997), especially chap. 3.

4 Corpus callosotomy, also called callosal section, is a surgical procedure used to treat severe epileptic seizures since the mid-twentieth century. (Harrington, p. 122).

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This drastic mental split has moral consequences for Stevenson’s dual protagonist, ones that reflect contemporary theological debate surrounding the dual-brain theory. More than one Victorian scientist had been struck by the possibility that “so far as he brain represents it, the soul must be double” (Hall and Hartwell 1984: 102). Like these scientists, Stevenson explores the potentially heretical possibility that human beings are inherently double even in a healthy state.

The issue of the dual brain theory in Stevenson’s work is approached by Anne Stiles’ excellent article Jekyll and Hyde, literary criticism, and late-Victorian science, (Stiles 2006: 879) where she mentions that with a few prominent exceptions, critics of Jekyll and Hyde have overlooked dual- brain theories as potential sources for the novella’s central theme. Anne Harrington, in Medicine, Mind and the Double Brain: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought (1987), briefly mentions the relevance of brain duality to Jekyll and Hyde: “[O]ne would have to argue . . . that Jekyll would tend to focus his personality in the civilized, rational left hemisphere, while Hyde would give vent to his criminal instincts from somewhere in the recesses of the uneducated, evolutionarily backward right hemisphere” (Harrington 136).

Since Harrington’s excellent study is historical rather than literary, however, she necessarily leaves the narrative implications of Henry Jekyll’s duality unexplored. Elaine Showalter, too, briefly elaborates upon Harrington’s observations about Jekyll and Hyde, arguing that “the dominant side of the brain represent[s] the dominant gender, and the other the repressed gender” (Showalter 1999:75). Showalter’s invocation of the dual-brain theory is part of a queer critical reading of Stevenson’s narrative that draws not only on Harrington but also on Sigmund Freud and his contemporary Wilhelm Fliess, who “argued that all human beings were bisexual” (Showalter 1999:75).

The opposites embodied in the Jekyll/Hyde binary conform to late-Victorian ideas about the brain as a double organ, in ways that both Harrington and Showalter have helped to outline. On the one hand, we have “Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., &c.” (p. 13), “the very pink of the proprieties” (p. 10). A respected, altruistic doctor, Jekyll appears a “large handsome,” “well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty” (pp. 20, 19). On the other hand, Edward Hyde is

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“abnormal and misbegotten,” exuding an ambiguous air of deformity (p. 45). Unlike Jekyll, Hyde appears young and effeminate by virtue of his diminutive stature, dandyish tastes, and emotional lability, including an outburst of “hysteria” (p. 45). Racially, Hyde is an ape-like evolutionary reversion sporting a “swart growth of hair” over the “dusky pallor” of his skin tone, in contrast to Jekyll’s “white” skin (p. 54). In other words, from a late-nineteenth-century perspective, Jekyll represents the pinnacle of evolution, while Hyde approaches its nadir.

II.2.3. Victorian Writers, vol. III (Craiova, Editura Universitaria,2006,ISBN (10) 973- 742-541-3,; ISBN (13) 978-973-742-541-6

II.2.3.a. Charles Dickens- (pp.7-82)

This section points out that the novels of Charles Dickens have attracted a wide and enthusiastic readership since they first appeared in the mid-nineteenth century, and in recent decades their social, biographical, and psychological elements have brought them increasing academic attention. For instance David Copperfield may serve not only to introduce Dickens or the novel to the students, but also to demonstrate the relations of fiction and autobiography and the roles of myth, archetype, and fantasy in fiction. Another central text both in Dickens's career and in the history of the novel itself, Bleak House provides students and teachers occasion to discuss Victorian social concerns involving law, crime, family, education, and money and to learn about every stratum of English society, from the aristocracy to the homeless.

Regarding recent critical approaches to Dickens, we may say that in the course of time Dickens's novels have been read in a whole number of varied and sometimes conflicting ways. The issue is the question of how far recent developments in thinking about literature can usefully be applied to Dickens. We think that a functional answer, which may be applied to any novelist, can be

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found in Grahame Smith’s essay Dickens and Critical Theory5 where the author makes three basic suppositions:

1. the chief greatness of Dickens' work as a whole resides in what J. Hillis Miller calls its "inimitable and inexhaustible linguistic exuberance";

2. Dickens is essentially a comic writer;

3. his work should be seen as an inseparable whole, from the Sketches by Boz to Edwin Drood, within which everything must be included, the journalism as well.

Starting from these, Smith considers that any application of critical theory to Dickens' work must take account of its linguistic virtuosity; its comic spirit; and be as applicable to the early and middle period work as the late. Smith further suggests that the major theorist who offers a useful tool for the illumination of Dickens' work is Mikhail Bakhtin, whose terms of theoretical position may turn Dickens’s novels into “a fruitful site for poststructuralist analysis.” Thus there are three major areas of Bakhtin's thought which can be applied to Dickens. First, there is a social foundation, a link with reality which is an indispensable element of any successful approach to Dickens. Second, the dialogic or polyphonic novel seems to fit Dickens. Third, the concept of the carnivalesque (as opposed to carnival proper) is one that can be fruitfully applied to Dickens.

Smith also considers that the application of polyphony to Dickens' texts is one that can be pursued in a number of directions, that the multiplicity of voices at work in any of Dickens' texts is impressive in its range and variety and quotes Bakhtin's assertion that "In the English comic novel we find a comic parodic re-processing of almost all levels of literary language, both conversational and written, that were current at the time." Bakhtin illustrates what he calls the 'heteroglossic' of the 'dialogic novel' in Dickens in a whole number of ways - in relation, for example, to what he calls 'hybrid construction'. By hybrid construction he means a "single speaker's utterance which contains within it another utterance with no formal ... boundary between them". As an example, he gives a brief passage from Little Dorrit: "But Mr. Tite

5 This essay was originally delivered at a March 1998 Dickens conference, Charles Dickens and His Work, at the Middle East Technical University in Turkey. The Victorian web.

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Barnacle was a buttoned up man, and consequently a weighty one." For Bakhtin, this appears to be an authorial statement but "in actual fact, the motivation lies within the subjective belief system of his characters, or of general opinion" (The Dialogic Imagination: 200).

But, in addition to this "double voicedness", as Bakhtin calls it, there are a whole number of ways in which his theoretical position illuminates Dickens' work. For example, at the deepest level, the polyphonic novel "is authentic only insofar as it represents an engagement in which, in various ways, the discourses or self and other interpenetrate each" (The Dialogic Imagination: 200). And this leads him to a moral imperative which is as central to Dickens as it is for the Dostoevsky for whom it was formulated. For Bakhtin, Dostoevsky writes "to affirm someone else's 'I', not as an object but as another subject." In its turn, this leads to the view that, for Dostoevsky, "as an artist the human being cannot be finally explained ... there is always something only he himself can reveal" (The Dialogic Imagination: 200) These are insights which can, surely, be applied to Dickens in a fruitful manner.

Smith also thinks that almost more useful is the recognition of the necessity of that element in Dickens' work which one critic sums up in the phrase "unnecessary detail". This subject of Dickens' work can, and has been read in opposing ways: as the explicit sign of a superabundant energy, or as the wastefulness of an artist who lacks control of his own material, amounting to irresponsibility. Although not writing of Dickens himself, Bakhtin provides a way out of this dilemma in his assertion that "for individuals cannot be completely incarcerated in the flesh of existing sociolinguistic categories ... [there is] no form that he could fill to the very brim, and yet at the time not splash over the brim." This position might be summarised in the statement that "the 'polyphonic' novel [is a form] in which the voices of the characters are dialogically engaged by the voice of the narrator without the narrator seeking the final word, or seeking to place or explain the characters" in a limiting manner (The Dialogic Imagination 5).

The term “carnivalesque” is also introduced by Smith because the concept of carnival itself is controversial in Bakhtin, not least because the social existence of carnival was declining at the point when the novel itself was coming into existence. The carnivalesque is a celebration of the "anarchic, body-based and grotesque elements of popular culture" and, as such, is associated

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with two other concepts – with what Bakhtin calls "grotesque realism", within which a major role is assigned to the "grotesque body". The grotesque body is a particularly interesting notion since Bakhtin defines it as "a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is continuously built, created and builds and creates another body" (Rabelais and his World: 217). Smith also states that there are innumerable scenes and characters to which the carnivalesque can be applied in Dickens’s novels, a most suitable example being The Pickwick Papers, where Mr. Pickwick and his companions are presented in their drunken sorties to all parts of England, as well as the world of Bob Sawyer and his stories, such as the girl swallowing beads which are afterwards heard rattling about in her stomach, and that it seems almost impossible to separate this carnivalesque celebration of human life from the series of Dickensian voices, from Sam Weller to Dr. Slammer to Mr. Jingle and so on.

In conclusion, as Smith argued in his essay, we do agree that Dickens can be read in terms of more open versions of critical theory because of the ways in which he deconstructs his own work in the act of writing it, offering one final example, from Our Mutual Friend, where there is no simple opposition between good and evil in relation to wealth. The greedy and materialistic are ruthlessly exposed, but this is combined, ultimately, with a celebration of the power of money to transform and enhance human lives. Double-voicedness and the heteroglossia of the dialogic are everywhere present in Dickens' fiction.

II.2.3.b.The Brontës ( pp.82-190)

1) Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)

The section points out that Charlotte Brontë novels centred on the theme of love and woman’s lot in the Victorian patriarchal society. We do agree with Philippe Séjourné, who considers that Charlotte Brontë’s novels are created around “a moral conflict which is […] considered from a woman’s point of view” (Séjourné 1999: 94).

Female characters have important behavioral qualities that women were required to have in the Victorian era such as virtue, courage, moral, lucidity and constancy. It is considered that

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Charlotte Brontë’s plot may seem more rigid than Jane Austen’s and sometimes deficient in realistic elements as the Gothic tradition sometimes prevails.

In her representation of femininity Séjourné interprets Charlotte Brontë’s use of the gothic as symbolizing “all that is frightening in men, particularly their instincts of violence, oppression and sexual appetite” (Séjourné 1999: 97). Another tradition that she takes over from the eighteenth-century writers is that her female characters appear in the company of misogynists, such as in Villette where Brocklehurst and the two persons that frighten Lucy on her late arrival in the night embody the negative personages of the plot.

Brontë portrays femininity both in the public and private spheres. In the public spheres, female characters are to be found in public gatherings, such as balls or “public festivities” (Séjourné 1999: 98). Séjourné underlines the fact that female rivalry appears in the public space and that it becomes obvious when the anti-heroine, i.e. antagonist of the main, female character browses the possible suitors in front of the heroine. Charlotte Brontë’s female characters may be the heroines or anti-heroines as is the case of Eliza, Georgiana, Miss Ingram or the Simpsons who connect through their negative features which one opposed to the Victorian virtues. Philippe Séjourné highlights Charlotte Brontë’s use of antithetical terms regarding the cultural differences of her female characters’ country of origin, England or France. For instance, in Villette the narrator draws a comparison between Lucy, the English girl who embodies the virtues that British society expected women to show, and the other young ladies living at the Pensionnat, who exhibit a different kind of behaviour, the French one, which is presented and full of superficial flaws. The antagonism between English and French women is based on principles, i.e. British women prefer being moral and ethical in their actions rather than being pleasant to look at and being false to men only to please them.

The section concludes that Charlotte Brontë portrays femininity both in the public and private spheres, and that both Charlotte and Emily Brontë depicted woman “as she was” and “not as she ought to be” (Séjourné 1999: 128).

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

2) Emily Brontë (1818-1848)

In this chapter it is pointed out that Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights has long held a high position in the academy and in popular culture. It is taught at levels from high school English to doctoral studies and has been adapted in enough film and television versions that many students who know nothing about the book know who Heathcliff is. In analyzing the novel we intended to uncover the hidden elements of race, gender, and class through close analysis of the narrative, as well as to discuss elements such as: the gothic conventions, the reliability of the narrators, the complexity of character development, the reliability of the narrators, the complexity of character development (considering the circularity of the novel) , the presence of historical and legal documents to reveal social and economic issues of the period like child custody and women's property rights, finally, the place of the novel in the canon.

We also emphasized the way in which Emily Bronte approaches the position of women in Victorian patriarchal society. A traditional perception of woman was that woman’s lifestyle depended on her comfort and social progress. In Wuthering Heights woman is presented in a new manner, the female protagonist expressing her feelings more easily as she does not act as an object of action, but the subject or the doer of the action. In Emily Brontë’s narrative woman’s lot is governed by male regulations expressed through gothic elements that transform it into a mere frightful environment. Emily Brontë portrays femininity as an accomplished state of a human being who experiences the feeling of love and not one who longs for being loved, in other words she takes a subject position. The readers are in awe of the passionate female characters, Catherine Linton and Cathy. We quite agree with Philippe Séjourné who maintains that Wuthering Heights is strongly focused on a feminist perspective such as “woman’s redeeming power” (1999: 132) In her novel, woman appears to gain power as Catherine marries Edgar for it is her who decides whom to marry even if out of a whim, in order to make Heathcliff jealous, while Heathcliff perceives this action as an act of betrayal. Cathy seems to be an improved version of Catherine as she suffers a sort of psychological development as opposed to her mother: Cathy’s selfish fits are reduced to silence by reason as opposed to Catherine’s unreasonableness. Emily Brontë’s presentation of “sibling love” can be compared to Eliot’s in

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The Mill on the Floss as Eliot’s embodiments of brother and sister “are born into a gendered world where girls are driven by an intense need for male approval and boys are locked into a harsh, self-justifying code of honour” (Gilbert 1980:492).

3) Anne Brontë (1820-1849)

The section points out that Anne Brontë’s novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an important writing in the development of the feminine Victorian fiction, as it describes the life of a runaway woman, Helen Huntingdon, and her son, Arthur, who tries to escape from her husband’s tyrannical and vicious behavior. Anne Brontë presents femininity by using two antithetical figures, i.e. Helen Huntingdon and Annabella Wilmot, who becomes Lady Lowborough by marriage. Unlike Helen, Lady Lowborough’s immoral lifestyle destroys her marriage to Lord Lowborough who divorces her by taking their son and presumed daughter from her affair with Arthur Huntingdon. Another iconic female protagonist is Milicent Hattersley who endures her husband’s vices and mistreatments. His vulgar behaviour and sadism cause her much despair as he treats her badly with the only goal of making her suffer. Milicent’s reluctance to marry Ralph suggests her fear to be hurt and treated as an object, which does really happen until Ralph Hattersley repents for Helen Huntingdon’s involvement and treats her with kindness and love. In The Tenant most female characters are imprisoned in odious marriages that eventually either end tragically or, less frequently, their husbands reconsider their tyrannical attitude towards their spouses. Anne Brontë depicts her female characters experiencing love from a two-fold perspective: their husbands’ interpretation of love and theirs; of course, their interpretation is a feminised one that underlines the sentimental aspect. Although the uncommonly bad treatment of women appears in other novels of the Brontës, this novel is the most shocking of them all. The husband’s demonic behaviour that Helen Huntingdon has to put up with is similar to the tyrannical behaviour of Janet Dempster’s and Gwendolen Harleth’s husbands, so a parallel is drawn between these works in the end of the chapter..

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II.2.3.c. George Eliot (pp. 190-331)

It is emphasized that George Eliot’s novels depict woman’s life from social, cultural, religious, and educational perspectives. Eliotean narratives have as point of departure real events that led to social class changes. Middlemarch deals with the period of the Great Reform Act. At that time, Ingham claims that the Reform Act of 1832 induced “the separation of the middle classes from the working classes […] which excluded the latter from the franchise” (Ingham 2003: 3).

Eliot’s writings, i.e. her novels, essays and reviews, portray different social issues that were at the core of British social and political life. In Felix Holt, the Radical she employs the word radical to depict Felix Holt’s character only to emphasize the fact that he is radical only in the instances when he does not attempt to influence people’s vote and when he chooses to lead his life not as his father would have wanted him to but as he wishes to. In the same novel, beside the competition during the parliamentary elections’ campaign there is also a social-class competition which motivates the characters’ actions. Esther Lyon is lured by the social power and class prestige that she could obtain by marrying Harold Transome after she is informed about her birth rights and inheritance that have been hidden from her up to that moment.

George Eliot did not write any industrial novels but we may observe the consequences of the Industrial Revolution in most of her novels as they depict the social movements and political changes that are triggered by the Industrial Revolution. In The Mill on the Floss the industrial progress announces the closing end of the comfortable life the Tullivers were used to leading. In Felix Holt, the Radical the working class is represented by different exponents who show how easily they can be corrupted in exchange for their vote by being offered pints of beer. In Middlemarch the common-sensical distance between social classes is dissipated by the actions of some characters that bend the social and patriarchal rules: Dorothea chooses love over money and loneliness, while Mr Bulstrode, the exponent of patriarchal righteousness, reveals his hidden past when a former acquaintance forces him to commit murder in order to keep his social position. Social classes comprise more than a defining lifestyle; they also embrace certain standards that help us discriminate between them. Critics generally accept the statement that middle-class women of late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century were defined in

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accordance with their standard of virtue which meant that they “were represented as protecting, and increasingly incarnating virtue” (Ingham 2003: 21) It is the larger picture of Victorian society that is present in the novels of Charles Dickens and George Eliot, the latter achieving a more subtle approach of woman’s condition. The feeling of physical, psychological, social and racial entrapment is present in the Brontë sisters’ novels and George Eliot’s as well. The effects of the industrial revolution on Victorian society, in general, and woman’s life, in particular, are presented in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels and Eliot’s too.

II. 2.4. Literary Essays. Close reading and comprehension (Craiova, Editura Universitaria, 2009), pp.329, ISBN 978-973-742-595-9

II.2.4.a. Forward by Gabriel Cosoveanu ( pp. I-VIII)

In the Foreword to the book ( pp. I-VIII) the literary critic Gabriel Cosoveanu considers that Anglo-American studies represent a field both permissive and generous from a methodological angle, but difficult when we refer to the background of the discussion, intelligible only to those conversant with the “field”. An incursion to the British Isles and to their extension called New England with hermeneutic weapons always remains a “challenging approach”.(p.II) .The literary aspects discussed in this volume among which sea fascination, the idea of progress, honorability, inequality, seem to be conversant with the author who came to name the present volume close- reading, meaning in Anglo-Saxon practice an example of faithfulness to the text, but also comprehension by which we mean the capacity to rise to that altitude from where the sensuousness of reading may be shared. (p.III)

II.2.4.b. The Construction of Privacy in Henry James’s The Bostonians (pp.1-33)

The essay identifies a critical form of property, namely the reputation, which is described as a jumping-off ground and even a guarantee of the social power. It is argued that the approximation of a notion with an immense impact, such as reputation, elicits the detail, and consequently, the scale of community values, in which the primordial mechanism of sorts spins around acceptability, seen as a sum of factors residing at the junction between the social, material and symbolic standings.

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II.2.4.c. Henry James and the Art of Criticism .(pp.33-62)

Criticism is seen as a parallel existence to life through the multiplication of experiences of others, and others before them. The metaphor of the house is conjured as the locus for the creative womb for both novel writer and literary critic. What Henry James achieves is to utilize the two functions together in such a way that they become interwoven and hard to distinguish one from the other. Another idea brought under scrutiny is the one which states that a novel’s main purpose is to be typical of life itself, very similar to the role of painting, as both are, after all, representations of reality. His job is indicative to that of the historian in this case with the only main drawback that the novelist cannot retort to archives to support his plots. However, James’ preoccupation for the real remains and leads to Roland Barthes’ effet du reel which the French thinker challenges as the characteristic of the bourgeois novel. This confirms what James believed, at that stage of his career, as being the role of novel writing, i.e. to represent life as it is: like Flaubert’s “crystal box” and not like Tolstoy’s “loose and baggy monster”. In other words, James intends to sketch a manifesto of the “realism” for the English novel.

II.2.4.d. James’s The Wings of the Dove and the Romance of Choice (pp.62-98)

In this essay, the author advances a reading of late James somewhat different from the critical model that has sought to expose the real historical referents -consumerism, class privilege, or power- just barely contained within his novels. An argument is that James's late fiction responds to a cultural context imagined at every level to be in danger of groundlessness. One of the most evasive terms that hovers over The Wings of the Dove, a novel that relentlessly joins chance and mobility, is the word "choice." If we try to focus this term for a moment by grounding it in historical context, we discover that choice derives from an ideology that, if not necessarily "new," was forcefully re- newed at the turn of the century: "opportunism."

II.2.4.e. Industrial Capitalism and the Situation of the Professional in Dickens’s David

Copperfield (pp.98-133)

The essay offers a subtle analysis of the stages of alienation in a social environment which is obsessed for productivity. As Dickens puts it, it is less worrying that a child is forced to labour in

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

order to survive, as compared to the aspect of diverting or delaying certain talents from rightful fruition. One such talent is the capacity to keep track of time - a metaphor to the industrial capitalism. When David’s first wife, Dora, has her watch stolen, he develops on the importance of time - which equates with money - leaving Dora unable to face the challenges of life, eventually, “falling behind time”. In fact, the whole novel shows a fascination for time, as its protagonist articulates a series of time practices and concepts with a view to identifying his one of the most relevant features of the mid-century industrial capitalism, i.e. time discipline.

II.2.4.f. Spectatorship and Ideology in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (pp.133-153)

By exploring A Christmas Carol, and taking suggestions from Althusser (ideologically speaking), Eisenstein (for the cinematic quality of the prose) and Baudrillard (with an interest for the sign-power relationship), the essay underlines the role of the property with Dickens, along with all the pathology it generates. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens speaks of the condition of the Victorian businessman and of the relation between the subject and culture and between the subject and representation. The story aims at linking sympathy and business by instilling a charitable impulse into male readers’ self-conceptions and producing social acceptance. The subject becomes not the man of feeling but the man who has forgotten how to feel, and, as a consequence the potential charity giver necessitates the same amount of socialization as the beggar himself. The story refuses any external and internal temporality, which hints again to Dickens’s obsession with time, only that now the time is an endless cycle of failure and recovery, seen as a form of alienation and reacceptance into an ever-forgiving culture.

II.2.4.g. Relationships between Masters and Servants in Thackeray’s Fiction ( pp.153-175)

The avatars of power is the central theme of the essay focusing on the work of William Makepeace Thackeray. Thackeray used to reveal, not without sarcasm and annoyance, that “anyone can turn gentleman” (Pendennis) under the condition that he demonstrates that he owns a required outfit and necessary funds. In his essay the author offers an alternative to the dominant model of reading Victorian fiction as an open secret for homosexuality, attempting to identify the ways in which the direct representation of sexual deviance are useful to the bourgeois writer. In the same manner in which Miller suggested that moments of social and sexual ambivalence

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

testify to the “wavering instability of all social categories”, the author concludes that it is the rise of capitalism which leads to a levelling of all erotic impulses to a single material lust; commodity fetishism being the only desire shared by the inhabitants of Vanity Fair.

II.2.4.h. Withheld Speech and Female Authorship in Jane Eyre and Villette (pp.175-206)

Building his demonstration on Theodor Adorno’s reflections (Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life), the essay investigates the feminine typology in Charlotte Bronte’s work, capturing the relevance and implication of the silence in some quintessential scenes. The author argues that Charlotte Bronte does not follow the trend of novel-writing with speech in order to develop a more effective means by which women writers might project a voice in the public print sphere and manages to achieve professional success. Bronte rejects a model of authorship based on voice, but succeeds in forming a new abstract readership or a national print sphere. Her writing is disembodied and impersonal and yet able to address a mass audience, while her providing the written narrative as a transcription of a preceding voice where meaning and affect reside. Bronte claims that writing augments value when they remain withheld.

II.2.4.i. The Trauma of Colonialism in Conrad's Early Work (pp.206-243)

The essay focuses both on the distant world (where the conflicts between two ways of life are identified – West and East with all their myths and prejudices), while the closer one reveals bottomless depths and unhealed wounds. Many of Conrad’s heroes, from Marlow, Almayer or Willems to Jim, Nostromo, Razumov or Heyst, demonstrate behavioral features which lead to the impression of a deep propension for meditation on the frailty of the so-called civilized life style under extreme circumstances. Marlow presents a reversed colonialization which masks European domination, with the result that Marlow’s stereotype of the East may amount to an ideological detour. Conrad debunks the idea that a “bond of common faith, of common conviction” inheres in colonial and colonized societies. The author arguments that if Conrad had left un-altered his image of the West as a “path of rectitude,” we might be in the right to call his accounts of Western colonialism “disingenuous”. However, his emphasis in Heart of Darkness obscures the protagonists’ intentions and desires. Similarly, by considering Conrad’s narrators and characters

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as an extension of his own opinions is misleading and turns literature narrative into a sociological approach.

II.2.4.j. Felicia Hemans’ Heroines and the Construction of National Identity (pp.243-274)

The essay gives the author the chance to investigate the Victorian patriotic feeling and attitudes that derive from it. Through the voice of Felicia Hemans, the national identity is constructed, bearing the marks of her melancholy and her concern with defining womanhood. In the author’s view, Hemans’ impact on her readers is due to her fragmented, compelling, and complex range of patriotic positions – as is the case with Casabianca with her sinister, silly and explosive verses. In her attempt to explore the issues of national identity, Felicia Hemans marches along with poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frances E. W. Harper, Alice Meynell and Lydia Sigourney, demonstrating her affiliation to a complex poetic tradition. Her poetry builds on the idea that national awarenesses are inescapably gendered and that gender is shaped by contradictory awarenesses, identifying feminine melancholy as a substitute for patriotic duty.

II.2.4.l. Epiphany and Character in Browning’s Poetry (pp.274-300)

The essay motivates the author to look for epiphanies in everything, including the reader’s experience. Browning’s epiphanic poetry manifests itself through interpretation of culturally specific signs, by exhibiting an interest in the historical particularities of manner, speech and thought. However, Browning’s epiphanies are secular and his dramatic monologues reveal a human personality, exemplifying the modern literary epiphany. His speakers are defined by their yearnings for absolute ideals, whether of theological or of quasi-religious nature, thus striving to attest individual desires or cultural faith. Even from his first poems, Browning shows an interest in characters for whom epiphany is an element of faith rather than an expression of empirical record.

II.2.4.2 The Imaginary Irish Peasant (pp.300-329)

The essay centers on the myth of the Irish peasant, an entity which is perceived by fellow nationals as a symbol of resistance, of dignity and heroism, whereas the imperial mentality associates it with dubious atavisms. The main topic developed is tolerance – as the only

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regulatory force against the centrifugal and inherent multiculturalism. The author recalls the time when the British people regarded the Irish peasant as a “white Negro”, comparing him to barbarians or savages, close relatives of Frankenstein or Caliban becoming the emblem of the Irish national character. But the author warns that these demonic representations reflected only a necessary urban fiction, in which English periodicals played a significant role.

II.3. Course books

Victorian Literature, Craiova, Reprografia Universitatii din Craiova, 1999, course book

The beneficiaries of this course book were primarily our students, but also all interested in Victorian studies and English literature in general. Based on recent bibliography, its main aims are:

- to present a bird’s eye view of Victorian literature;

- to emphasize the main literary trends that appeared during this period;

- to enhance and update the students’ knowledge of Victorian literature by offering a critical perspective of the canonical writers of 19th century Britain;

- to insist on the authors that excelled in a specific literary genre and proved a source of inspiration for future generation of writers;

- emphasis was laid on critical thinking, assimilation and understanding of the diverse literary and cultural phenomena, not on accumulation;

- the course has in view to stimulate its readers, not to interpret literature as an isolated phenomenon, but as an integrating part of the social and cultural context

Course Description: 1.Introduction to the Victorian Age (1830 – 1890). Background Information. 2. Major Historical Events. Cultural Conditions. Victorian Orthodoxy. Traditionalists. Innovators General information on the Victorian Age: social and political context of the period, specific realities, historical framing. Chief events of the studied period, outstanding personalities.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

Cultural conditions, religious tendencies, literary trends. The conflict between traditionalists and innovators in the Victorian literary context.

Literary Features of the Age

General view of the literature. 1. Its morality; 2.The Revolt; 3. Intellectual Developments; 4. The New Education; 5.International Influences; 6. The Achievement of the Age; 7.The development of Literary Forms.Poets.

The following canonical authors have been approached:

1. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. His Poetical Characteristics. His poetry (Ullysses, In Memoriam, The Hesperides). a) His choice of subject, b) His Craftsmanship, c) His Pictorial Quality, d) Tennyson’s lyrical quality, e). Style.

2. Robert Browning (1812-1889). 1) His Poems and Works ((Fra Lippo Lippi, My Last Duchess). Features of his work: a) His choice of subject, b) His style c) His Descriptive Power d) The Dramatic Monologue, f) Characteristics

3. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). 1. His Poetry (The Wreck of the “Deutchland”).Features of his poetry: a) His love of nature, b) His Use of Language c) His Rhythmic Patterns d) His imagery.

4. The Pre-Raphaelites: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Morris,Algernon Charles Swinburne.

5. Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870). Dickens’s Life and Work.General Features of his work.Experimental period: 1. Sketches by Boz, 2. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Second Period: 1. Adventures of Oliver Twist, 2) Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, 3) The Old Curiosity Shop. Mature Period: 1. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, 2.Dombey and Son, 3. David Copperfield, 4) Bleak House, 5) Hard Times, 6. Little Dorrit, 7. A Tale of Two Cities. Final Period: 1. Great Expectations, 2. Our Mutual Friend, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

6. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 – 1863).Features of his works: His Reputation, His method, His Humour and Pathos, His work (Vanity Fair)

7. The Brontes. 1. Charlotte Bronte’s Life and Work.(Analysis of Jane Eyre); 2. Emily Bronte (1818-48) Analysis of Wuthering Heights: The Narrators of Wuthering Heights.Another View of the Novel.3. Anne Bronte: “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Their Importance in the History of the Novel.

8. George Eliot (1819-89) Her works. Features of Her Novels. Her Choice of Subject. Her Characters. George Eliot’s Style.

9. Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928).Features of his Novels: 1. His Subjects, 2.His Treatment of his Themes, 3.His Characters, 4.His Knowledge of the Countryside. 5. Analysis of Tess D’Urbervilles.

Biblography.

II.4. Published studies on Victorian canonical literature

II.4.1. in academic journals

2014

1. VICTOR OLARU, Ruskin’s aesthetic theories at the transition between centuries (XIX- XX), in Revista de Stiinte Politice/ Revue des Sciences Politiques,, nr.41/2014, pp. 59-73. indexed in EBSCO, ProQuest Central, KVK, cis01.central.ucv.ro/revistadestiintepolitice/

This paper attempts to present and interpret Ruskin’s aesthetic theories at the transition between the 19th and the 20th centuries, as well as their impact on the development and tradition of European and Anglo-American modernism. Early 20th writers generally rejected Ruskin, as part of the modernist rebellion pattern against Victorian culture. Yet most of them rightly found in Ruskin an incipient modernism, both in his ideas and in his style. As Sharon Aronofsky Welman puts it in Ruskin and Modernism (p.7) "emphatic dismissal of Ruskin did not necessarily prevent

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his thought from permeating the new aesthetic. While modernism renounced certain aspects of Ruskin's work, such as his retreat from modernity and his nostalgic backward glance at the Gothic, the moderns retained more of their Ruskinian inheritance than they threw away”. In conclusion, one may assert that, although 20th century scholars took pains in minimizing Ruskin’s merits, their effort has actually emphasized both his influence that reached across the world, and the part he played in the foundation of modernism.

2. VICTOR OLARU, John Ruskin-Between art and social justice, in Revista de Ştiinţe Politice/. Revue des Sciences Politiques,No. 42/2014, pp.90-107, indexed in EBSCO, ProQuest Central, KVK , cis01.central.ucv.ro/revistadestiintepolitice/

3. VICTOR OLARU, John Ruskin-Between Art and Social Justice

Abstract

In the context of the English and European culture, John Ruskin holds a definite, if not unique place, as the leading English art critic of the Victorian period, water-colourist, prominent social thinker and philanthropist. This man, who supported with an unusual, persuasive force, almost imaginary theses in arts, morals, politics and political economy, had become some sort of “manager of consciousness” in the most conservative and practical European country of the 19th century. As regards art, in 1843 Ruskin published the first volume of Modern Painters a book that would eventually consist of five volumes and occupy him for the next 17 years. His first purpose was to insist on the “truth” of the depiction of Nature in Turner’s landscape paintings. After 1860, this aesthetically-based form of humanism makes way to some more concrete social preoccupations, in other words, a genuine search for social justice. Thackeray publishes in Cornhill Magazine some of his vehemently anti-bourgeois articles of political economy (1860), further continued by other writings which testifies a clear-cut, although rather confusing socialist orientation. In 1871 he writes a series of extremely violent pamphlets, subsequently gathered in the volume Fors Clavigera. He speaks about the kibbutz-organization of labourers, about state support for artistic creation, publishes the volume Unto the Last and becomes a member of the Paris Commune helping committee. Thus the paper has in view an analysis of Ruskin’s

Professor PhD/Prof.univ.dr. VICTOR OLARU, Habilitation Thesis/Teza de abilitare

intellectual preoccupations, split between art and social justice and, consequently, his creative evolution from art to social writings, from Modern Painters to Fors Clavigera.

2013

4. VICTOR OLARU, George Eliot and Darwinism in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English, Year XIV, No.1, 2013, pp.123-136. ,

However much were 19th century British intellectuals interested in science based on methodological research, Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) took them by surprise and produced great changes mentality of the period. His work shaped the course of Victorian scientific, theological and artistic thought, determining various direct or indirect reactions with most major poets and fiction writers of the late Victorian period, George Eliot included. This article attempts to emphasize Eliot’s engagement with Darwin’s theory, demonstrating the importance of science in such a novel as Middlemarch. Reference is also made to other Eliot novels: Silas Marner, Adam Bede, Daniel Daronda, and The Mill on the Floss.

5. VICTOR OLARU, Approaching art through nature-John Ruskin, in Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Limbi Straine Aplicate An IX, Nr.1,2013, pp.281-289

Ruskin approached art through nature. As a young man, he considered that nature -mountains, rocks, trees, plants, skies and rivers-was a revelation of God’s glory. He also believed that nature was an expression of Father’s Word, that it should be read like a holy book, and that it was man’s privilege to interpret it. This article has in view to emphasize the way in which these ideas are reflected in Ruskin’s writings and lectures on nature, and how they influenced the construction of his artistic and literary personality.

6. VICTOR OLARU, John Ruskin, an interpreter of Victorian society, vol. 4, Revista de Stiinte Politice, nr.4/2013, pp. 59-73. , indexed in EBSCO, ProQuest Central, KVK, cis01.central.ucv.ro/revistadestiintepolitice

The paper points out Ruskin's position regarding the Victorian society he lived in and reflected in his writings, such as: The Political Economy of Art (1857), A Joy for Ever 1880), Traffic (1865),

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Unto This Last (1862), Time and Tide (1867), Fors Clavigera (1871). One may conclude that Ruskin's social criticism eventually had major influence because he thus rejected outright the fundamental ideas of classical economics accepted by most of his contemporaries and set out on his own. Thus he rejected a political economy based upon competition and urged the greater relevance and practicality of one based on cooperation. Although at the date of their publication they faced hostility, today critics credit these works with the merit of having helped to raise the social consciousness of Victorian readers and economists.

2012

7. VICTOR OLARU, Details of an Intellectual Autobiography, Annals of the University of Craiova, series: Philology, English, vol 2, 2012, pp.75-85 10 p

John Ruskin, the leading personality of the Victorian culture (writer, art critic and patron, painter and prominent social thinker) tests his skills in approaching his own life in Praeterita, an incomplete autobiography published between 1881-1886 in separate numbers, after which year his mental illness prevented him from writing. This piece of work is an astonishing account of revelation, and Ruskin himself avows that, just like Mill’s writing of the same kind, his autobiography is an intellectual history, with an obvious personal touch and consists in a series of juxtaposed moments of vision. The aim of this article is to present and emphasize the importance of some of these “details” in Ruskin’s life, as perceived and described by the author himself.

2011

8. VICTOR OLARU, Hero Worship ” with Thomas Carlyle in the Prophetic Decade, in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology,English,Year XII, Nr.1, 2011 pp.60-68

After the publication of Chartism (1839) and Hero and Hero Worship (1840), Carlyle got interested in the social issues together with the deepening of the economic crisis and “hero worship” became a dominant theme in all his later writings. For him the “hero” may appear in a variety of roles, mentioned in Hero and Hero Worship: the divinity, the prophet, the poet, the priest, the man of letters and the king. His concern with the social problems of his time is put

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forward in Past and Present(1843), a work that approaches the issues of unemployment, emigration, education, and the principle of cooperation, expressing at the same time his moral interest in the future of British society. Book 2 of Past and Present, The Ancient Monk, a description of life in the Abbey of Bury St. Edmonds in the twelfth century, is actually an attack on the 19th century social crisis in England, Infected by individualism, a writing in which the theme of “hero worship” appears again in the person of Abbot Samson. The author’s solution to this crisis is the emergence of a new, morally responsible working aristocracy arising from the new middle class. This was Carlyle’s message to his readers at the peak of his prophetic career. But the theme of “hero worship”is also approached in his subsequent writings like Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1845). Carlyle’s ideas are also present in the literary field, especially in the works of Dickens, Elisabeth Gaskell and Charles Kingley.

2009

9. VICTOR OLARU, Thomas Carlyle, the Prophet of His Age in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English, Year X, No.2, 2009, pp.180-188 .

In this paper the author’s intention is to emphasize the impact that Carlyle’s ideas had on the intelligentsia of his age, as well as his prophetic role in the English society of the time. His audience was formed of the educated classes, famous novelists: Thackeray, Dickens, Elisabeth Gaskell, poets:Browning, Tennyson,Edward Fitzgerald, journalists: Harriet Martineau, John Sterling, public figures like Charles Kingsley and Thomas Arnold, prominent political refugees from the Continent like Giuseppe Mazzini and Godefroi Cavaignat. After mentioning the implications of the term “prophet”: an outsider, a moralist, a proclaimer, a messenger, not primarily a thinker, the author identifies Carlyle’s prophetic messages: the German Romanticism, the world of ideas of the Old Testament (the world of the prophets), a new kind of faith, never very precisely defined, an amalgam of German Idealism and a system of values derived from the Old Testament. Moreover, Carlyle was a preacher of social sin and salvation, and he launched the idea that came to be widely known as “The Condition of England Question”. The author concludes that his importance lies mainly in two things: over and over again he was the first to ask the questions which soon became the general questions of the age. At the same

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time he had the strongest formative influence on the most talented of his younger contemporaries. These are the reasons for which he may be considered “the prophet of his age”.

2008

10. VICTOR OLARU, Christina Rossetti,s Goblin Market:Two Feminist readings, in Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Ştiinţe Filologice, Limbi străine aplicate, Anul IV, Nr.1-2, 2008: pp.167-185.

Christina Rossetti s "Goblin Market" offers a wide range of interpretations from different points of view and perspectives. Whereas the readings in this first put widely concern what has been termed "Anglo-American" feminist theory, in the second part of this paper we focused on reading "Goblin Market" as an expression of "ecriture feminine".The poem was discussed during the seminars with seven! groups of students. So we tried to offer them two different, but equally interesting feminist perspectives of, probably, the best poem of this amazing Victorian woman poet.

11. VICTOR OLARU, Translating Literature into Visual: The Frankenstein Films in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English, Year IX, No.2, 2008 ,..pp. 204-219

In the movie world, it is generally accepted the idea that scripts adapted after literary works do not necessarily turn into great films. The author considers that this opinion can be fully supported by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which traveled all this thorny way from hand written page to celluloid. Having a careful look at the Frankenstein filmography, one could draw the conclusion that no film really managed to correctly seize the format and the spirit of the original. The literary techniques used in the book, from concentric stories to multiple flashbacks made it necessary for the script writers to draw up their own versions, using only fragments or key-ideas from the literary work.

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2007

12. VICTOR OLARU, Criticism as an Individual Activity: The Approach through Reading, in.Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English,Year VIII, No.1, 2007 ,. pp.114-132

The author’s concern in this paper is primarily with the reading of literary texts. In the beginning we referred to a crisis of confidence in that current of literary criticism that saw the work of art as an object. Another theme was to bring to critical attention a neglected element, namely story, which takes us into our very apprehension of the novel. In connection to this issue, we referred to some important moments in three English novels (Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Austen’s Emma), attempting to show the extent and repercussions of this element in our reading of them, and the contribution that story can make to our understanding of fiction.

2006

13. VICTOR OLARU, Epiphany and Browning: Character Made Manifest.in .Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English,Year VII, No.1-2, 2006,pp.... 65-87

When discussing epiphanies from the writings of Robert Browning (or John Ruskin, or George Eliot), we should bear in mind real differences in perspective between James Joyce and a dissenting English Victorian like Browning. Still, it is worth asking what sort of epiphany might have meant to a mid-century figure like him. Epiphany is where you find it: and in Browning's poetry you find it everywhere. This paper is an attempt to account for the above-mentioned assertion with examples from “Men and Women”, “My Star”, “Transcendentalism: A Poem in Twelve Books”.

14. VICTOR OLARU, Economic Aspects in Dickens’ Great Expectations, in Proceedings of 3rd International Scientific Conference ECO-TREND, 2006 „Economics and Globalization”, Session 6- HUMANITIES, November 24-25 , 2006, Targu-Jiu,Romania/ Lucia Popa-Paliu- Craiova: Universitaria 2007, pp.245-259, ISBN (10) 973-742-321-0; ISBN (13) 978-973-742- 321-1.

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The link between 19th century economics in England and literature is clearly illustrated in Dickens' treatment of his female characters. We chose for exemplification one of his most refined and mature novels Great Expectations, analyzing the relationship of the triangle Pip, Miss Havisham, Estella, the way in which the first two treat Estella from the perspective of economics. For instance, by linking sexuality and economics. Great Expectations constructs Pip's and Estella's relationship by means of these issues. According to Ross Dabney, in Love and Property in the Novels of Dickens, Pip's relationship with Estella is not something between two persons, concerning itself with what the two persons are; it is concerned with impersonal things.

2005

15. VICTOR OLARU, The Split Personality in"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English,Year VI, No.1, 2005, pp.146-163

R.L.Stevenson’s imagination and moral sensibility were obviously influenced by the vision of good and evil that are in continuous struggle in man’s nature, and by the obsession of dual personality. In the article the author .discusses the following aspects: the circumstances that contributed to the writing of this book: the writer’s dreams and nightmares, his illness that turned him into an opium consumer-, he influence of the romantic British and American authors, his readings on religious topics, etc. At same the time, one analyzes the way in which the Scottish novelist approaches the topic of good and evil, and the manner in which literary critics interpreted this novella, its impact on Stevenson’s fellow-writers, and on European and world fiction.

16. VICTOR OLARU, “The Gothic as Part of Neo-Romanticism: Stevenson’s Short Stories”, in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English, Year VI, No.2, 2005,pp 99-111

R.L. Stevenson, a writer associated to the Neo-Romantic generation showed total discontent with the limited canons and aspirations of Victorian society. This is the reason for which in his writings he looks back to the past, an extremely rich source of inspiration for such a sentimental nature as his. Firstly, Stevenson recreates in a modern dimension the story of adventure from its very beginning. This important advance, that proves to be a turning point in the author’s creation,

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had been refined by the influence of Romanticism. The author points out that his protagonists are not only extraordinary characters that act in extraordinary situations, but also interesting persons in the psychological evolution of conscience, as one may notice after a careful reading of his short stories: Thrawn Janet, The Body Snatcher, The Pavilion of the Links, The Merry Men and Markheim.

2004

17. OLARU VICTOR, The Literature about Dracula: The Roots of an Iconic Figure, pp.129-139. in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English, Year V, No.1, 2004, pp.129- 139.

In this article the author has in view the analysis of literary works whose central character is the Romanian prince Vlad Tepes, as well as the Dracula accounts in the pre-modern period. In literary circles, the author mentions the first German stories about Dracula, then the Russian ones (Efrosin, the supposed author of the first Dracula story), as well as the Gothic trend initiated by Bram Stoker with his famous novel Dracula. It is also emphasized that Romanian folklore is by far the most varied and complex information source, whereas the Western tradition is very well represented by the works of the American scholars Radu Florescu, Raymond T. McNally and Kurt.W.Treptow.

18. OLARU VICTOR, The Alchemist in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,.pp.174-183 in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English, Year V, No.2, 2004,

There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Mary Shelley was well acquainted with the occultism of Godwin. Let us recall that Mary had her father's book Lives of the Necromancers printed in 1834, two years before Godwin's death, and probably at her own expense, being a book she greatly admired, even though it was judged in its day offensive to public taste and religion. Godwin probably cultivated and shared his interest in the occult with Mary from her childhood, and the various chapters of Godwin's book. Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, the Rosicrucians, Faustus, and Raymond Lully were frequently discussed at Skinner

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Street, and later at Godwin's home on The Strand. In fact. Godwin's heroes are those fallen angels that Victor Frankenstein eventually abandons. The author of this paper presents the portraits of these alchemists and emphasizes the way they are represented in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

2002

19. OLARU VICTOR, Mary Shelley’Frankenstein, and the Spectacle of Masculinity in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English, Year III, No.1, 2002, ...pp. 121-134

This paper is a modern inter-textual approach of Mary Shelley’s famous writing Frankenstein-a text often read as Percy’s critical portrait- a point of view supported by Weekes’ representation. In Frankenstein, Medusa’s laughter may produce a new mythology concentrating not on the spectacle of feminine monstrosity, but on the extravagant fantasies of a deficient masculinity. One may support that reading the spectacle of Frankenstein’s masculinity, Medusa’s story can be reversed as her laughter would enliven the inanimate male bodies in the novel in order to reveal the conditions of their articulations.

2001

20. VICTOR OLARU, The Artificial Man , in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English, Year II, No. 1, 2001, pp.156-167.

The theme of the creation of man was not new to Mary Shelley having ancient origins: the myth of Prometheus, that of Pygmalion, or the older Hebrew legends of the Golem. Our interest in this paper was to explore some of the important eighteenth - and early nineteenth - century discoveries in science and alchemy that were probably known to Mary Shelley, and that coalesced in her creation of the monster. We also attempted to examine the extent to which Frankenstein can genuinely claim to have a scientific foundation in line with the discoveries of the early nineteenth century, and to realize whether this novel can legitimately be described as a genuine work of science fiction, or whether it belongs to a more occult tradition. We concluded

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that in certain respects, the Hebrew Golem was similar to Mary Shelley’s conception regarding Frankenstein monster. It is about an alter ego or a gigantic projection of its creator. In many Golem versions as well, the latter was forced to take revenge on its master; the difference lies in the fact that, unlike the monster, the Golem could be easily destroyed.

II.4.2. in periodicals

1. Gerard Manley Hopkins, un important precursor al poeziei moderne, in RAMURI, dec.2013, p.10

2. Lady Mary Wroth, prima prozatoare britanica, , in RAMURI, Nr.1, ianuarie, 2009., p..20

3. Literatura si istorie la Thomas Babington Macaulay, in RAMURI, Nr.4, aprilie, 2007., p. 20

4. Motive ale poeziei victoriene, in RAMURI, Nr.7-8, 2007, p.22

5. Dizidenti victorieni, in RAMURI, Nr. 12, decembrie, 2006, p.17 www.revistaramuri.ro/contact.php www.revistaramuri.ro/articole.php revistaramuri.ro/

II.5. Texts in the course of being published

1. Victor Olaru, Literary “anomalies” in Victorian fiction, in The 13th International Conference - Language, Literature, and Cultural Policies - "Error in Context, Context of Error", The Department of English, American and German Studies of the University of Craiova, Romania, The English Department of the University of Burgundy, France, November 21- 23, 2014

Whenever we read a novel, we certainly get very interested in the story and wonder how it may end, but sometimes we may be disappointed with the denouement, which is not what we actually

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expected, contrary to the logical development of the narrative, and looking rather anomalous. Referring to Victorian fiction, some writings seem to be “flawed” by the authors’ desire to impose a happy ending-Dickens, Hardy and above all Thackeray- whereas some elements of the story may impose a quite different outcome. Consequently, one may ask questions of the type: Did Becky Sharp at the end of Vanity Fair kill Joseph Sedley, Amelia’s brother? How does Abel Magwitch, Pip’s benefactor in Dickens’s Great Expectations, swim to shore with a great iron on his leg? Is the hero of George Eliot's Middlemarch illegitimate? Why does Jane Eyre give in to an unexpected outburst of superstition? Such a literary “anomaly” is illustrated by the case of Heathcliff from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (Did he actually kill Hindley Earnshaw?) , the paper emphasizing the idea that readers may provide their own answers by making use of the close reading approach (in literary criticism, the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text).

2. Victor Olaru, Aspects of Fluctuating Doubt in Tennyson's Poetry -The 12-th international conference Language, Literature, and Cultural Policies - "Reality: An Open Window to Doubt", Craiova, October 3-5, 2013.

Alfred Tennyson, the poetic giant of Victorian England displays in his work different aspects of fluctuating doubt. By discussing some of poems in which the words “doubt” and “faith” occur frequently , this paper tried to emphasize what kind of doubts tormented the poet , what steps he took in reaching a lasting kind of faith and what conclusions he might have reached. Tennyson scholars generally agree that a number of poems have been recognized as “Doubt and Faith” poems. Some of them have been considered here; famous pieces (“In Memoriam”,” Crossing the Bar”), as well as less-known ones ("The Ancient Sage", "The Two Voices," and "Vastness.").

II.6. English literary criticism

II.6.1. Books: The Foundations of English Criticism, Craiova, Editura Universitaria, (2004), pp.161, ISBN 978-973-742-599-7

II.6.1.a. Introduction

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Starting from the idea that literary criticism is the application of thought to the process of writing, we thought it necessary to offer our readers/students an introduction to the field from a historical perspective. Thus these pages present the history of British literary criticism dating back to the Classical and Renaissance Periods, all the way up through to the mid-Twentieth Century (1914-1951). It covers the most notable English critics for each period: Philip Sydney, John Dryden, William Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, Henry James, T.S. Eliot, D.H.Lawrence, F.R. Leavis, I.A.Richards, William Empson.

II.6.1.b. From the Middle Ages to the High Renaissance (1350-1660): the beginnings of English Criticism

In this section, it is emphasized that Philip Sidney holds a very important place among the English critics, His essay The Defence of Poesie, is now considered one of the most important early works of literary criticism to be found in the English language. One of the themes of the Apology is the insufficiency of simply presenting virtue as an idea; the poet is needed so that men will be moved to virtuous action. From Sidney, this view of the virtuousness of poetic imagination can be connected directly with future poets and literary figures, particularly Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth.

Ben Jonson is also among the best-known writers and theorists of English Renaissance literature, highly learned in the classics, profoundly influencing the Augustan age through his emphasis on the precepts of Horace, Aristotle, and other classical Greek and Latin thinkers. While he is now remembered primarily for his satirical comedies, he also distinguished himself as a poet, preeminent writer of masques, erudite defender of his work, and the originator of English literary criticism. Jonson’s admiration and adoration of the classics did not shut the windows of his own mind. He admired the ancients for what they were worth. At the same time he did not love and admire to any degree less the great English authors like Shakespeare, Spenser, Bacon, Marlowe, Sidney, Donne and others. Thus we see that Jonson’s neo-classical creed did not blind him to the purely English genius and originality of the Elizabethan authors. He was not to any degree blind to the glories of English literature.

II.6.1.c. The Age of Reason (1660-1789): the critic in authority.

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John Dryden is rightly considered as “the father of English Criticism”. He dominated literary life in England during the last four decades of the seventeenth century. By deliberately and comprehensively refining language, Dryden developed an expressive, universal diction which had had a profound impact on the evolution of speech and writing in the English-speaking world. He was the first to teach the English people to determine the merit of composition upon principles. With Dryden, a new era of criticism began. Before Dryden, there were only occasional utterances on the critical art. (E.g. Ben Jonson and Philip Sidney) Though Dryden’s criticism was of scattered nature, he paid attention to almost all literary forms and expressed his views on them. Except An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden wrote no formal treatise on criticism. His critical views are found mostly in the prefaces to his poetical works or to those of others. According to Dryden, a critic has to understand that a writer writes to his own age and people of which he himself is a product. He advocates a close study of the ancient models not to imitate them blindly as a thorough going neo-classicist would do but to recapture their magic to treat them as a torch to enlighten our own passage. It is the spirit of the classics that matters more than their rules. Yet these rules are not without their value, for without rules, there can be no art. Besides invention (the disposition of a work), there are two other parts of a work – design (or arrangement) and expression. Dryden mentions the appropriate rules laid down by Aristotle. But it is not the observance of rules that makes a work great but its capacity to delight and transport. It is not the business of criticism to detect petty faults but to discover those great beauties that make it immortal.

In the section it is also examined the evolution of Alexander Pope from a literary figure to a timeless artist whose works still provide insight into social and political interactions. One of his earlier masterpieces Essay on Man was written in the way of Horace’s Ars Poetica where Pope identifies the original sin of man as pride and seizes ethic principals based on hierarchical universe. It is explored Alexander Pope's famous poem An Essay on Criticism. In an attempt to understand the importance, influence and significance of the work, we looked at the literary and philosophical context of the poem.

Another author mentioned here is Samuel Johnson. In his works, especially in Lives of the Poets series, he describes various features of excellent writing. He believed that the best poetry relied

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on contemporary language, and he disliked the use of decorative or purposefully archaic language. He was suspicious of the poetic language used by Milton, whose blank verse he believed would inspire many bad imitations. Also, Johnson opposed the poetic language of his contemporary Thomas Gray. His greatest complaint was that obscure allusions found in works like Milton's Lycidas were overused; he preferred poetry that could be easily read and understood. In addition to his views on language, Johnson believed that a good poem incorporated new and unique imagery. As well as direct literary criticism, Johnson emphasised the need to establish a text that accurately reflects what an author wrote. Shakespeare's plays, in particular, had multiple editions, each of which containing errors caused by the printing process. This problem was compounded by careless editors who thought difficult words to be incorrect, and changed them in later editions. Johnson believed that an editor should not alter the text in such a way.

II.6.1.d. The Romantic Age (1790-1830): the critic as explorer

English literary criticism of the Romantic era is most closely associated with the writings of William Wordsworth in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria (1817). Modern critics disagree on whether the work of Wordsworth and Coleridge constituted a major break with the criticism of their predecessors or if it should more properly be characterized as a continuation of the aesthetic theories of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German and English writers. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s essay A Defence of Poetry contains the poet's famous claim that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world", whereas William Hazlitt’s The Spirit of the Age is a sequence of terse commentaries on contemporary writers and thinkers. Current scholarly work on Romantic literary theory often suggests that many of the Romantic critics were far ahead of their time, anticipating the work of various late twentieth-century thinkers. For instance, Kathleen M. Wheeler states that “Coleridge's concept of polarity, of opposition, is in many ways anticipatory of Derrida's concept of difference…” (Sources, Processes and Methods in Coleridge's 'Biographia Literaria', (Amazon, 2010, p.15)

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II.6.1.e. The Victorian Age (1830-1914): the critic against society

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) who profoundly influenced the shape of nineteenth century British thought and political discourse, also wrote a few remarkable literary critical essays, but he rather raised questions about the relationship of imaginative writing to the life of society, than discussed literary works directly. Mill wrote on Coleridge as a philosopher. In his well-known essays of 1838 and 1840 on Bentham and Coleridge, which were published in the London and Westminster Review. Mill suggested that Bentham and Coleridge were “the two great seminal minds of England in their age” and used each essay to show their strengths and weaknesses, implying that a more complete philosophical position remained open for articulation.

Matthew Arnold is famous for introducing a methodology of literary criticism somewhere between the historicist approach common to many critics at the time and the personal essay; he often moved quickly and easily from literary subjects to political and social issues. His Essays in Criticism (1865, 1888), remains a significant influence on critics to this day. He considered the most important criteria used to judge the value of a poem were "high truth" and "high seriousness". By this standard, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales did not merit Arnold's approval. Further, Arnold thought the works that had been proven to possess both "high truth" and "high seriousness", such as those of Shakespeare and Milton, could be used as a basis of comparison to determine the merit of other works of poetry. He also sought for literary criticism to remain disinterested, and said that the appreciation should be of "the object as in itself it really is."

Beyond his fiction, Henry James was one of the more important literary critics in the history of the novel. In his classic essay The Art of Fiction (1884), he argued against rigid proscriptions on the novelist's choice of subject and method of treatment. He maintained that the widest possible freedom in content and approach would help ensure narrative fiction's continued vitality. James wrote many valuable critical articles on other novelists; typical is his book-length study of Nathaniel Hawthorne, which has been the subject of critical debate. In his The School of Hawthorne (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, p.137.), Richard Brodhead has suggested that the study was emblematic of James's struggle with Hawthorne's influence, and constituted an effort to place the elder writer "at a disadvantage." In his essay "Anxiety of

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Audience: Economies of Readership in James's Hawthorne." The Henry James Review 34, no. 1 (2013): 1-2, Gordon Fraser, meanwhile, has suggested that the study was part of a more commercial effort by James to introduce himself to British readers as Hawthorne's natural successor.

II.6.1.f. The Twentieth Century (1914-present day): the responsibility of the critical function .

T.S. Eliot made significant contributions to the field of literary criticism, strongly influencing the school of New Criticism. While somewhat self-deprecating and minimising of his work—he once said his criticism was merely a "by-product" of his "private poetry-workshop"—Eliot is considered by some to be one of the greatest literary critics of the twentieth century.

In his critical essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent", Eliot argues that art must be understood not in a vacuum, but in the context of previous pieces of art. This essay was an important influence over the New Criticism by introducing the idea that the value of a work of art must be viewed in the context of the artist's previous works, a "simultaneous order" of works (i.e., "tradition"). Eliot himself employed this concept on many of his works, especially on his long-poem The Waste Land. Also important to New Criticism was the idea—as articulated in Eliot's essay "Hamlet and His Problems"—of an "objective correlative", which posits a connection among the words of the text and events, states of mind, and experiences. This notion concedes that a poem means what it says, but suggests that there can be a non-subjective judgment based on different readers' different—but perhaps corollary—interpretations of a work.

D.H. Lawrence’s criticism of other authors often provides insight into his own thinking and writing. Of particular note is his Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays. In Studies in Classic American Literature Lawrence's responses to writers like Walt Whitman, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe also shed light on his craft.

F.R.Leavis proponents claimed that he introduced a "seriousness" into English studies, and some English and American university departments were shaped very much by Leavis’s example and ideas. Leavis appeared to possess a very clear idea of literary criticism and he was well known

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for his decisive and often provocative, and idiosyncratic, judgments. Leavis insisted that valuation was the principal concern of criticism, and that it must ensure that English literature should be a living reality operating as an informing spirit in society, and that criticism should involve the shaping of contemporary sensibility. Though his achievements as a critic of fiction were impressive, Leavis is often viewed as having been a better critic of poetry than of the novel. As a critic of the novel, Leavis’s main creed stated that great novelists show an intense moral interest in life, and that this moral interest determines the nature of their form in fiction. Authors within this "tradition" were all characterised by a serious or responsible attitude to the moral complexity of life and included Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and D. H. Lawrence, but excluded Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens. In The Great Tradition Leavis attempted to set out his conception of the proper relation between form/composition and moral interest/art and life. This proved to be a contentious issue in the critical world, as Leavis refused to separate art from life, or the aesthetic or formal from the moral. He insisted that the great novelist’s preoccupation with form was a matter of responsibility towards a rich moral interest, and that works of art with a limited formal concern would always be of lesser quality.

I.A. Richards is often labelled as the father of the New Criticism, largely because of the influence of his first two books of critical theory, The Principles of Literary Criticism and of Practical Criticism. Principles was a major critical breakthrough, offering thirty-five insightful chapters regarding various topics relevant to literary criticism, including: form, value, rhythm, coenesthesia, literary infectiousness, allusiveness, divergent readings, and belief. His next book, Practical Criticism, was just as influential as an empirical study of inferior literary response. Richards removed authorial and contextual information from thirteen poems, including one by Longfellow and four by decidedly marginal poets. This approach had a startling impact at the time in demonstrating the depth and variety of misreadings to be expected of otherwise intelligent college students as well as the population at large. I.A. Richards thought literary criticism was too abstract and ‘impressionistic’. He wanted to make literary criticism have precision like a science. Richards also wanted to examine the psychological process of writing and reading poetry.

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William Empson is today best known for his literary criticism, and in particular his analysis of the use of language in poetical works: his own poems are arguably undervalued, although they were admired by and influenced English poets in the 1950s. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was an acquaintance at Cambridge, but Empson consistently denied any previous or direct influence on his work. Empson's best-known work is the book Seven Types of Ambiguity, which, together with Some Versions of Pastoral and The Structure of Complex Words, mines the astonishing riches of linguistic ambiguity in English poetic literature. Empson's studies uncover layer upon layer of irony, suggestion and argumentation in various literary works, applying a technique of textual criticism so influential that often Empson's contributions to certain domains of literary scholarship remain significant, though they may no longer be recognized as his. The universal recognition of the difficulty and complexity (indeed, ambiguity) of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 94" ("They that have power ..."), for instance, is traceable to Empson's analysis in Some Versions of Pastoral. Empson's study of "Sonnet 94" goes some way towards explaining the high esteem in which the sonnet is now held (often being reckoned as among the finest sonnets), as well as the technique of criticism and interpretation that has thus reckoned it.

II.6.2. Articles:

1. Victor Olaru, Criticism as an Individual Activity: The Approach through Reading, pp.114- 132, in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English,Year VIII, No.1, 2007

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II.7. English civilization

II.7.1. Books:

Civilization Landmarks of Britain ( Craioava, Universitaria Printing House, 2008 ) 314 pages, ISBN 978-973-742-598-0), structured in three chapters: Geography, History, Culture, is meant to be a useful cultural tool for those interested in the subject, as well as a starting point and stimulating element for further readings and research in the field. We found it necessary the introduction of a supplementary section, called Pages from the History of England, meant to be a very useful tool in seminar work with the students in order to raise their interest for the history and culture of England. (p.11).

We consider that the study of the origin of English place-names, of the strata that lay at their basis (Celtic, Latin, Scandinavian, French) offers interesting information about England’s history, geography and archeology, about the Anglo-Saxon forefathers of today’s population, their customs, the way they worked and jollied, or even about the nature surrounding them . (Chapters I, II, III). I believe that such an approach may be considered as a credible contribution to the field of English civilization, as revealed by the reviews of my doctoral dissertation, published under the title of “Topomimie engleza si romana- Studiu contrastive” (English and Romanian Toponymy. A Contrastive Study”, Craiova, Editura Scrisul Romanesc, 1998, pp.270, ISBN 973-38-0247-6.

Thus, the reputed philologist and literary critic, Professor Ovidiu Ghidirmic remarks that: ”Considered for a time a discipline subordonated to geography, history, in a word to the civilization of the respective country, toponymy has become a stand-alone field, which requires by its complex nature, multidisciplinary research. The toponymyc study implies an approach from multiple and complementary perspectives, and a constant return to auxiliary fields: geography, history, natural science, ethnology, sociology” (Ovidiu Ghidirmic, Linguistic comparatism and interdisciplinary research”, review, Ramuri, nr.7-8, 1999,p.24).

The structure of the book is the following:

Foreword

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Chapter I .GEOGRAPHY 1. THE FACE OF BRITAIN 1. Generalities; 1.1 Islands and Continent; 1.2 The Climate; 1.3 The British Peoples

2. The Regions; 2.1 Albion; 2.2 Wessex: Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Berkshire.

2.3 The English Riviera: Devon, Cornwall, Somerset; 2.4 Wales; 2.5 The Midlands

2.6 An English Holland; 2.7 The Country of Wool; 2.8 The Cotton Towns and the Lake District

2.9 Scotland; 2.10 Northern Ireland; 2.11 London; 3. Place Names in England; 3.1 Names of Celtic Origin; 3.2 Names of Anglo-Saxon Origin

3.3 Names of Scandinavian Origin; 3.4 Roman Names; 3.5 Norman Names

Chapter II HISTORY THE LEGACY OF THE PAST 1. The Roman Conquest and its Permanent Legacy. 55 B.C.-A.D.410

2. The Saxon Settlement and the Establishment of Christianity. 410 - 800 3. England United. The Triumph of the House of Wessex. 800 – 978 4. Downfall of Saxon England. Danes and Normans. 978-1066 5. Mediaeval England. The Normans and Angevins. 1066 – 1327 6. The Breakdown of Mediaeval England. 1327-1485 7. The Building of Modern England The Early Tudors. 1485- 1558 8. The Birth Pangs of Representative Government. 1558- 1628 9. The Crisis of English History. Civil War, Restoration, Revolution. 1628-1688 10. Political Stability and Economic Revolution. 1688- 1782 11. Reform and Reaction. The Napoleonic Wars. 1782- 1822 12. The Second Great Crisis. The Age of Reform. 1822-1848 13. The Era of British Supremacy. The Victorian Age. 1848- 1914 14. The First Great Struggle for Freedom and its Aftermath. 1914-1939 15. The Second Great Struggle for Freedom and its Consequences. 1939- 1952

Chapter III CULTURE 1. PHILOSOPHY; 1.1 The Middle-Ages; 1.2 The Sixteenth Century 1.3. The Seventeenth Century; 1.4 The Eighteenth Century; 1.5 Utilitarianism and after; 1.6 The Nineteenth Century

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2 . THEOLOGY 3. SCIENCE 4 THE FINE ARTS 4.1 Architecture; 4.1.1 Origins.; 4.1.2 Norman architecture.; 4.1.3 The Gothic style; 4.1.4 The Tudor style; 4.1.5 The Renaissance ; 4.1.6 Queen Anne style; 4.1.7 The Georgian style; 4.1.8 Victorian architecture; 4.2 Painting and Engraving; 4.2.1 Origins; 4.2.2 The National Awakening; 4.2.3 The Great Generation; 4.2.4 Portrait and Landscape; 4.2.5 A Visionary; 4.2.6 From Turner to Ruskin; 4.2.7. The Preraphaelites; 4.2.8. The Beardsley age. 4.3. Sculpture; 4.4. Arts and Crafts; 4.4.1 Fine Arts and Arts and Crafts; 4.4.2. Cabinet making. 4.4.3. Stained glass, ceramics and porcelain; 4.5. Music.

Chapter IV - PAGES FROM THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND

1. The Iberians; 2. The Limits of Latinization; 3. The English Conquest; 4. The Norman Conquest 5.Ivanhoe; 6. The Hundred Years' War; 7. The Bourgeois Revolution (1642- 1646).Cromwell; 8. Fundamental Issues in the English Revolution; 9. Maiden Speech in the House of Lords; 10. The Prisoners of Chillon; 11. The Making of a Chartist; 12. The Man of Destiny.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

II. 7.2. Course books.

Elements of English Civilization ( The Reproduction Services of the University of Craiova, 2001 )-course of English civilization for students.

II.7.3. Dictionaries

A short Dictionary of English Place-Names ( Craiova, Editura Universitaria, 1999) pp.167, ISBN 973-9271-83-1

CONTENTS:

Introduction.; Discovering place-names; A variety of meaning; Folk information; Habitation information; A variety of sources: The Celts; The Romans; The Anglo-Saxons; The Scandinavians; The Norman French; Abreviations of County Names.

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Dictionary; Some Elements of English Place Names; Works Consulted; Suggested Further Reading

II.7.4. Studies in academic journals

1.Victor Olaru, English Place-Names of French Origin, in Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice, Lingvistica, Anul XXVIII, Nr.1-2, pp. 327-334, 2006, EUC, Craiova, URIH-indexed

The number of terms of French origin in the English toponymic system is significantly smaller in comparison with the vast number of place names of English origin, some being transferred directly form the names of dentical origin in France,for example,Beamond (English), Beaumont (French), respectively, etc. Many French toponyms in England have, as a first element the word bel or beau (“beautiful”), others refer to a certain natural or artificial feature. The author concludes that most English toponyms of French origin appeared after the Norman Conquest of 1066, having as a first or second element an antroponym of French origin.

WEB PAGE: http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/activ_st/lingvistica.htm

TITLE: Annals of the University of Craiova – Series Philology, Linguistics, Class: B+

ERIH List: Linguistics, Functional BDI links: http://www.fabula.org/actualites/article41514.php http://journals.indexcopernicus.com/karta.php?action=masterlist&id=5902

2.. Victor OLARU, Place-Names Illustrating Social and Legal Customs, in Studii si cercetari de Onomastica si Lexicologie (SCOL), Anul I, Nr.1-2/2008, pp..201-209.,

The paper refers to that category of English place names which illustrate customs specific to different social classes and to legal practice in England. In most cases, these place names contain as first element a word from Old English or from Old Scandinavian. There are discussed place names which reflect the early society divisions: Kingston (OE king + tun), frequently encountered in many districts in a range of variants, Quainton (OE cwen + tun}, Fingl&sham

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(OE fengel + ham), Aldermanbury (OE alderman], Charlton (OE churl], ChildwalliOE did). As far as legal practice is concerned, the author mentions names of the type: Damerham (OEdoniere), Tollerton (OEtollere), Shrewton (OEgerefa), etc. To a large extent, these names were mentioned in writing after the Norman Conquest in 1066.

cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/...scol.../studii_cercetari_1995-2003.pdf

II.8. Articles on British, Irish and American Postmodernist literature published in periodicals

II.8.1.Theoretical background

A brief theoretical approach to the concepts of displacement and identity have provided the conceptual support of our approach of postmodernist British and American writers. We believe that our future research projects in this field will also be best highlighted through these theories.

Displacement and identity

The necessary condition to belong somewhere is to be fixed in space and time and, in its literal and figurative meaning, home is the fixing element that shapes one's sense of identity and belonging. When one's existence is within the fixity of home, where home is metaphorically used for everything that refers to stability and the natural order, the individual's identity is not a problem of debate. But when the fixity of home is challenged, one's identity in terms of that matter is questioned and a sense of displacement at identity level becomes the case.

In literary and cultural studies, the concept of displacement brings into light states of dislocation from the centre, from all that can be defined as being in place. The critical approach to this concept will serve as the basis for future projects by offering a perspective on two of the most important themes of contemporary social discourse: identity and displacement connotative of “a decisive shift in humanity's understanding of itself“, as Marc Krupnick states, when he refers to the postmodern discourse of displacement (Krupnick 1953:15).

The ubiquity of displacement is evident in this short analysis, the concept embracing different forms. Estrangement, alienation, exile, marginalization, even death, are themes that occur often

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in postmodernist literature. Writing a history of the theoretical approach to the concept of displacement and its metaphorical representations is a daunting and challenging task, with a long trajectory that can be traced from Biblical times straight to the present, when it has become one of the ubiquitous terms in the contemporary discourse.

The postmodern discourse of displacement is highlighted in Freud's: Interpretation of Dreams, where it stands for a technical word in psychoanalysis. The concept of displacement is subsequently taken over by some other critics and philosophers, such as Stuart Hall, who associates it with the act of translating (Hall 2005: 32), or Derrida, who attempts to displace the metaphysics of presence by undoing its etymological sense (Krupnik 1983:67). Said's insight into the concept of exile (Said 2001: 173) will also provide an outstanding theoretical support in future research projects. Said describes displacement from a postcolonial perspective, while Zygmunt Bauman and Caren Kaplan consider the concept in relation to travelling experiences, aiming at analyzing 'historical constructs of modern displacement: leisure travel, exploration, expatriation, exile, homelessness, and immigration to name a few.' (Kaplan 1996:3).

Bettina Knapp's study on Exile and the Writer provides representations of displacement in relation to the experience of exile, Knapp distinguishing between esoteric and exoteric experiences in relation to the concept. The approach of marginal will also be provided by works belonging to Julia Kristeva and Ignace Feuerlicht.

Views belonging to 'Key Thinkers on Space and Place' (Hubbard and Kitchin 2011) serve as the overall theoretical support necessary for doctoral candidates to identify and analyze the concepts of identity and displacement, according to their representations at textual and contextual levels. Theories belonging to Auge, Bachelard, Bauman, Derrida, Foucault, Freud, and Tuan, to name a few, will ensure a more cohesive understanding of the power of space to enable or disable the individual, and emphasize the power of space and place in one's identity re-/construction.

II.8.2. Articles on Postmodernist British and Irish authors

In the following lines, we have made a selection of some outstanding British and Irish authors with a brief description of the way they were approached.The complete list is to be found in

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section IV.1.4. of the present thesis: Articles on British, Iriah and American Postmodernist literature published in periodicals.

1. Carol Ann Duffy, poet, playwright and freelance writer (b. on 23 December 1955 in Glasgow) is one of the most significant names in contemporary British poetry, her work being read and enjoyed equally by critics, academics and lay readers. Duffy’s themes include language and the representation of reality; the construction of the self; gender issues; contemporary culture; and many different forms of alienation, oppression and social inequality. Her work has been linked to postmodernism and poststructuralism, but this is a thematic influence rather than a stylistic one: consequently, there is an interesting contrast between the postmodern content and the conservative forms.

2. Fleur Adcock (born 10 February 1934) is a New Zealand poet and editor, of English and Northern Irish ancestry, who has lived much of her life in England. Her poetry has received numerous awards, many of them from her native New Zealand, and she won a Cholmondeley Award in 1976. She was awarded an OBE in 1996. Adcock's poetry is typically concerned with themes of place, human relationships and everyday activities, but frequently with a dark twist given to the mundane events she writes about. Formerly, her early work was influenced by her training as a classicist but her more recent work is looser in structure and more concerned with the world of the unconscious mind.

3. Liz Lochhead (born 26 December 1947) is a Scottish poet and dramatist. She was Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University (1986-7) and Writer in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. Her first collection of poems, Memo for Spring, was published in 1972 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Her poetry has been published in a number of collections including Penguin Modern Poets 4 (1995). Liz Lochhead’s work frequently focuses on girlhood, motherhood, the female side of a relationship. She is also fascinated by interstices, and points of connection between past and present. She is very much a Scottish writer, and Scotland is not an infrequent presence in her work, in one way or another.

4. Jo Shapcott was born in London, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and later won a Harkness Fellowship to Harvard. She has worked as Education Officer

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at the South Bank Centre, and for the Arts Council Literature Department. Her first collection, Electroplating the Baby (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1988) won the Commonwealth Prize, and her second, Phrase Book (Oxford, 1992) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. She was twice a winner of the National Poetry Competition. Using a precise, colloquial diction, Shapcott draws her subjects and imagery from unusual sources, including popular culture and the sciences. She excels in narrative forms, often written from a displaced, oblique but controlled point of view and employing a surreal wit with which to explore the balances of sexual, political, or human versus animal power.

5. Helen Dunmore (born 12 December 1952) is a British poet, novelist and children's writer. Educated at the University of York, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL). From her first poetry volume The Apple Fall (1983) to her novel Counting the Stars (2008), her writing has been distinguished by its rich vein of imagery depicting the natural world, food and bodily pleasures, combining poetic intensity with compelling storytelling. She also has a strong historical imagination, although, as a character in Mourning Ruby (2003) observes, ‘Sometimes we recognize history as a sensation – a smell, or a touch – before we can name it or know what it really is’.

6. Anne Stevenson (born January 3, 1933) is an American-British poet and writer. Stevenson is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including It Looks So Simple from a Distance (Poems on the Underground, 2010), Selected Poems (The Library of America, 2008), Stone Milk (Bloodaxe, 2007) Poems 1955–2005 (Bloodaxe, 2006) and A Report from the Border: New & Rescued Poems (2003). Bitter Fame, her biography of Sylvia Plath, was published by Viking/Penguin in 1989. Intersections and borders are common emblems in Stevenson’s work, though the land on which they are drawn is often mutable or shrouded in mist.

7. Ruth Fainlight (born 2 May 1931, New York City, U.S.) is a poet, short story writer, translator and librettist. She was educated in the United States and England, and studied for two years at the Birmingham and Brighton Colleges of Arts and Crafts. She was Poet in Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1985 and 1990. The hallmark of Ruth Fainlight's Poetry is its intense self-scrutiny. By focussing on life's seeming minutiae, it finds a quasi-

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religious sense of the numinous, even the mystical, within the everyday. Her wish is 'to see the matter clearly'; a brooding, restrained and cerebral sensibility measured changes in the scenes around her, subtle shifts in relationships, and heightened awareness of the natural world.

8. Elaine Feinstein (born 24 October 1930, Bootle, Lancashire) is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator. Feinstein's early poetry bears the influence of modernists such as Pound, but it wasn't until she began translating the great Russian poet, Marina Tsvataeva, that she found her own voice. ‘People have always been the centre of my concerns’, she has further observed. Her family and domestic life, her writer friends in Britain or abroad, people passing by; all are described with sympathy, if also with some scepticism. Her own Jewish cultural heritage, and the wider Jewish European experience in the twentieth century, has also informed her writings. Feinstein is particularly good at identifying the manifold ways in which male and female writers interact and inspire each other to produce art.

9. Mimi Khalvati (born 28 April 1944, Tehran, Iran) is a respected poet and poetry translator. She is furthermore the mentor and guide for dozens of emerging poets through her work as coordinator (and often course tutor) at The Poetry School. Her place on the shortlist for the esteemed T.S. Eliot Prize for The Meanest Flower (2007) provides irrefutable evidence of the high regard in which her work is held by her contemporaries and readers. Her heritage is drawn from Iran, where she was born, and England, where she grew up. Her work is notable for its dissimilarity to other prominent poets writing today; there is none of the ‘streetwise lingo’ Ben Wilkinson finds in Simon Armitage’s work (Critical Perspective, Contemporary Writers, 2008).

10. Kathleen Jessie Raine (born 14 June 1908, deceased 6 July 2003) was a British poet, critic, and scholar writing in particular on William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy. Her poetry is infused with the urge to approach the sacred through art, insisting - in 'Who are We?' - that we are "Presences of that omnipresence without end or beginning". The sacred is understood in a wide and inclusive sense, one in which there is room for Plato, Jesus, Buddha and Shiva, all alongside a visionary

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understanding of smaller things, such as the ephemeral 'Daisies of Florence' that open into an image of "her who walks through spring after spring in primavera robed".

II.8.3. Articles on Postmodernist American authors

1. Victor Olaru, Charles Simic. Portret literar, in Scrisul Romanesc nr.6, p.15 2. 2. Victor Olaru, Poeti laureati americani: Donald Hall, in Scrisul Romanesc, nr.5, p.14

3. Victor Olaru, Kay Ryan si comprimarea gandului in poezie, in SCRISUL ROMANESC, nr.4, 2009, p.19;

4. Victor Olaru, Ted Kooser, poet national american”, in Scrisul Romanesc, nr.1, 2009, p.8;

5. Victor Olaru, Billy Collins, un ‚’fenomen’’ al poeziei americane contemporane, Scrisul Romanesc, nr.2, 2008, p. 29;

6. Victor Olaru, John Ashbery-portret literar, in Scrisul Romanesc, nr.1, 2008, p. 20;

7. Victor Olaru, Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni si portretul poetic, in Scrisul Romanesc, nr.6, iunie 2013, p.20

8. Victor Olaru, In lumea lui Tony Hoagland, Presentation and translation in, Ramuri, aug.2012, p.12

9. Victor Olaru, Loc pustiu pentru W.S.Merwin, in Scrisul Romanesc, Nr.1-2, ian.-feb., 2007, p.17

10. Victor Olaru, New Writing 14, Presentation and translation, in Ramuri, mai, 2007, p.7

11.Victor Olaru, Paul Perry, Hibernare, Presentation and translation in Scrisul Romanesc, Nr. 9- 10, 2006, p.23

12..Victor Olaru, Carrie Etter: Divort, Presentation and translation in Scrisul Romanesc, Nr. 9- 10, 2006, p.22

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13. Victor Olaru, Jeff Dolven: Valsul lui Alcibiade, Presentation and translation, in Ramuri, Nr. 9, 2006, p.14

14. Victor Olaru, John Tranter-Invitatie in America, Presentation and translation in Ramuri, Nr. 9, 2006, p.17

15. Victor Olaru, Peter Scupman – poems - Presentation and Translation in Scrisul Romanesc, 1- 2, 2004, p.20

16. Victor Olaru, Glenda Cimino-poems-Presentation and Translation in Ramuri-Dec 2004, p.11

16. Victor Olaru, Jerry Murphy-poems-Presentation and Translation in Ramuri-Dec 2004, p.12

18. Victor Olaru, Adam Sorkin - "Boala Traducerii" si insanatosirea poeziei” in Ramuri, Presentation and Translation, February, 1999, p.10.

In the following lines, we have made a selection of some outstanding American authors with a brief description of the way they were approached.The complete list is to be found in section IV.1.4. of the present thesis: Articles on American Postmodernist literature published in periodicals.

1. John Ashbery (born July 28, 1927) is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Renowned for its postmodern complexity and opacity, Ashbery's work still proves controversial. Ashbery has stated that he wishes his work to be accessible to as many people as possible, and not to be a private dialogue with himself. At the same time, he once joked that some critics still view him as "a harebrained, homegrown surrealist whose poetry defies even the rules and logic of Surrealism." Critics have noted how Ashbery's verse has taken shape under the influence of abstract expressionism, a movement in modern painting stressing nonrepresentational methods of picturing reality.

2. W.S.Merwin (born September 30, 1927) is a leading American writer whose poetry, translations, and prose have won praise over seven decades. His first book, A Mask for Janus (1952), was chosen by W.H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Though that first book

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reflected the formalism of the period, Merwin eventually became known for an impersonal, open style that eschewed punctuation. Writing in the Guardian, Jay Parini described Merwin’s mature style as “his own kind of free verse, [where] he layered image upon bright image, allowing the lines to hang in space, largely without punctuation, without rhymes ... with a kind of graceful urgency.” Although Merwin’s writing has undergone stylistic changes through the course of his career, a recurring theme is man’s separation from nature. The poet sees the consequences of that alienation as disastrous, both for the human race and for the rest of the world.

3. Ted Kooser (born 25 April 1939) is a poet and essayist, known for his honest, accessible verse that celebrates the quotidian and captures a vanishing way of life. Brad Leithauser wrote in the New York Times Book Review that, “Whether or not he originally set out to…[Kooser’s] become, perforce, an elegist.” Populated by farmers, family ancestors, and heirlooms, Kooser’s poems reflect his abiding interest in the past, but escape nostalgia in part because of their clear- eyed appraisal of its hardships. While Kooser’s work often treats themes like love, family and the passage of time, Leithauser noted that “Kooser’s poetry is rare for its sense of being so firmly and enduringly rooted in one locale.” Though Kooser does not consider himself a regional poet, his work often takes place in a recognizably Mid-western setting; when Kooser was named US Poet Laureate in 2004, he was described by the librarian of Congress as “‘the first poet laureate chosen from the Great Plains.”

4. Billy Collins (born March 22, 1941) is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself. John Updike praised Collins for writing “lovely poems...Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides.” But Collins has offered a slightly different take on his appeal, admitting that his poetry is “suburban, it’s domestic, it’s middle class, and it’s sort of unashamedly that.” Collins’s level of fame is almost unprecedented in the world of contemporary poetry: his readings regularly sell out, and he received a six-figure advance when he moved publishers in the late 1990s. He served two terms as the US Poet Laureate, from 2001-2003, was New York State Poet Laureate from 2004-2006, and is a regular guest on National Public Radio programs.

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5. Kay Ryan (born September 21, 1945) acknowledged as one of the most original voices in the contemporary landscape, Kay Ryan is the author of several books of poetry, including Flamingo Watching (2006), The Niagara River (2005), and Say Uncle (2000). Her book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (2010) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Ryan's tightly compressed, rhythmically dense poetry is often compared to that of Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore; however, Ryan’s often barbed wit and unique facility with “recombinant” rhyme has earned her the status of one of the great living American poets, and led to her appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate in 2008.

6. Donald Hall (born September 20, 1928) is considered one of the major American poets of his generation. His poetry explores the longing for a more bucolic past and reflects the poet’s abiding reverence for nature. Although Hall gained early success with his first collection, Exiles and Marriages (1955), his more recent poetry is generally regarded as the best of his career. Often compared favorably with such writers as James Dickey, Robert Bly, and James Wright, Hall uses simple, direct language to evoke surrealistic imagery. In addition to his poetry, Hall has built a respected body of prose that includes essays, short fiction, plays, and children’s books. Hall, who lives on the New Hampshire farm he visited in summers as a boy, is also noted for the anthologies he has edited and is a popular teacher, speaker, and reader of his own poems.

II.9. Comparative studies I have been particularly interested in the constant comparison of British, American and Romanian cultures. The interest for this topic was made manifest through my participation in two projects which approached the problem of cultural and national specificity by means of translation. These projects are:

2009 Coordinator from the Department of English and German Studies of the cultural grant “I.D Sirbu-The writer’s posterity. 90 years from his birth.20 years from his death. financed by The Writers’ Union of Romania (WUR), total value of project 9000 RON. The project is on the WUR site; Approved cultural projects on semester I, 2009, position 21. Project manager: Assoc. Prof. Ian Lascu. In this project I coordinated the students’ activity of translating a few important I.D.Sirbu texts from Romanian into English; I also organized and participated in public readings

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in English by our students, members of the Intercultura translating center of the Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova. www.uniuneascriitorilor.ro/

2008 Coordinator from the Department of English and German Studies of the international grant “Translation and inter-culturality”, financed by The Writers’ Union of Romania( WUR ), total value of project 7000 RON. The project is on the WUR site; Approved projects on semester II, 2008, position 12. Project manager: Assoc. Prof. Ian Lascu. www.uniuneascriitorilor.ro/- result These projects ended in the production of two volumes of contemporary Romanian poetry translated into English:

1. Limba sarpelui calator. The Tongue of the Wandering Serpent. Poems by Mihai Firica, Translated from Romanian by Victor Olaru, Editura Ramuri,Craiova 2006, ISBN 973-7936-29-9

2. Lettres Entre Deux Femmes. Letters Between Two Women. Scrisori între două femei. Rodriguez, Cecilia Burtica, Traducere in limba engleza de Victor Olaru, Scrisul Romanesc,Craiova, 2007, Isbn 978-973-38-0083-5

II.9.1. Studies in foreign academic journals

This study appeared in Portuguese translation in the Scielo and Redalyc-indexed academic journal alea ESTUDOS NEOLATINOS. 1. OLARU Victor, As duas versões em inglês de Mioritza/Two English versions of Mioritza- pp. 192-203, in alea ESTUDOS NEOLATINOS,Alea: Estudos Neolatinos,Programa de Pós- Graduação em Letras Neolatinas/Faculdade de Letras – UFRJ,v. 16, n. 1. Rio de Janeiro, janeiro/junho de 2014, Semestral.1. Letras Neolatinas – Periódicos. I. Instituição,ISSN 1517- 106X C DD. 807,FINANCIAMENTO, Programa de apoio às Publicações Científicas, INDEXAÇÃO: Scielo (www.scielo.br/alea),Redalyc (www.redalyc.com Abstract This paper proposes a short comparative analysis of two English translations of the Romanian poem Mioritza, the first from 1856, made by Henry Stanley, and the second, by the American

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Poet W.D. Snodgrass, from 1972. It is argued that the latter has more poetic value, for it utilizes rhyme patterns and a meter closer to the Romanian ballad. Alea : Estudos Neolatinos Print version ISSN 1517-106X Abstract OLARU, Victor. As duas versões em inglês de Mioritza. Alea [online]. 2014, vol.16, n.1, pp. 192-200. ISSN 1517-106X. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1517-106X2014000100014. O artigo traz uma breve análise comparativa das duas versões em inglês de Mioritza, a primeira, de 1856, realizada por Henry Stanley, e a segunda, de 1972, feita pelo poeta americano W. D. Snodgrass. Defende-se a hipótese de que a segunda apresenta maior valor poético com a utilização de rima e métrica em moldes próximos ao da balada romena. Keywords : Mioritza; poesia romena; balada popular romena.

II.9.2. Studies in Romanian academic journals 1. Victor Olaru, Cultural Aspects of the Romanian Immigration in the United States of America in Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stinte Filologice, Literatura Romana si Universala, Anul XXVI , Nr.1-2, 2004 Abstract In this article the author highlights some important cultural aspects of the Romanian Americans, first remarking that Romanians have a recorded presence of almost 250 years on American soil. In the late eighteenth century, a Transylvanian priest named Samuel Damian immigrated to America for scientific reasons. The first major wave of Romanian immigrants to the United States took place between 1895 and 1920, in which 145,000 Romanians entered the country. They came from various regions, including Wallachia and Moldava. The author also emphasizes the merits of cultural personalities belonging to various fields; in the academic world Mircea Eliade Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen ,Constantin Corduneanu , and the Romance philologist Maria Manoliu-Manea who served as president of the American Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences for many years. In film, television and theater are mentioned the film director Jean Negulesco, the television actor Adrian Zmed , Andrei Şerban, and Liviu Ciulei, best known for directing classical works. Also mentioned are the contributions of the following personalities: in journalism Theodore Andrica , Reverends Vasile Haţegan and Gheorghe Murȩsan; in literature

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Peter Neagoe. Mircea Vasiliu, Eugene Theodorescu, Anişoara Stan, . Eli Popa, Andrei Codrescu, and Silvia Cinca; in music George Enesco, Ionel Perlea, Stella Roman; in visual arts Constantin Brancuşi, George Zolnay, Elie Cristo-Loveanu, Constantin Aramescu.. Alexandru Seceni .

2. Victor Olaru, Romanian Poetry into English, in Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice, Limbi Straine Aplicate, Anul II, Nr.1-2, 2006, ISSN: 1841-8074 , pp.165-175

Abstract

In spite of the fact that Romanian is not a widely circulated language, the real value of Romanian literary creations has been emphasized by means of translations, that have played an important part in the building of Romanian modern culture. In the first part of this article, the author highlights some of the most representative anthologies of Romanian literature translated into English and appeared in Britaion and the USA, focusing on the volume Alibi and Other Poems by Stefan Augustin Doinas and published in 1975 by the London publishing house Anvil Press. Translated into English by Peter Jay in collaboration with Romanian specialists, the volume was highly appreciated and is considered to be a piece of excellent propaganda for Romanian culture within Anglo-Saxon cultural space. The author analyses two representative poems translated into English The Words and The Boatman’s Speech making remarks on the quality of English translations. One concludes that by the truthful rendering into English of the meanings and refinements of Doinas’s poetry, the book has fully carried its point.

II.9.3. Papers read in sessions This paper was read in The 4th ENIEDA Conference on linguistic and Intercultural Education, Vrsac, Serbia, 29 September-1 October 2011 Victor Olaru Translating National Identity: Romanian Poetry into English Abstract

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Starting from the ideas that literary translation is a major means of representing and preserving one's national identity and that authors who resist their nationality through their literature, are presumed representative as a "voice" of their nation when their work appears in translation, in the beginning of the paper the author has in view the presentation of the most representative anthologies of Romanian poetry translated into English from the beginning to present-day. Among the many translations considered by critics literary successes, one chose to discuss the volume Alibi and Other Poems , London, Anvil Press, 1975, by the famous Romanian modern poet Stefan Augustin Doinas, English version by Peter Jay. The author analyzed two representative English versions present in the anthology: " The Words" (Rom.,, Cuvintele"), and " The Boatman's Speech " (,,Cuvantarea luntrasuluF ) and concluded that they will give the bilingual reader the feeling of re-enacting two distinct experiences, that the real source of this difference is not to be found in any failure of the translators, but in an inherent specific structure of that experience itself beginning at a deep level of each language. The reason for this alleged impossibility of an integrated lyrical transfer lies precisely in the fact that the modern poet cannot embody such a revelation otherwise than in the „ mythical" dimensions of his own native language. One might agree, therefore, that the ambition of an absolute translation is in itself hopeless, but-due to its practical-it is by no means useless.

II.10. Literary translations

II.10.1. Literary translations published in volumes

II.10.1.a. From English into Romanian:

1. Hall Caine- Fiul Risipitor – Universalia, Craiova 1990

2. A.J Cronin –Cheile imparatiei, Oltenia - Craiova 1992

3. F Forsyth- Cainii razboiului - Olimp- Bucuresti, 1993,

4. C. Cussler- Dragonul - , vol.I, Olimp - Bucuresti, 1994,

5. C. Cussler- Dragonul - vol. II Olimp Bucuresti. 1994

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6.. R. Kipling –Lumina care s-a stins, Universalia, Craiova -1991,

7. La ce bun poeti in vremuri sarace. Antologia Festivalului Poezia pentru o lume a dialogului, 8- 12 iunie 1992, Craiova, Romania, pp. 77-87- Collective volume of literary translations

8. Poetry for a World of Dialogue, Craiova, June 1992. Translations by :Ana Carstens ,Petru Cardu, Stefan ,Augustin Doinas, Oana Firescu, Marius Ghica, Virgil Mazilescu, Victor Olaru, George Popescu, D.Tepeneag - Collective volume of literary translation.

II.10.1.b. From Romanian into English

1. Angels and Gods. Poems by Gabriel Chifu. Translated from Romanian by Victor Olaru.- The poetry Miscellany Chapbooks Chattanooga USA 1992

2. Day After Night. Twenty Romanian Poets for the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Gabriel Stanescu and Adam J. Sorkin- Editura Criterion Publishing, S.U.A, 1998, Library of Congress Nr. 98-9458. Collective volume of literary translations in colaboration with Adam J. Sorkin

3. Limba sarpelui calator. The Tongue of the Wandering Serpent. Poems by Mihai Firica, Translated from Romanian by Victor Olaru, Editura Ramuri, Craiova

4. Lettres Entre Deux Femmes. Letters Between Two Women. Scrisori între două femei. Rodriguez, Cecilia Burtica, Traducere in limba engleza de Victor Olaru, Scrisul Romanesc, Craiova, 2007

II.10.2. Literary translations published in Romanian periodicals

1. Stephen Romer - poetry, Ramuri, (Traducere), May - June 2002 2. William Scammell - poetry, Ramuri, (Traducere), May - June 2002 3. Andrew Pidoux - poetry, Ramuri, (Traducere), May - June 2002

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4. Michael Murphy- poetry, Ramuri, (Translation), May - June 2002 5. Erica Wagner - poetry, Ramuri, (Translation), May - June 2002 6. Deryn Rees-Jones, poetry, Ramuri, (Translation), May - June 2002 7. Patrick Mc Guinness - poetry, Ramuri, May - June 2002 8. Caitriona O' Reilley - poetry, Ramuri, May - June 2002 9. Khan Singh Kumar - poetry, Ramuri, May - June 2002 10. English Contemporary Poetry. The selection of poems was done from the volume "New Writing" (nr. 10) 2002 published by Picador and The British Council 11. Philippe Jones – poetry from the volume "Le dénombrement des choses", Le Spandale, 1973 ("Intai viata"), Ramuri 12. W. D. Snoddgrass - poetry – Ramuri, Nov. 1997. 13. W. D. Snoddgrass - poetry Ramuri, Oct. 1997 14. Liz Lockhead - poetry – Ramuri, Jan - Feb. 1997 15. Elaine Feinstein - poetry - Ramuri, Oct - Nov. - Dec. 1996 16. Andrew Motion -poetry- Ramuri.- Dec. 1995 17. W. D. Snodgrass -poetry- Ramuri - Dec. 1995 18. Joseph Brodsky -poetry- Ramuri, Nov.- Dec. 1995 19. Andrew Motion -poetry Ramuri Sept.-Oct. 1995 20. John Gohorry -poetry Ramuri Sept.-Oct. 1995 21. Donald Hall -poetry- Ramuri Sept.-Oct. 1995 22. John Burnside -poetry- Ramuri Sept.-Oct. 1995 23. Peter Reading -poetry- Ramuri Sept.-Oct. 1995 24. John Gohorry – poetry - Ramuri, Sept.-Oct. 1995 25. Jonathan Arac - essay -"Foucault and Central Europe. A Polemic Speculation", Ramuri, March-April 1995 26. Jose Lambert-essay - "Ethnolingvistic Democracy, the Policy of Translations and the Dis(order) of Contemporary World", Ramuri , Sept.-Oct.-Nov. 1994 27. Winfried Fluck -essay- "Radical Aesthetics"- Ramuri, March.-April-May, 1994 28. W.D.Snodgrass - poetry , Ramuri, Dec. 1993 29. W.D.Snodgrass - poetry , Ramuri, Nov. 1993

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30. W.D.Snodgrass - poetry , Ramuri , Oct. 1993 31. Jo Shapcott-poetry , Ramuri iunie-iulie, 1993 32. Klaus Rifbjerg - poetry , Ramuri May. 1993 33. Winfried Fluck-essay-Neo-realism in the Contemporary American Novel, ,Ramuri, April. 1993 34. Kathleen Jamie - poetry , Ramuri , Feb. 1993 35. Anne Stevenson- -poetry , Ramuri , Jan. 1993 36. John Ashbery- poetry, Ramuri Jan. 1993 37. Alan Brownjohn-poetry , Ramuri, ian.. 1993 38. Alan Brownjohn-poetry , Ramuri ,Jan. 1993 39. Susan Bassnett -essay- Ramuri , Sept-Oct 1992. 40. Richard Jackson -poetry - Ramuri l June-July 1992(II) 41. Richard Jackson -poetry - Ramuri ,June-July 1992(I) 42. Piotr Kihiwahcs- essay- Ramuri -March-April 1992 43. Richard Jackson -poetry - Ramuri -April 1991 (I, II, III,IV) 44. George Uscatescu -essay- Ramuri -June 1990 45. Agatha Christie -fiction (21 pag) -Ramuri Almanah -1990 (p. 317) 46. Richard Jackson -poetry - Ramuri Almanah - 1990 (p. 79) 47. Agatha Christie -fiction (26 pag) -Ramuri Almanah -1990 (p. 170) 48. Richard Jackson poetry- Ramuri -Dec 1988 49. Richard Jackson -poetry - Ramuri Almanh - 1988 (p. 235) 50. Perrott Philips-fiction (9 pag)- Ramuri Almanac-1988 (p. 205) 51. David Janus -fiction (8 pag) Ramuri Almanh-1988 (p. 97) 52. Agatha Christie -fiction (19 pag) -Ramuri Almanh -1988 (p. 124) 53. Richard Jackson -poetry - Ramuri - June 1987 54. Agatha Christie -fiction (18 pag) -Ramuri Almanah -1987 (p. 195) 55. Agatha Christie -fiction (24 pag) -Ramuri Almanah -1987 (p. 44) 56. Fleur Adcock -essay- Ramuri June 1985. 57. Agatha Christie -fiction (25 pag)- Ramuri Almanah (p.98). 58. Alden Nowlan – poetry- Ramuri Almanah- 1982 (p.272)

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II.10.3. Literary translations published in foreign periodicals

1. Gabriel Chifu -poezie ("Short Personal Record")- translation from Romanian into English in - The Poetry Miscellany nr. 22 1992 (p. 5) Chattanooga University, S.U.A.

2. The following poems were published in the volume Twenty Romanian Poets for the Twenty - First Century, edited by Gabriel Stanescu and Adam J. Sorkin, Criterion Publishing House USA, 1998

3. Patrel Berceanu, The Pharaohs of chestnuts, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

4. Patrel Berceanu, Everything that's not white, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

5. Patrel Berceanu, Experiment, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

6. Patrel Berceanu, I might be understood, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

7. Patrel Berceanu, Suddenly the all becames a little, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

8. Patrel Berceanu, Everything that's not white, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

9. Gabriel Chifu, Like seaweed, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

10. Gabriel Chifu, A memory, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

11. Gabriel Chifu, A desert where the past goes wandering, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru, The following poems were published in the periodical Asylum, A Balcan Poetry Magazine, August 1999

12. Gabriel Chifu, Remembrance, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

13. Gabriel Chifu, The One on the Brink, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru.

14. Gabriel Chifu, Practising for Separation, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

15. Gabriel Chifu, Good-Hearted Man, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

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16. Gabriel Chifu, An Answer and a Question, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Victor Olaru

III. Plans of evolution and development of the professional

It is generally acknowledged the idea that analysts and hermeneutics scholars from the beginning of this millennium in the cultural and especially in the literary fields cannot deny the fact that the postmodern change of canon has reached a limit from where, on the one hand this direction is preserved as such, but, on the other, contemporary writers return to old abandoned canons ( modernism). However, for this reason, diversity is preserved and this fact ensures and endorses the diversity of critical approach of literary texts produced in the 21st century. On the basis of this varied background (from the literary and critical point of view) accordingly ensue our plans of evolution and development of the professional career:

1. on the line of British and American contemporary literature, in direct connection with the course I teach at MA level (second year): Contemporary British Women Poets

2. on the line of approaching from a new perspective aspects of English (Victorian) literature (in direct connection with the course I teach at BA level (second year): Contemporary critical perspectives of Victorian literature (rereading Victorian fiction)

III.1. Project 1: Identity and Otherness in Victorian Fiction

The title of this research project – Identity and Otherness in Victorian Fiction– contains some of the key-words of this critical discourse: Victorian, identity, Otherness. To these, we should add: England vs. the British Empire; colonial vs. postcolonial; Englishness vs. foreignness. Discussed individually or in pairs, such keywords form the spine of this approach to the Victorian novel; it is our intention to proceed to a close reading of a selection of nineteenth-century novels and, by using the tools of the comparatist, and the instruments of cultural criticism, to identify those elements which shed light of the perception of the Other by the Victorian novelists and the Victorian readership. References will be made to the principles of postcolonial theory (as formulated by such critics as Kwame Anthony Appiah, Homi Bhabha, Ania Loomba, Abdul JanMohammed, Edward Said, or Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Sara Suleri (among others), with a special stress upon the critical reception of these novels, starting with echoes in the

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publications of the Victorian age, until most recent studies in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Our selection of the novels has its own reasons: it has been my intention to join together not only those novels which are usually considered as belonging to the same group or class – such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights – but also Dracula and its twentieth-century counterparts, such as Dracula in Love, or Dracula, My Love which provide two different dimensions of Victorian thought: dealing with the supernatural and the perception of far-off, less understood and exotic places, among them Transylvania and the Balkans.

Our intention is to approach Victorian literature mostly from a postcolonial position, and deal with the Victorians’ understanding of the concept of Otherness and the presence of the Other in the selected novels. The Others we have chosen to discuss thus far – namely the Irish, the Gypsy, the Jew, the colonized native, and the vampire – are seen mostly as stereotypes, as they come out in the selected novels of representative Victorian authors. Postcolonial theory and literature has searched for answers to a number of pertinent questions regarding the concepts of the Other and Otherness: What does the Other mean in these times? Should Self and Other be viewed inevitably as accentuating differences? After identifying the Other, is ‘comprehension of Otherness’ possible or is knowledge of the Other just a form of colonization, of authority, even violence? On the other hand, by applying the answers to the first set of questions to the particular case of Victorian fiction, we can easily construe a second set of questions:

(1) Were the Victorians aware of the diversity and complexity of the world they lived in? If the answer is positive, what is the extent of their awareness?

(2) The origins of Englishness are to be found in the very beginnings of the British Empire during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. To what extent has the awareness of one’s doubleness – being a citizen of England (hence his/her Englishness), and belonging to the Empire – influenced the perception of Victorian fiction?

(3) Could the Victorians possibly apprehend the Others – the outsiders (Indian, African, and Australian subjects) or the insiders (the Irish, and the Gypsy) as their human fellows?

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(4) How about the exotic characters – such as the inhabitants of South-Eastern Europe (and present-day Romania as the case may be) – whose presence and traditions inform the Westerners’ perception of an imaginary Other from the East?

This project is meant to be an attempt to answer these questions which implies a detailed interpretation of the texts, with the purpose of reaching a viable conclusion as regards the positioning of the Victorian novelists and reading audience towards the Other – whoever this Other might be: Irish and Indian, African and Australian, the Gypsy, the outlandish non-subjects, and the imaginary Other, such as the Transylvanian Vampire and his subjects

In terms of structure, our project is preceded by an Introduction containing the theoretical considerations necessary for the critical discourse, followed by two distinct, but closely connected, main parts, each subdivided into three more theoretical, general sections (Part One), and five more sections (Part Two), which represent the analytical dimension of the project, and cover a selection of representative Victorian novels. As the case may be, reference will be made to other works of Victorian writers relevant to the main topic under discussion. Each of the novels analysed offers a different dimension of the reception of the Other in Victorian England. The chapter of Conclusions rounds up the analysis and brings it to the twentieth century, with references to the Neo-Victorian literature.

The introductory section is essentially a review of the different critical angles from which various critics have interpreted and evaluated Victorian fiction, starting with Lord David Cecil, a representative of the so-called Humanist School of criticism. Writing in reaction to contemporary taste, Cecil established a humanistic view of literature and promoted novelists on the grounds of their “knowledge of human nature” and “their creative imagination.” His is a coherent appraisal of the Victorian novel as a literary form, and he was one of the first critics to consider George Eliot as a kind of reference point for her age: “there is one sort of novel before George Eliot and another after her.” As a representative of the formalist school, I have chosen Dorothy Van Ghent, who examined the whole nature and purpose of the novel as a form, and whose analysis of Wuthering Heights focuses on different specific patterns of imagery in the text, the novel being a “tension between two kinds of reality”. The school of Psychological Criticism has also shown a

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great interest in the Victorian novel. For example, Heathcliff as “the source of psychic energy, the seat of the instincts (particularly sex and death, pure sexual force …”, but the Freudian critics since have found evidence of the Oedipal complex, and themes of repression, incest, infanticide and sadism. Dreams and taboos have been rich fields of investigation; and feminist critics have been vigorous in their use of Freudian theory.

The Victorian novel has been the focus for feminist discourse, though this approach applies more to some texts than others. Jane Eyre, Villette, and Shirley, for instance, are much more obvious about “the woman question” than novels such as Barchester Towers or The Egoist. Critics like Ellen Moers, Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar or Catherine Waters have contributed seminal criticism of Victorian novels.

One example of a post-structuralist approach is that of J. Hillis Miller, according to whom “there is an error in the assumption that there is a single secret truth about Wuthering Heights. This secret truth would be something formulable as a univocal principle of explanation which would account for everything in the novel. The secret truth about Wuthering Heights, rather, is that there is no secret truth which criticism might formulate in this way.”

Last but not least, post-colonial criticism – on which our general approach of the research topic is based – explores covert imperial issues, such as slavery or appropriation, as they appear in novels like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre; and where former colonies like Australia and Canada form a significant part of the novels by Dickens and Gaskell, the school also deconstructs the texts which refer to actual colonial material or use the colonial as a site for the exploration of the exotic, the alien, the unknown (as is the case with novels written by Wilkie Collins, Conrad, Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling).

Part one: “The Theoretical and Historical Background” establishes the positioning of what is commonly called ‘Victorian literature’ in the general context of the nineteenth century which witnessed the overlapping of Romanticism and Victorianism, and the presence of Darwin who challenged long-established theories regarding the evolution of humankind. “The Century of the Novel”, as it was called, addressed itself to a certain readership which – in order to be included into this category – had full access to the printed text.

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Section One: Colonialism vs. post-colonialism” defines Otherness by difference, associating it predominantly with marginalized individuals, who are excluded from the dominant group, who are disempowered, silenced, isolated due to various deviations or to social, religious, political and sexual differences. The preoccupation and fascination with the Other can be traced back to the beginning of human history and thought. As Simone de Beauvoir (1998:161) underlines, “the category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself.” Four hundred years earlier, in his Essay “On the inconstancy of Our Actions”, Michel de Montaigne remarked that the Other is not necessarily the antonym of the self but also part of what determines or even constitutes the self: “We are entirely made up of bits and pieces, woven together so diversely and so shapelessly that each one of them pulls its own way at every moment. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and our people” (380).

Jean Baudrillard proclaimed the beginning of “an era of production of the Other”. The Other will no longer be killed, devoured, seduced, faced, loved or hated, it will be produced. In any case, “otherness is lacking and, since we cannot experience otherness as destiny, one must produce the other as difference.” (127) Similarly, Kwame Anthony Appiah worries about a possible “manufacture of otherness” for “those who will not see themselves as Other” (1993: 156-7). Appiah also signals the dangers of raising awareness about the issues of identity and difference. In order to escape the label of ‘Other’, he appeals to nativism, that is viewing nations as ‘organic communities’, “bound together by […] the shared norms that are the legacy of tradition, struggling to throw off the shackles of alien modes of life and thought” (1996: 72).

Finally, postcolonial theories use the term ‘otherness’ interchangeably with ‘difference’ and ‘othering’ in connection to race (Franz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, Abdul JanMohammed), natives (Homi Bhabha), women, multiculturalism and minorities, the politics of identity and representation (Edward Said), and when interrogating alterity (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sara Suleri).

Section Two: “Empire Matters” is a necessary historical incursion into the history and politics of Victorian England, which are fully mirrored by the novelists. This was a period which was

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heavily influenced by the political writings of Carlyle, and Darwin’s revolutionary Origin of the Species which courageously challenged the very myth of creation.

Section Three. “Englishness vs. foreignness, history and literature” is an exploration of the reception of the geographical dimensions and ethnic diversity of the British Empire during Queen Victoria’s reign. British colonialism expanded at such a rate during Queen Victoria’s reign that by the end of the nineteenth century Britain ruled one tenth of the earth’s surface.

In the fiction of the period the influence of the Imperial experience is amply reflected, and a whole school of novelists, especially later in the century, make the Empire the central focus of their discourse. For this reason, post-colonial criticism takes a particular interest in the Victorian novel. Here are a few examples: Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1895), She (1887) and Allan Quartermain (1887) are extravagant novels of adventure which catch the moods of chauvinistic ruthlessness that characterized contemporary colonialism. Joseph Conrad gives a rather different picture of the politics of colonialism in Heart of Darkness (1902), and his representation of the colonial enterprise in central Africa is devastating. The story was based not only on his own experience of a journey to the Congo to which he added, he says, ‘a sinister resonance’. Thus the are justified reasons to add other questions to the research ones mentioned in the beginning:: How far do issues such as religion and colonialism play an explicit or implicit part in the selected Victorian novels? In what ways might twenty-first-century attitudes towards Britain’s colonial past leads us to rethink our attitude towards a character such as Rochester in Jane Eyre and towards Charlotte Brontë herself as a novelist?

Part two: “The Victorian Age and the Other” deals with the reception of the Other in Queen Victoria’s realm, “where the sun never sets”. Covering an immense surface of the known world, the Empire triggered genuine responses to the presence of the subjects of the world-wide British Empire in good ole’ England. Fully aware that an approach to the British Empire’s Others could only start from the very heart of England, we may start with a view of the presence in Victorian literature of such nations which have been there for centuries – the Irish, the Jews and the Gypsies – to which the consciousness of being part of the Empire and the innate curiosity of the English for exotic lands and peoples prompted us to add the African and the Transylvanian.

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Section Four: The Irish, or the unwanted Other is an approach to the Irish presence in Victorian literature from different perspectives: social, political, cultural. The perception of the Irish presence by the nineteenth-century readers followed two convergent directions (at least): one is the presence of Irish characters in novels written by British authors, the other one is the depiction of the national Irish character in the writings of Anglo-Irish authors. Among the more or less known authors, we should mention Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rockrent (1800), a novel set in Ireland and generally considered the first of its kind on an Irish theme; Sydney Owenson (aka Lady Morgan) and her epistolary novel The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale (1806); Charles Robert Maturin, with his novel Melmoth the Wanderer (1820); William Carleton with his Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1834), Joseph Sheridan’s Le Fanu and his Gothic stories; brothers John and Michael Banim and their The Tales of the O’Hara Family; or Bram Stoker and his world-known Dracula. In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights we have yet another instance of the writer’s confusing treatment of the Other: Heathcliff, the foundling, is an “unreclaimed creature”, whose forceful insertion into the Earnshaw household is recounted in detail in Chapter IV of the novel, where the foundling is described as a dirty, ragged, black-haired gypsy brat collected from the streets of Liverpool. It was at the time of the great Potato Famine in Ireland, when starving Irish refugees were crowding the streets of Liverpool harbour, many of them finding their end there, and – for the English – the ethnic origins of the Irish was quite obscure, and they were often assimilated with the Gypsies.

Section Five: The Gypsy, or the romanticized Other deals with one of the most controversial Other on the British Isles. Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, then, commentators have written much on Gypsies in general, Gypsies in Britain, and even Gypsies in literature. Under the influences of the relatively new fields of anthropology, ethnology, and philology, scholars from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries were eagerly attempting to fix the Gypsies’ geographic origins, record and understand their language, and trace their migrations and their history. Their presence triggered contradictory feelings of both fear and fascination. We are aware of a romanticized view of Gypsies, which manifests itself works of fiction by many other authors throughout the Victorian Era. Notable Gypsy presences in Victorian literature are to be found not only in the already mentioned novels Jane Eyre (1847)

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and Wuthering Heights (1847), but also in Matthew Arnolds poem The Scholar Gypsy (1853), George Eliot’s narrative poem The Spanish Gypsy (1864-1868), and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s novel written in verse, Aurora Leigh (1856). The gypsy motif in Jane Eyre reflects the ambiguous attitude of Victorian society toward Gypsies. The depiction of “the Gypsy” at Thornfield Hall and the characters’ reactions to her are reflections of prejudices based on the Gypsies’ skin color, way of life, and traditions, and are also reflections of discriminatory treatment the Gypsies suffered. Their image was full of stereotypes, as in Jane Eyre, where the Rochester/Gypsy woman is simultaneously “troublesome” (suspect of the ability to disturb the existing order, and who might be put in stocks as a punishment for her misbehaviour); a “low impostor” (though they do not really believe in her fortune-telling abilities, the party accept her); “a real sorceress” (another stereotype which connects the Gypsies with witchcraft); “a genuine witch” (closely connected to “the old gentleman”, that is, the devil); a “rigorous Sybil” (that is, a prophetess); and, finally a “gipsy-vagabond” (which means a homeless traveller). What comes out from all these examples is that unlike colonial subjects, Gypsies were a domestic or an internal Other, and their proximity and visibility were crucial features in their deployment as literary or symbolic figures. Their familiarity lent them an exoticism that was, at the same time, indigenous and homely.

Section Six: The Jew, or the unavoidable Other deals with the Jews, whose millenary presence in England triggered misunderstanding and fear, for the simple reason that – just like the Gypsies – they were different. Their otherness was, nevertheless less physically visible. In George Du Maurier’s Trilby (1894), the story of Svengali, the Jew, a rogue who uses hypnosis to totally control and exploit sexually and financially beautiful, poor Trilby, made headlines at the time, as the fictional Jewish hypnotist was using the same cure as the already famous Freud, and following the press scandal, no physician was willing to take the risk of using hypnosis – Svengali’s “evil power”. Similar examples of writers using stereotypes when dealing with Jewish characters are to be found in other novels, such as Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds (1871), Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington (1817), Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819), Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1838), George Elliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876), and Reuben Sachs (1887), a novel of Jewish identity by Amy Levy, a late Victorian Jewish novelist and poet who wrote back

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against George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda.As it was the case with the Irish and the Gypsy, the most common image of a Jewish character in Victorian fiction was a racial stereotype, mostly negative. The literature of the age, which echoed the general public views, regarded the Jews as an unavoidable Other, his “otherness” being manifest not only in the religion of the Jewish people, but also in appearance, social standing, and morality – which set them apart from their non-Jewish fellows.

The Victorian novelists cherished the view of the “villain Jew”, Charles Dickens being a notorious example. The character Fagin in Oliver Twist is the embodiment of all the negative moral and physical features attributed to the Jews over the centuries. As if trying to counterbalance such a negative outlook, the same Dickens later introduces Riah, the kind Jewish money-lender, one of the characters in Our Mutual Friend as a symbol of virtue. The novel makes us familiar with what is generally considered the most sympathetic, uncritical depiction of a Jewish character not only in Victorian fiction but in all English literature. For Dickens, the Jewish stereotype is thus not only inaccurate, it is a valuable screen for cynical exploiters who are both English and Gentile. George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda is acclaimed for its rendering of the essence of nineteenth-century Judaism and its favourable references to Jewish proto-Zionist and Kabbalistic ideas. The impact of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species explains Eliot’s preoccupation with both the differentiation of races and inter-racial relations. Furthermore, her close relationship with Emanuel Deutsch, Jewish Orientalist and mystic who was teaching her Hebrew lessons, provided the writer with the model for the character of Ezra/Mordecai in Daniel Deronda.

Section Seven: The Colonized, or the unaccounted-for Other is a close reading of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, as an illustrative example of the treatment of the colonized Other in Victorian fiction. Said puts forward that “the whole point of what Kurtz and Marlow talk about is in fact imperial mastery, white European over black Africans, and their ivory, civilization over the primitive dark continent” (Said 1993:29). Conrad’s novel reflects the realities of the world in the 19th century, that is, the Europeans regard Africans as primitive and immature to colonize them. Briefly, it can be easily claimed that Heart of Darkness is one of the best examples of the

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subversion of European colonialism since it clearly shows the brutal relationship between the Europeans and the natives.

Section Eight: The Vampire, the fearful (un)dead Other turns the analysis of otherness into an entirely different direction. We have chosen the famous Dracula, the 1897 novel of Anglo-Irish writer Bram Stoker, who offers us a two-dimensional journey into Transylvania – a geographical journey, and an occultist and spiritual one. Dracula reflects the attitudes and ideas of the late Victorian period in regard to several important issues of the day, including the importance of professional and social advancement, the significance of their own culture in the minds of nineteenth-century Britons, and the concern over what the influx of foreign influences might do to that culture and to the competition for place in society. Juxtaposed against these attitudes is the sense that in Dracula faith has taken second place to the professional advancement of many of the characters.

Transforming the epistolary style of earlier, realistic novels, such as Pamela (1740-42) and Clarissa (1747-48) by Samuel Richardson, Stoker’s work transcribes a Gothic nightmare whose multiple versions might raise doubt as to the reliability of any of the versions, despite his use of realism. However, when Jonathan Harker finally realizes what the women of castle Dracula and Dracula himself represent, he feels the weight of the truth of the events that have transpired. We are interested in the descriptions of Jonathan’s journey across northern Transylvania, which – besides the impressive landscapes – is a country inhabited by diverse ethnical groups, all observing ancient customs and beliefs. As such, Transylvania is an opportunity to meet and come to terms with the Other – alive, or undead. Bram Stoker’s Transylvania is the link between East and West, exotic and familiar, subhuman band and host society, the breach through which “Oriental” superstition and degeneration enters the Western European bloodstream. The late Victorians’ questioning of previous scientific, religious, and social certainties may help explain a surge of interest in the occult as the century drew to a close. Certainly many of the same people doing the questioning were drawn to the occult, which perhaps served to restore a sense of mystery to lives increasingly illuminated by the glaring spotlight of Victorian rationalism.

III.2. Project 2: Neo-Victorian literature. Reinterpreting Victorian fiction.

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1. Introduction

In the last third of the twentieth century one may remark that the Victorian age and its literary productions are present in the writings of contemporary fiction writers. Robert Graves’s The Real David Copperfield (1933), Virginia Woolf’s Freshwater (1935), Michael Sadler's Fanny by Gaslight (1940) and Marghanita Laski's The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953) had started a phenomenon continued by very successful novels as as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). Since then there have been two Booker-Prize-winning novels with a Victorian setting, J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) and Peter Carey's Oscar and Luanda (1988, as well as A. S. Byatt's Possession (1990). More than often, the Neo-Victorian authors go as far as to both imitate and satirize the nineteenth-century literary conventions, or its moral and political assumptions. Thus, we think we may be justified in trying to understand the reasons for this tendency of some twentieth- century writers to resort to the subject matters and settings of the Victorian age.

With this research project we are entering the field of postmodernism and its component postcolonial studies, and the practice of re-reading and re-writing the colonial and imperial literature with the purpose of disclosing the intimate relationship between the margin – the former colonies – and the centre – to use Said’s terminology (Said 1994). Victorian novelists – such as W.M. Thackeray, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontës, and Charles Dickens – exploited this relation as a useful and fruitful narrative device. Thus, the Victorian readership had unlimited access to such textual representations of the colonized margin, which explains the general picture of the colonies and its people, the result of extensive reading by this “novel- reading nation” rather than of first-hand contacts.

2. Description

Neo-Victorian literature may be identified as two-dimensional: we have, first, the academics’ approaches to this side of postmodernism, and the fictional works themselves. We are not dealing with Neo-Victorianism as an academic subject, but with the large number of Neo-

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Victorian novels that have triggered an impressive number of responses from the public at large, and have revived the interest of the public in the history, literature and art of the Victorian age. Some scholars have reasons to argue the positioning of a new novel as Neo-Victorian or not: the visible Victorian setting – without the reasonable support of a “knowing” engagement with the Victorian period – cannot provide a sustainable argument.

3. Uses

After 1990 as well, the Victorian period and Victorian literature constitute special topics for contemporary novelists. In his essay Using the Victorians: the Victorian Age in Contemporary Fiction, (Rereading Victorian Fiction, pp.190-213) Robin Gilmour differentiates six uses which novelists have made of the Victorian period and its products in their fiction:

1. The historical novel written from a modern perspective and in a modern idiom, without much narratorial interference but implying a modern interpretation of the past. In a sense all historical novels are like this. The difference is one of degree and, crucially, of self-consciousness. Among many examples one might choose Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur or Byatt's Angels and Insects.

2. Pastiche and parody, whether in the thoroughgoing form of Palliser's Quincunx, or in part: the poems, diaries and letters in Possession, the Notebooks in Graham Swift's Ever After (1992). This is a kind of ventriloquism from within the narrative. It is worth noting in passing that pastiche is a stylistic compliment which the Victorians themselves were capable of paying to their pre¬decessors: Thackeray's Henry Esmond (1852) is partly a pastiche eighteenth-century novel and when first published appeared with an eighteenth-century typeface.

3. The inversion of Victorian ideology, as in the Flashman novels of George MacDonald Fraser, which, by installing a cad as hero, effec¬tively stand Arnoldian values on their head.

4. The subversion of Victorian fictional norms. The classic case here would be The French Lieutenant's Woman, which parodies the form of the Victorian novel as it was used by Thackeray and George Eliot, with the chapter epigraphs and garrulous narrator, but uses the narratorial

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possibilities of the form to introduce a degree of explicit philosophizing which was then (1969) felt to be no longer available to a modern novelist. Things are different now, of course.

5. The modern reworking or completing of a classic Victorian novel, as Jean Rhys does Jane Eyre (1847) in Wide Sargasso Sea or Emma Tennant Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) in Tess (1993); or its incor¬poration in a digested form, as is Great Expectations (1860-1) in Graham Swift's Waterland (1983).

6. The research novel. This is a work which, recognizing the promi¬nence which the study of Victorian literature and culture plays in contemporary academic life, builds that into the structure of the novel, making it the subject or focus of the book: Possession (again), David Lodge's Nice Work (1988), to some extent Graham Swift's Ever After)

4. Analysis

As examples of Neo-Victorian fiction implying a recent interpretation of what it means to be English in the Victorian Age, we have chosen for analysis two pairs of novels: (1) Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs, and (2) Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Jean Rhys’s prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea, as well as two Booker-Prize-winning novels with a Victorian setting, J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) , Peter Carey's Oscar and Luanda (1988}, and A. S. Byatt's Possession (1990).

The connection we are interested in is that between Dickens’s Great Expectations and Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs, in which we have an obvious example of a re-writing of a Victorian story by a (postcolonial) Australian writer. In fact, what we call Neo-Victorian literature is the result of an organic process, explained by a desire of both writers and readers to readdress the Victorian era from an entirely new perspective. The Neo-Victorian fiction of Australia is no exception, as it tackles postcolonial issues. The writers’ and scholars’ interest in and preoccupation with a distinct Australian identity is all set on a background of British colonial past which unavoidably opposes Britishness to Australianness. It is the same background which triggered Peter Carey to re-address his Victorian predecessor in Jack Maggs. Carey himself

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recounted the moment he identified himself with Dickens’s Magwitch, and explains his wish to reinvent the Dickensian character.

While Great Expectations is a classic of the dominant ideas found within canonical texts by first- person narration, the Australian novelist challenges this narrative structure. Dickens’s Magwitch, the escaped convict and the benefactor of the protagonist, reappears in Peter Carey’s novel as Jack Maggs, an ex-convict who, after completing his sentence in Australia, illegally returns to England in search of his son, Henry Phipps (the counterpart of Dickens’s Pip). We are witnessing the manner in which the Australian writer challenges the narrative conventions of his Victorian source. In this particular case, the stress falls on the liberated convict, who is placed at the very centre of Carey’s novel. It is another example of a bildungsroman, in which the protagonist relinquishes all his emotional ties with England, embraces a new nationality, and goes through a process of hybridization. Maggs denies his Australian connection and insists in his search for Henry Phipps, leaving behind Dick and John, his Australian sons, though, at the end of the novel – entire different from the Dickensian source – he changes his mind, returns to Australia together with Mercy, and accepts his responsibilities as a father and a citizen of that country. Here is another instance of a writer from the margin “writing back” against the Victorian novelist.

The readers are confronted with an alternative version of Dickens’s story, and not a simple addition, as is often the case with such works. Thus the narrative authority of the metropolitan, colonial centre is challenged, and Carey introduces Tobias Oates, a London novelist who – in a fictional novel, The Death of Jack Maggs – distorts the truth about the facts that led to Jack Maggs transportation. Tobias Oates has long been recognized as a fictional version of Dickens himself and, by challenging the writing process in itself and any claim to the truth, the Australian writer reconsiders Dickens’s text as one version of the truth, which accepts other versions as well. Just as Dickens’s Australia is Victorian Australia, Peter Carey’s England is mostly Victorian England.

Both novels end similarly, mirroring the style of the Victorian realist fiction. Dickens’s protagonist humbly forgets his ‘great expectations’ in order to accept reality, so does Maggs,

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who rejects his “better class of son” (378), and accepts his Australian family, joining them for the last years of his life which he lives in family bliss and ends surrounded by “his weeping sons and daughters crowded around his bed” (392). It is an ending which Anthony Hassall calls “Doubly unexpected, determinedly Australian and optimistic” (129), and it reflects Carey’s Australian emphasis in the novel, and his appropriation of the Victorian novel.

The ending, moreover, gives primacy to the colonial: Jack Maggs dies “without ever having read ‘That Book’” (392) in which Oates inscribes Maggs’ story, effectively “‘dissolving’ the binary opposition between primal text and sequel” (Janet Myers 470). Yet the ending is also problematic, for in closing the novel in such a generic convention, Carey is in essence perpetuating the same support for “the advance of nineteenth-century capitalism through spread of empire” (Gribble 186) that Great Expectations conformed with. Maggs does not embrace an Australian identity – there was no national identity in these colonies which were yet to become a nation (Janet Myers 468) – but replaces his dreams of English domesticity for English domesticity within Australia. After all, Maggs became president of the local cricket club (391). Carey has spent the novel critiquing the imperial patriarchy of Britain, only to replace it with an Australian version. The ending, then, is typically Victorian, and confirms the power of British culture in Australia.

5. Conclusions

In their 2010 volume, Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999- 2009, Heilmann and Llewellyn analysed the development of Neo-Victorian fiction written since the publication of Jack Maggs and the appropriation of literary figures as fictional characters, and did not fail to highlight the ethical and aesthetic issues it raised.

Linda Hutcheon has a more reconciling position as she thinks that rewriting the Victorian era and Victorian literature does not and cannot reject the canon. Accordingly, such a novel as Jack Maggs, which she categorizes as a work of historiographic metafiction, “asserts its rebellion through ironic abuse of it” (12). The intertextuality and self-reflexiveness of historiographic metafiction is obvious in Peter Carey’s adaptation of Dickens’s novel. We are giving full credit to Julie Sanders whose opinion on adaptations and revisionary works is that they – talking to a

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source material and an often new audience – finally “achieved most often by offering a revised point of view from the ‘original’, adding hypothetical motivation, or voicing the silenced and marginalized” (Sanders 19).

III.3. Project 3: Contemporary British women poets

The aims of our project are:

1. to emphasize the link between contemporary British poetry and the present-day cultural context represented by the theories of Tzvetan Todorov (identity and alterity), Jacques Lacan (structuralism- symbol of the Borromean knot), Michel Foucault (self-empowerment by language ), and Helene Cixous (liberating the female mind and body).

2. to point out the particular character of contemporary British poetry within the European cultural context. This may eventually prove to be a contribution to the building of a credible cultural bond between British contemporary women poets and their colleagues from other European countries, Romania included, as well as a stimulus for the increase of students’ and academics’ interest in contemporary feminine poetry writing with all its varied themes, motifs and nuances that emphasize the literary value of the authors.

Mention must be made that the postmodernist British women poets included in the project are the subject of articles and translations published by me since 1981 in various Romanian literary periodicals.

As Michael Schmidt and Grevel Lindop note in their critical survey of British poetry since 1960, the postbellic decades have marked a shift in the insular poetic imagination and language as poets explore more consciously ‘areas of language and relationship, considering and responding to place, object, history, tradition, people.’ (Schmidt and Lindop, 8) Consequently, poems become ever more celebrative of the new pluralism that grants greater diversity in terms of age, race and gender, ethnicity and sexual affiliation, concerned with the new personal versions of postmodern Britain. Philosophically, the Todorovian doctrine of the interplay between identity and alterity can bring together poems concerned with the self opening to the other (poems about the plenary or altered female mind and body, as well as verses concerned with issues of

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domesticity and femininity), poems concerned with the self opening to the other (poems about travelling as internalisation of otherness and verses related to history and contemporary politics). Similarly, Lacan’s triadic structure of the Borromean knot is accommodated in the preoccupations with writing as the site of resistance, rebellion and extreme emotionalism. It is a writing style that is biologically and psychologically feminine, as advocated by Cixous’s philosophical system: women write about themselves and about others, about social roles and activism.

In order to express their private inner worlds and identities poets employ a wide range of strategies:

- vigorous, biting poetry: Fleur Adcock, (Victor Olaru: Fleur Adcock - Presentation and translation, poetry- in Ramuri. June 1985, p.10), Carol Ann Duffy ( Victor Olaru: Carol Ann Duffy-Perspectiva critica, in SCRISUL ROMANESC, Nr.7-8, 2007, pp.29) ;

- glacial, unsympathetic tone :Liz Lochhead (Victor Olaru: Liz Lockhead - Presentation and translation, poetry –in Ramuri, Jan - Feb. 1997, p.16), Jo Shapcott ( Victor Olaru: Jo Shapcott- Presentation and translation , Ramuri iunie-iulie,1993)

- flexible, energetic voices: Helen Dunmore (Victor Olaru, Helen Dunmore Introduction and Translation , poetry, in Ramuri Dec. 1995), Anne Stevenson (Victor Olaru: Anne Stevenson- Presentation and Translation, poetry, in Ramuri , Jan. 1993 );

- generous, benevolent poems : Ruth Fainlight (Victor Olaru, Ruth Fainlight - Presentation and translation, poetry , in Ramuri ,Jan - Feb. 1997) , Elaine Feinstein, (Victor Olaru: Elaine Feinstein , Presentation and translation, poetry, in Ramuri Oct - Nov. - Dec. 1996, p.17) ;

- tender, emotional lines : Mimi Khalvati (Victor Olaru, Mimi Khalvati , Presentation and Translation , poetry, in Ramuri Oct. 1993), Kathleen Raine ( Presentation and Translation , poetry, in Ramuri May, 1994)

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Most poems can be interpreted through different philosophical and theoretical ideas developed under the term ‘postmodernism’, and be incorporated into several clearly defined patterns of thinking that dominate the intellectual scene.

Philosophically, one may mention the Todorovian doctrine of the interplay between identity and alterity, Lacan’s triadic structure of the Borromean knot as well as Cixous’s philosophical system, according to which women write about themselves and about others, about social roles and activism.

Linguistically, Foucauldian empowerment through the agency of the word is often expressed in Hassan’s terms of unmaking, echoing A. Alvarez’s belief that ‘good poetry should be immune to gentility’ (Alvarez 32) – and thus remaking aesthetic tradition by bringing forth subjects of interest to womanhood.

Although, the various forms of imagination and expression existent in contemporary poetry by women prevents a clear-cut categorization, in her book Elena Nistor identifies several features of present female-feminine-feminist poetry in the UK as regards themes and style.(Nistor:27)

A) THEMES

1. Displacement. Contemporary poetry displays an extreme sense of displacement and need for relocation. Elaine Feinstein’s travel poems being an example of the individual’s appropriation of the universe and creation of a significant private cosmology. (Victor Olaru: Elaine Feinstein – Presentation and translation, poetry, in Ramuri Oct - Nov. - Dec. 1996, p.17)

2. Confessionalism Contemporary British women write highly autobiographical poems that set the self in relation with the other. Fleur Adcock’s ‘Bogyman’ may be considered representative for the opening of the self to the outside world. (Victor Olaru: Fleur Adcock - Presentation and translation, poetry- in Ramuri. June 1985, p.10), as well as the confessions offered by women poets in interviews. (Victor Olaru:"Poetry is the most ethical form of art" -interview with Jo Shapcott, in Ramuri, June-July- 1991, p.5).

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3. Duality, Poems arise as a complex migration between the self and the other, emphasising the personal over the objective. Self-segregation is best exploited in such poems as Liz Lochhead’s ‘The Other Woman’. (Victor Olaru: Liz Lockhead - Presentation and translation, poetry, in Ramuri, Jan - Feb. 1997, p.16),

4. Domesticity. The philosophy of routine is conspicuous in women’s poetry. Home place can be both the locus of oppression and the source of power, cooperation and solidarity. Ruth Fainlight explains household concerns in ‘Ephemeral Lives’, a poem that assigns a universal meaning to the microcosm of home. (Victor Olaru: Ruth Fainlight- Presentation and translation, poetry –in Ramuri, Aug. 1997, p.13),

5. Seclusion. Feminine identity is articulated in a confident language that dispenses with conventional patterns of representation and traditional rigid language. Writing is a reclusive act; illness and suffering also dissolve the self into loneliness and isolation as shown by Ruth Fainlight’s ‘The Knot’, ‘Vertical’ and ‘Two Monologues’; . (Victor Olaru: Ruth Fainlight- Presentation and translation, poetry –in Ramuri, Aug. 1997, p.13).

6. Multiplicity, openness. Reality is constructed and reconstructed through and within the ironic and undermining plays of language. Self-liberation takes the form of evasion to the outer world or to the inner realm of creation as in Patience Agbabi’s ‘Osmosis’. (Victor Olaru, Patience Agbabi -Presentation and translation, in Scrisul Romanesc, 1-2, 2005, p. 25 ).

7. Myth-revisioning. Contemporary poetry by women is concerned with reshaping the exemplary stories of ancient mythology in order to devise alternative tales that describe feminine experience. The perfect characters of the primordial fictions turn into common women with ordinary responsibilities, among which supporting their ‘better halves’ like in Carol Ann Duffy’s collection The World’s Wife, (Victor Olaru: Carol Ann Duffy-Perspectiva critica, in SCRISUL ROMANESC, Nr.7-8, 2007, pp.29) or criticising the closest family members like in Liz Lochhead’s ‘The Mother’ (Victor Olaru: Liz Lockhead - Presentation and translation, poetry, in Ramuri, Jan - Feb. 1997, p.16).

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8. Metropolitanism. British women poets exhibit a marked preference for the urban environment, as proof of the emotional division between London and the rest of Britain. Often terrifying, the capital is a dystopian universe that nurtures estrangement and dissolution of identity as shown in Jo Shapcott’s poems (Victor Olaru: Jo Shapcott-Presentation and translation, poetry, in Ramuri, iunie-iulie, 1993), and interviews. (Victor Olaru: "Poetry is the most ethical form of art" -interview with Jo Shapcott, in Ramuri, June-July- 1991, p.8).

9. Emotional disorder. In poetry, mental imbalance takes various forms: infantophobia, sexual fascination with cruelty, madness – the typically ‘female malady’ since women are socially and culturally associated with irrationality and emotionalism. Excellent examples of emotional distrust are provided by Anne Stevenson’s ‘The Victory’ (Victor Olaru: Anne Stevenson- - Introduction and Translation, poetry, in Ramuri, Jan. 1993), Fleur Adcock’s ‘Advice to a Discarded Lover’ (Victor Olaru: Fleur Adcock - Presentation and translation, poetry - in Ramuri. June 1985, p.10), and Jo Shapcott’s ‘Ink’ (Victor Olaru: Jo Shapcott-Presentation and translation, poetry, in Ramuri, iunie-iulie, 1993, p.20)

10. Eccentricity. Milder version of madness, unconventionalism and behavioural oddities occur as neurotic outbursts that provide the self with the freedom to make bold statements as illustrated among others by: Stevie Smith, ‘The English’ and ‘Not Waving but Drowning’; Jenny Joseph, ‘Warning’ (Victor Olaru: Stevie Smith ,Introduction and Translation, poetry, in Ramuri , Jan. 1995); Fleur Adcock, ‘For Heidi with blue hair’; Susan Wicks, ‘Rings’. (Victor Olaru: Fleur Adcock - Presentation and translation, poetry- in Ramuri. June 1985, p.10).

11. Irony. Considered strategies of excess that undo the logical binaries of Western rational thought, undermining the prevailing patterns, banter and mockery codify a mode of self- expression that help the spirit survive and live with oneself at peace. Among others, Sophie Hannah offers a malicious satire directed at tourist philistinism in such poems as ‘Postcard from a Travel Snob’.(Victor Olaru: Sophie Hannah - Presentation and translation, poetry- in Luceafarul. June 1996, p.20).

12. Subversion. Refusing withdrawal within the simplicity of the domestic universe, women poets engage themselves in clever sneering at conventional norms and standards often directly

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attacking real or imaginary official positions of power, like Carol Rumens’s political poems (‘The Song of Jack Flag’, ‘Words for Politicians’, ‘The Skin Politic’) (Victor Olaru: Carol Rumen- Presentation and translation, poetry- in Tomis. June 1999, p.19), or Stevie Smith’s spiritual rebellion (‘Egocentric’, ‘The Reason’). (Victor Olaru: Stevie Smith - Presentation and translation, poetry- in Romania literara. June 1995, p.25).

To conclude, we may assert that governed by understatement and sarcasm, contemporary British poetry written by women oscillates between playful, detached irony and aggressive, emotional ridicule. On the one hand, there are poems that pose an interest in the general and the abstract, being characterised by extrovert, large gestures anchored in tradition by topics alluding to tradition and conservatism. On the other hand, there are introvert, extremely personal verses whose inclination towards the inward reflects pathos rather than pure logos.

Thematically and lexically innovative, women’s poems are often conflicting, advancing an energetic, sometimes surprising, poetic imagery whose naturalness follows the ebbs and tides of female emotions. There are, however, poets whose work reveals them as conservative guardians of poetic tradition as illustrated by Anna Adams (Victor Olaru: Anna Adams - Presentation and translation, poetry- in Romania literara, June 1999, p.19), in opposition with the new-comers who promote innovative themes and linguistic devices.

IV. Bibliographical references

IV.1. List of published books and articles (publications)

IV.1.1. Books and course books

- Literary Essays. Close Reading and Comprehension , Universitaria, Craiova, 2009

- Civilization Landmarks of Britain, Universitaria, Craiova, 2008

- Victorian Writers, vol. III, Universitaria, Craiova, 2007

- Victorian Writers, vol. II, Universitaria, Craiova, 2006

- Victorian Writers, vol. I, Universitaria, Craiova, 2005

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- The Foundations of English Criticism, Craiova, 2004

- Topomimie engleza si romana- Studiu contrastiv, Craiova, Scrisul Romanesc, 1998

- A Short Dictionary of English Place-Names, Craiova Universitaria, 1999

- Victorian Literature, Craiova, Reprografia Universitatii din Craiova, 1999 – a course for students

- Elements of English Civilization, Craiova, Reprografia Universitatii din Craiova, 2001 – a course for students

IV.1.2. Collective volumes:

- Dimensiuni Culturale”, Editor Emil Sirbulescu.-, EUC, 2009

- Dimensiuni Culturale” , Editor Aloisia Sorop.- EUC, 2008

- Studii de Limba Romana în Memoria Profesorului Radu Popescu, EUC, 2008, English Place Names Illustrating Social and Legal Customs

-. Omagiu Marius Sala, EUC 2008, pp.215-225

- Omagiu Gheorghe Bolocan, Euc, 2006, pp.340-351

IV.1.3. Studies in academic journals;

1. George Eliot and Darwinism, in Annals of the University of Craiova, Series: Philology, English, Year XIV, No.1, 2013, pp.100-117…

2. Two English versions of Mioritza- As duas versões em inglês de Mioritza, pp 192-203, in alea ESTUDOS NEOLATINOS, Alea: Estudos Neolatinos, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras Neolatinas/Faculdade de Letras – UFRJ, v. 16, n. 1. Rio de Janeiro, janeiro/junho de 2014, Semestral.1. Letras Neolatinas – Periódicos. I. Instituição, ISSN 1517-106X C DD. 807, FINANCIAMENTO, Programa de apoio às Publicações Científicas

INDEXAÇÃO: Scielo (www.scielo.br/alea), Redalyc (www.redalyc.com) Apoio:

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3. Ruskin’s aesthetic and social theories at the transition between centuries (XIX-XX). , Revista de Ştiinţe Politice/. Revue des Sciences Politiques, No. 43/2014, pp…60-76

4. John Ruskin-Between art and social justice, Revista de Ştiinţe Politice/. Revue des Sciences Politiques, No. 42/2014, pp…90-107...

5. Approaching art through nature-John Ruskin, in Analele Universităţii din Craiova, Seria Ştiinţe filologice, Limbi străine aplicate, Anul IX, Nr. 1(10)/2013, ISSN: 1841-8074

6. John Ruskin, an interpreter of Victorian society, Revista de Ştiinţe Politice/. Revue des Sciences Politiques, No. 40/2013, pp.59-73.

7. Details of an Intellectual Autobiography, Annals of the University of Craiova, series: Philology, English, vol. 1, 2011

8. The Approach of Nature in Ruskin’s Work, in Anale DLSA, 1-2, 201

9. Ruskin, the social critic, Annals of the University of Craiova, series: Philology, English, vol 1, 2010

10. Producing Literature in Late 19th Century England: George Gissing’s New Grub Street, in Anale DLSA, 1-2, 2007

11. Criticism as an Individual Activity: The Approach through Reading, Annals of the University of Craiova, series: Philology, English, vol.1, 2007

12. Real Identity in Fiction. William Deacon Brodie- Source of Inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in Dimensiuni Culturale, EUC- 2009

13. Translating Literature into Visual - The Frankenstein Films, Annals of the University of Craiova, series: Philology, English, vol.1, 2007

14. Criticism as an Individual Activity: The Approach through Reading, Annals of the University of Craiova, series: Philology, English, vol. 1, 2007

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15. Art and Literature- Some Gothic Motifs, ECO-Gorj 2007, Universitatea Constantin Brancusi Tg-Jiu.

16. Epiphany and Browning: Character Made manifest, in Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice-Engleza, Anul VII, Nr 1-2-2006, pp.65-87, EUC

17. English Place-Names Illustrating Social and Legal Customs, in Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice, Limbi Straine Aplicate, Anul III, Nr.1 -2007

18. Categoria nume de grup in toponimia romaneasca si engleza, in OMAGIU MARIUS SALA, volum colectiv, 2007

19. Discussion-A Major Means of Stimulating Teaching Activities.in Omagiu Gheorghe Bolocan, p.340-351,Universitaria, 2006.

20. Economic Aspects in Dickens’ Great Expectations, 2006 „Economics and Globalization”, November 24-25,2006,Targu-Jiu,

21. Economics and Literature in Victorian England: Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism, Nov. 2006, Targu-Jiu, Romania

22. The Double Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, DIMENSIUNI CULTURALE” , Editor Emil Sirbulescu.-,2005

23. The Double Life of William Deacon Broadie, Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice, Literatura Romana si Universala , 2005

24. Mary Shelley and the Gothic Novel ,Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice, Literatura Romana si Universala , 2006

25. Mary Shelley’s Prophetic Vision , Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice- Engleza, anul VII, Nr.1-2006

26. Romanian Poetry into English, in Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice, Limbi Straine Aplicate, Anul II, Nr.1-2, 2006, ISSN: 1841-8074

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27. English Place-Names of French Origin, in Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice, Lingvistica, AnulXXVIII, Nr.1-2, 2006, EUC, Craiova

28. The Gothic As Part Of Neo-Romanticism:Stevenson's Short Stories, Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice- Engleza, anul VI, Nr.1-2005, pp.99-111, Universitaria, Craiova,

29. Cultural Aspects of the Romanian Immigration in the United States of America, Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Literatura Romana si Universala, Anul XXVI , Nr.1-2, 2004

30. The Literature about Dracula: the Roots of an Iconic Figure, Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Sectia Engleza, 2004

31. The Alchemists in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Sectia Engleza, 2003

32. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the Spectacle of Masculinity, Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Sectia Engleza, 2002

33. The Artificial Man, Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Sectia Engleza, 2001 The Role of Appelatives in the Formation of Place-Names, Studii si cercetari de onomastica (SCO) nr. I, anul III, page 67-24, 1998, Craiova

34. Methods of Studying English Place-Names, Analele Universitatii din Craiova, 1997, p. 180- 187

35. English Place-Names and Their Meaning, Analele Universitatii din Craiova, 1997, p. 18-25

36. The Origins of English Place-Names, Studii si cercetari de onomastica (SCO) nr. III, anul II, pag. 37, Craiova 1997

37. Determinatives in English Place - Names, Analele Universitatii din Craiova, 1996

38. The Influence of French on English Place - Names, Analele Colegiului din Drobeta - Turnu Severin, 1996

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39. The Category of Folk Names in English Toponymy, Studii si cercetari de onomastica (SCO) nr. I, anul II, page 99, Craiova 1996.

40. Types of Place- Names Formations in English and Romanian, Studii si cercetari de onomastica (SCO) nr. I, anul I, page 57, Craiova 1995.

IV.1.4. Articles in periodicals:

1. Gerard Manley Hopkins, un importanat precursor al poeziei moderne, Ramuri, dec.2013, p.10. 2. Poeme de Tony Hoagland, Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri, aug.2012. 3. Kay Ryan si comprimarea gandului in poezie, in Scrisul Romanesc, nr.4, 2009, p.29. 4. Ted Kooser, poet national american”, in Scrisul Romanesc, nr.1, 2009, p.29. 5. Lady Mary Wroth, prima prozatoare britanica, in Ramuri, Nr.1, ianuarie, 2009, p.20. 6. Billy Collins, un ‚’fenomen’’ al poeziei americane contemporane, in Scrisul Romanesc, nr.2, 2008, p.29. 7. John Ashbery-portret literar, in Scrisul Romanesc, nr.1, 2008, p. 20. 8. Voci lirice britanice ale decadei 1994-2004, in Scrisul Romanesc, nr.11-12, 2007, p.20. 9. Literatura si istorie la Thomas Babington Macaulay, in Ramuri, Nr.4, aprilie, 2007, p. 20. 10. John Tranter: Orchestrarea disparitatilor, in Ramuri, Nr.2, februarie 2007,p.17 11. Versiuni din Sonetele lui Rilke pentru Orfeu: Scimbare, vazute de Don Paterson, in Scrisul Romanesc, Nr.1-2, ian.-feb., 2007 12. Loc pustiu pentru W.S.Merwin, in Scrisul Romanesc, Nr.1-2, ian.-feb., 2007. 13. Carol Ann Duffy-Perspectiva critica, in Scrisul Romanesc, Nr.7-8, 2007, pp.29. 14. Motive ale poeziei victoriene, in Ramuri, Nr.7-8, 2007, pp.22. 15. Dizidenti victorieni, in Ramuri, Nr. 12, decembrie, 2006. 16. New Writing 14: Paul Perry, Hibernare, prezentare si traducere in Scrisul Romanesc, Nr. 9-10, 2006 17. Chenjerai Hove: Numarand noptile, prezentare si traducere in Scrisul Romanesc, Nr. 9- 10, 2006.

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18. Carrie Etter: Divort, prezentare si traducere in Scrisul Romanesc, Nr. 9- 10, 2006. 19. Jeff Dolven:Valsul lui Alcibiade, prezentare si traducere in Ramuri, Nr. 9, 2006. 20. John Tranter: Invitatie in America, prezentare si traducere in Ramuri, Nr. 9, 2006. 21. Veronica Gaylie: Rugaciuni, prezentare si traducere in RAMURI, Nr. 9, 2006. 22. Patience Agbabi - Prezentare si traducere, in Scrisul Romanesc, 1-2, 2005. 23. Alan Jenkins - Prezentare si traducere Scrisul Romanesc, 1-2, 2005. 24. Maude Caitlin - Prezentare si traducere Scrisul Romanesc, 7-8, 2004. 25. Beverly Bie, Prezentare si traducere Scrisul Romanesc, 1-2, 2004. 26. Peter Scupman – poem -Prezentare si traducere, Scrisul Romanesc, 1-2, 2004. 27. Matt Simpson – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Scrisul Romanesc, 1-2, 2004. 28. Rory Brennan – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Dec 2004. 29. Glenda Cimino – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Dec 2004. 30. Moia Cannon – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Dec 2004. 31. John Liddy – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Dec 2004. 32. Thomas Mac Siormoin – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Dec 2004 33. Eva Bourke – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Dec 2004. 34. Jerry Murphy – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Dec 2004. 35. Rita Ann Higgins – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Dec 2004. 36. Paul Durcan – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Nov 2003. 37. Eavan Boland – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Nov 2003. 38. Paula Meeham – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-Nov 2003. 39. Helen Ivory - poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-June-July 2003. 40. John Ash – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Scrisul Romanesc, 4, 2003. 41. |David Constantine - poem- Prezentare si traducere, Scrisul Romanesc, 4, 2003. 42. Bernard O’Donoghue – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Scrisul Romanesc, 4, 2003. 43. Ruth Fainlight – poem - Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-June-July 2003. 44. Tom Pow - poem- Prezentare si traducere, Ramuri-June-July 2003. 45. Colm Toibin -proza, "Farul din Blackwater", Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere), Noiembrie – December 2002 46. Isabel Dixon - poezie, Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere), Martie 2002.

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47. Ester Morgan - poezie, Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere), Martie 2002. 48. Isabel Dixon - poezie, Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere), Martie 2002. 49. Vivienne Vermes – poezie din volumul "Sand Woman", - ("Cand lumea isi opreste roata"), Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Ian. 2002. 50. Vivienne Vermes – poezie din volumul "Sand Woman", - ("Femeia de nisip"), Ramuri,(Prezentare si traducere) Ian. 2002 51. Philippe Jones – poezie din volumul "Le dénombrement des choses", Le Spandale, 1973 -("Intai viata"), Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Iulie - Aug. 2000. 52. Philippe Jones – poezie din volumul "Le dénombrement des choses", Le Spandale, 1973 - ("Inedit"), Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Iulie - Aug. 2000. 53. Philippe Jones - poezie din volumul "Le dénombrement des choses", Le Spandale, 1973 - ("Formele diminetii"), Ramuri, (Presentare si Traducere) Iulie - Aug. 2000. 54. Philippe Jones – poezie din volumul "Le dénombrement des choses", Le Spandale, 1973 -("Hemoragia fluviului"), Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Iulie - Aug. 2000. 55. Edna Wiley - poem - ("Petrecerea"), Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Iunie 2000. 56. Edna Wiley - poem - ("Sufletul da sarutul de adio"), Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Iunie 2000. 57. Edna Wiley - poem - ("Lituanie pentru o zi insorita"), Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Iun. 2001. 58. Francoise Wuilmart – eseu, "Pacatul egalizarii" in traducerea literara, Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere), May – Iun. 2001 59. Guy Goffette – poezie - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) April 2000. 60. Sheila O'Hagan, din volumul "The Peacock's Eye", Salmon Publishing (1992) - "Bucataria lui Mozart" - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Martie 2000. 61. Sheila O'Hagan, din volumul "The Peacock's Eye", Salmon Publishing (1992) - "Paianjenul" – Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Martie 2000. 62. Sheila O'Hagan, din volumul "The Peacock's Eye", Salmon Publishing (1992) - "Tata" - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Martie 2000. 63. Peter McDonald - Ucigasii - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Feb. 2000. 64. Peter McDonald - Contele Dracula se distreaza - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Feb.

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2000. 65. Peter McDonald - Nuvela - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Feb. 2000. 66. Colette - Nys - Mazure si Francoise Lison - Leroy - poezie - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Nov. 1999 67. André Schmitz - poezie - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Oct.1999. 68. Allan Brownjohn - poezie - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Martie 1999. 69. Adam Sorkin - eseu - "Boala Traducerii" si insanatosirea poeziei - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Februarie 1999. 70. Jean "Binta" Breeze - poezie - Luceafarul, (Prezentare si traducere) Oct. 1998. 71. Tony Harrison - poezie - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Sept. 1998. 72. Jonathan Coe – proza - Ramuri, (Prezentare si traducere) Aug. 1998. 73. Liz Lockhead - poezie – Ramuri, Ian. - Feb. 1997 (Prezentare si traducere) 74. Elaine Feinstein – poezie, in Ramuri, Oct - Noiembrie - Dec. 1996 (Prezentare si traducere). 75. Dennis O'Driscoll – poezie (Introducere si traducere), Ramuri, Ian. -Feb. 1992. (II) 76. Dennis O'Driscoll – poezie (Introducere si traduere), Ramuri, Ian. - Feb. 1992. (I) 77. Saul Bellow - proza - Introducere si traducere, Ramuri, 1990. 78. Jean Negulesco about Constantin Brancusi – Introducere si prezentare a unui extras din cartea lui Jean Negulescu "Memoirs of Hollywood" – Ramuri, Decembrie 1987.

IV. Bibliographical references

IV.1.5. Bibliographical quotations in volumes

1. Sud-Vest (O antologie a scriitorilor contemporani din Oltenia), Editura Aius, Craiova, 1998, ISBN 973-9251-86-2, pp. 237-245

2. Florea Firan, Profiluri si structuri literare, Editura Scrisul Romanesc, Craiova, 2003, ISBN 973-38-0391-x, pp.131-133.

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3. Florea Firan, Destinul unei reviste-RAMURI, 1964-2005, Editura Scrisul Romanesc, Craiova, 2003, ISBN 973-38-0476-2, pp.101-102.

4. Lucian Dindirica (coordonator) Dictionarul bibliografic al membrilor Uniunii Scriitorilor din Romania-Filiala Craiova , Editura Aius, Craiova, 2010, ISBN, 81'374.2:016:929 (498 Craiova), 81'374.2:061 Uniunea Scriitorilor, p.172-174 .

5. Dictionarul Personalitatilor din Romania. Biografii contemporane, Editia 2011, Editura Anima, Bucuresti, ISBN 978-973-7729-37-8, p.329.

6. Virgil Stanciu, Dictionar de anglisti si americanisti romani, Editia I, Editura Tribuna, Cluj, ISBN 978-973-1878-02-7, p.234.

7. Virgil Stanciu, DAAR. Dictionar de anglisti si americanisti romani, Editia a II-a revazuta si adaugita, Limes, 2015, ISBN 978-973-726-905-8, p.120

IV.1.6. Critical references, reviews

1. Oana Ilie, Captivante eseuri de literatura anglo-americana, in AUTOGRAF MJM, nr.1,2, 3, ISSN: 1841-2130, 2008, p.10.

2. Ioan Lascu, Despre literatura victoriana si nu numai, in SCRISUL ROMANESC, nr.3, 2008, www.revistascrisulromanesc.ro, ISSN1583-9125 , p.19.

3 .Sorin Cazacu, Victorian Writers, vol. I, in Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Literatura Romana, Universala si Comaparata, N.1-4, 2007-2008, ISSN 1224-5720, p.224.

4 Oana Ilie, O lectie de literatura engleza victoriana, recenzie la volumul Victorian Writers”-vol. III, in SCRISUL ROMANESC, Nr.3-4, 2007, www.revistascrisulromanesc.ro,ISSN1583-9125, p.9.

5. Sorin Cazacu, Un pod peste timp, recenzie la volumul Victorian Writers- vol. I, in AUTOGRAF MGM, Nr.4-5-6, 2007, ISSN: 1841-2130, 2008, p.10.

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6. Sorin Cazacu, Victorian Writers–vol.II, recenzie, in EX PONTO, Constanta ,Nr.2, aprilie- iunie, 2007, ISSN 2065 – 4200, p.165.

7. Sorin Cazacu, Victorian Writers”-vol.III. recenzie, in RAMURI, Nr.3, 2007, revistaramuri.ro/ ISSN 1220-6342, p.15.

8.. Ovidiu Ghidirmic: Comparatism lingvistic si cercetare disciplinara, recenzie la vol. Toponimie engleza si romana, in RAMURI, Nr.2, 1999.,revistaramuri.ro/ ISSN 1220-6342

IV.1.7. Papers read in sessions (from 2001 to present)

1. Victor Olaru, Literary Anomalies in Victorian Fiction, The 13-th International Conference LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND CULTURAL POLICIES - "ERROR IN CONTEXT, CONTEXT OF ERROR", Craiova, November 19-21, 2014. http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

2. Victor Olaru , Ruskin’s aesthetic and social theories at the transition between centuries (XIX- XX). Fourth International Conference AFTER COMMUNISM. EAST AND WEST UNDER SCRUTINY,4-5 April 2014, Craiova, Romania -https://centerofpostcommunistpoliticalstudies.w.

3. Victor Olaru , Versiuni englezesti ale poetilor moldoveni, FESTIVALUL DE LITERATURĂ „BUCUREŞTI – CHIŞINĂU – ORHEIUL VECHI”, 20-21 iunie 2014, Colocviul „ Două state – o singură literatură”- litere.md/cateva-file-din-cronica-facultatii-de-litere/

4. Victor Olaru-Aspects of fluctuating doubt in Tennyson’s poetry. The 12-th international conference LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND CULTURAL POLICIES - "REALITY: AN OPEN WINDOW TO DOUBT", Craiova, October 3-5, 2013, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

5. Victor Olaru, John Ruskin-Between art and social justice- Fourth International Conference AFTER COMMUNISM. EASt AND WEST UNDER SCRUTINY, 4-5 April 2013, Craiova, Romania, https://centerofpostcommunistpoliticalstudies.w.

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6. Victor Olaru, Approaching Art through Nature - John Ruskin, 23rd CONFERENCE ON BRITISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES TIMIȘOARA, ROMANIA, May 16 18, 2013, www.litere.uvt.ro/conferinte/BAS/index.htm

7. Victor Olaru, Sources of Conflict-Ruskin’s Writings on Society and Economics, 11th International Conference LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL POLICIES ” SITES OF DISSENSION,SITES OF NEGOCIATION ”, 15-16 Nov. 2012, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

8.Victor Olaru, Romanian Contemporary Poetry into English , International Writers and Translators' Center of Rhodes, Greece, 7-10 June, 2011 , www.transartists.org/.../international- writers-tra...

9.Victor Olaru, “Details’ of an intellectual autobiography: Ruskin’s “Praeterita”, The 10th International Conference “Language, Literature And Cultural Policies – Details That Matter” - First Call for Papers; - Second Call for Papers - October 7-9, 2011, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

10.Victor Olaru, Ruskin, the social critic, THE 9th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE - “LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL POLICIES – CENTRES AND (EX-) CENTRICITIES” - Craiova, Romania, November 12-14, 2010, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

11.Victor Olaru- Details of an intellectual biography ,10th International Conference LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL POLICIES ”DETAILS THAT MATTER’’, CRAIOVA, 7-9 October 2011, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

12. Victor Olaru, The approach nature in Ruskin’s writings , Colocviul International LIMBA,CULTURA,CIVILIZATIE, A X-A editie, Craiova, 24-26 martie, 2011, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

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13.Victor Olaru-Stefan Augustin Doinas in English translation, 4th ENIEDA Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education, Vrsac, Serbia, 29 September-10 October, 2011, old.fil.bg.ac.rs/katedre/opstaling/majam_en.html, listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/.../012470.htm.

14. Victor Olaru, My Experience of Translating Poetry , 35th BELGRADE MEETING OF TRANSLATORS, Belgrad, Srebia, 27-30 mai, 2010, www.linguisticsociety.org/.../conferences- calls

15. Victor Olaru, Victorian prophets-Thomas Carlyle, 9th International Conference, ”Centres and [ Ex-] Centricities”- Craiova, November 12-14, 2010, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

16. Victor Olaru, Carlyle and the prophetic decade, THE 8th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL POLICIES” – FROM EVOLUTION TO INVOLUTION , Craiova, Romania, October 2-4, 2009, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

17. Victor Olaru, Lady Mary Wroth: the first English fiction writer, International Colloquium “Language, Culture, Civilisation”, Craiova, 3-5 March, 2009, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

18. Victor Olaru, “ European Dimension of Thomas De Quincy”, EUROPEAN VALUES IN LITERATURE, Simpozion judetean organizat cu ocazia zilelor Colegiului National ,, ELENA CUZA „”, Craiova, 19-21 mai 2007,” www.elenacuza.ro/

19. Victor Olaru, Cultural Aspects of the Romanian Immigration in the United States of America THE 7th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL POLICIES” – INTERFACES , Craiova, Romania, November 13-15, 2008, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

20. Victor Olaru, Art and Literature, “Universitatea-parte a strategiilor de postaderare a Romaniei la UNIUNEA EUROPEANA” , 2-3 iunie, 2007, TARGU-JIU, www.utgjiu.ro/

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21. Victor Olaru, Ruskin, the social critic, The 7th International Conference “Language, Literature and Cultural Policies”- Interfaces, Craiova, Romania, Noiembrie, 13-15, 2008, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

22. Victor Olaru, The Alchemists in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, THE 6th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL POLICIES – OBSESSIVE DISCOURSE” , Craiova, Romania, October 25-27, 2007, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

23. Victor Olaru, The influence of drugs on writing: Thomas de Quincey and Charles Baudelaire, Colloque International "Synchronie et diachronie dans l’étude du français - CRAIOVA, 4-5 mai 2007, , http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

24. Victor Olaru, Londra si Charles Dickens, COLOCVIUL ALGCR. MARILE ORAŞE ŞI LITERATURA. - 13-15 iulie 2007, Sibiu, www.unitbv.ro/algcr/IstoricConferinţe/2007.aspx

25. Victor Olaru-, Epiphany and Browning: Character Made Manifest, THE 5th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL POLICIES “WORD POWER”, Craiova , 2-4 Nov., 2006, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

26..Victor Olaru, Economic Aspects in Dickens’ Great Expectations, in Proceedings of 3rd International Scientific Conference ECO-TREND, 2006 „Economics and Globalization”, Session 6- HUMANITIES, November 24-25 , 2006, Targu-Jiu,Romania, www.utgjiu.ro/

27. Victor Olaru, Economics and Literature in Victorian England: Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism , 3rd International Scientific Conference ECO-TREND, 2006 „Economics and Globalization”, Session 6- HUMANITIES, November 24-25 , 2006, Targu-Jiu,Romania/ www.utgjiu.ro/

28. Victor Olaru, The Literature about Dracula: the Roots of an Iconic Figure, The 5th International Conference, Language, Literature And Cultural Policies “Word Power”, Craiova, 2-

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4 Nov., 2006, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

29.Victor Olaru, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the Spectacle of Masculinity, The 4th International Conference “Language, Literature And Cultural Policies”, Craiova, 5-6 Nov., 2004, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

30. Victor Olaru, The Artificial Man, la The International Conference “Language, Literature And Cultural Policies”, Craiova, 2-4 ,Nov., 2001, http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/litere/ Conferinţe, colocvii şi simpozioane internaţionale.

31. Victor Olaru, Studii culturale romanesti la Boston College, ROMANIAN CULTURAL CENTER, NEW YORK, aprilie 2001, www.icrny.org/, www.icr.ro/new-york/

32. Victor Olaru, George Eliot’s Moral World , CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY LONG BEACH, mai 2001, https://www.csulb.edu/

33.Victor Olaru, My Fulbright experience at Boston College, FULBRIGHT VISITING SCHOLAR CONFERENCE: ,,Immigration and Migration Past, Present and Future: The American Experience”, Washington D.C., SUA, martie 2001, cis01.ucv.ro/resurse/113_fisa.doc

IV.1.8. Other professional activities-conferences, seminars, workshops

1. 10th International Conference Language, Literature and Cultural Policies, 7-9 October 2011

2. 4th ENIEDA Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education, Vrsac, Serbia, 29 September-10 October, 2011

3..Colocviul international „ LIMBA,CULTURA,CIVILIZATIE ”, Craiova, 24-26 March, 2011

4. 9TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE „” Centres and [ Ex-] Centricities”-Craiova, November 12-14, 2010

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5. INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM “LANGUAGE, CULTURE, CIVILISATION”, Craiova, 3-5 March, 2009

6. 7th International Conference Language, Literature and Cultural Policies Interfaces, Craiova , Romania, November, 13-15 , 2008

7. 6th International Conference Language, Literature and Cultural Policies; ’’ OBSESSIVE DISCOURSE ’’, University of Craiova, Faculty of Letters, Department of British and American Studies, October 25-27, 2007

8. 3rd International Scientific Conference Eco-Trend 2006, 24-25 Nov., 2006, Targu-Jiu, Romania

9.5th International Conference Language, Literature and Cultural Policies “WORD POWER”, Craiova , 2-4 Nov., 2006

10. Participant EPSO ,European Community, Brussels, Oct. 2006

11..4th International Conference Language, Literature and Cultural Policies ” , Craiova, 5-6 Nov. ,2004

12.3th International Conference Language, Literature and Cultural Policies Craiova, 2-4, Nov., 2001

13. ROMANIAN CULTURAL CENTER, NEW YORK, Studii culturale romanesti la Boston College, April, 2001

14. CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY LONG BEACH , George Eliot’s Moral World , May 2001

15. Translation referent of ILE ( IRELAND LITERATURE EXCHANGE) , Nov., 2001

16. SEMINAR DE STUDII CULTURALE BRITANICE, organizat de CONSILIUL BRITANIC, 3-7 May, 1999, Fantanele, Judet Cluj

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17. CONFERINTA INTERNATIONALA“INTALNIREA SCRIITORILOR ROMANI DIN INTREAGA LUME” , NEPTUN, 2-6 June, 1999.

18. The Seneffe Translation Seminars , Seneffe, Belgium, 1998, Aug.

19. The BCLT Translation Seminars, Norwich, Great Britain, 1997, April-May

20. CRAIOVA SOCIOLINGUISTIC SEMINAR, July, 1995 “English Place-Names with Christian Association”

21. BRITISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES, Timisoara, 18-20 May, 1995, “The Structure of English Place Names “ (p.11)

22. Conference “The Historical and Political Turn in American Literary Studies“, J.F. Kennedy Institute for North America Studies, Berlin, 1994, presentation “Some Cultural Aspects of the Romanian Americans”

23. University of Craiova,, Sesiunea Stiintifica Lingvistica Teoret si Aplicata, “Modalitati de formare a toponimelor in limba engleza, 28-29 mai, 1993 (p.11)

24. UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF COMPARATIVE LITERARY THEORY AND LITERARY TRANSLATION “Translating Romanian Poetry into English”, 26 May, 1992

25. SECOND WARWICK SEMINAR ON BRITISH CULTURAL STUDIES, 27 Aug.-3 Sept., 1991, Warwick , Great Britain.

IV.1.9. Membership and activities in professional associations:

• ROMANIAN WRITER’S UNION

• ROMANIAN FULBRIGHT ALUMNI ASSOCIATION (RFAA)

• ENGLISH SPEAKING UNION (ESSU)

• EUROPEAN SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF ENGLISH (ESSE)

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• ROMANIAN ASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIES, (RAAS)

• ASOCIATIA DE LITERATURA GENERALA SI COMPARATA DIN ROMANIA

• ROMANIAN SOCIETY FOR PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES

• RAMURI CULTURAL FOUNDATION

• OMNIA-CULTURAL FOUNDATION OF FRENCH LIBRARY

• ROMANIAN FULBRIGHT ALUMNI ASSOCIATION (RFAA)

IV.1.10. Professional honors, awards and fellowships:

• Honorary Vice-Consul of Romania in Boston, 2000-2001

• Teaching and Research Fulbright grant -Boston College, USA (2000-2001)

• Included in the DICTIONARY OF ROMANIAN PERSONALITIES. .Contemporary Biographies, edition 2011

• Appointed Translation referent of Ireland Literature

Exchange, Dublin, Ireland (2001)

• 13-th Central European Summer School in Generative Grammar,

Olomouc, Czech Republic (2006)

• Institute for Applied Language Studies University of

Edinburgh, Scotland (1992)

• member of EPSO Commission, European Community, Brussels, Belgium (2006)

• British Centre for Literary Translation, University of

East Anglia, Norwich, Great Britain (1997)

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• Literary Translation Centre-Senneffe, Belgium (1998)

• Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Ireland(1999)

• J.F.K. Institute for North-American Studies,Berlin,1994

V. References

1. Abrams, M.H, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. NY: Oxford UP, 1953, p.34. 2. Almog, Oz. The Problem of Social Type: A Review, Electronic Journal of Sociology. 1998, http://www.sociology.org/content/vol 003.004/almog.html.

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3. Alvarez, A. The New Poetry or Beyond the Gentility Principle. The New Poetry. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd. First published 1962. Revised Edition 1966. 21-32. 4. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1993. In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. Oxford University Press. 5. Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich, Rabelais and His World,,Indiana University Press, 1984 6. Baudrillard, J., M. Guillaume. Figuri ale alterităţii (Paralela 45: Piteşti: Paralela 45, 2002.. 7. Bal, Mieke. Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. 2nd edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. 8. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex, London: Jonathan Cape, 1953. 9. Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Introduction in W. McNeill, K. Feldman (eds.) Continental Philosophy: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 161-167. 10. Bem, S. L. Gender schema theory: A cognitive account of sex-typing. Psychological Review, 88, 1981: 354–364. 11. Bloom, Harold. 1994. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. p. 226. New York: Harcourt Brace 12. Booth, Alison. Greatness Engendered. George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. New York: Cornell University Press, 1992. 13. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. 14. Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Tr. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. 15. Bourdieu, Pierre. Domination. California: Stanford University Press, 1995. 16. Bourdieu, Pierre. Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2000. 17. Brook, Barbara. Feminist Perspectives on the Body. London and New York: Pearson Longman, 1999. 18. Brooks, Peter. Realist Vision. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005. 19. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble – Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.

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20. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge, 1993. 21. Cixous, Hélène. Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks: Ways Out/Forays. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (Eds.). The Feminist Reader. Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism. Second edition. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: MacMillan. 1997. 91-103 22. Creegan, Kate. The Sociology of the Body. London: Sage Publications, 2006. 23. David, Deirdre. Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy – Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot. New York: Cornell University Press, 1987. 24. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger – an Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Routledge, 2002 (1966). 25. Dollimore, Jonathan, Sexual Dissidence. Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault, Claredon Press, Oxford, 1991, p.64. 26. Dyer, Richard. The Role of Stereotypes. Media Studies: A reader, 2nd edition, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999: 1-6. 27. Eagleton, Terry. Chapter III. In The Function of Criticism: From the Spectator to Post- Structuralism, pp. 45-67. London: Verso, 1984. 28. Feuerlicht, Ignace. Alienation: From Past to Future. Westport, Connecticut: greenwood Press, 1978. 1978: 211.). 29. Flint, Kate. George Eliot and Gender, The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot. Ed. George Levine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001: 159-180. 30. Foucault, Michel. The Subject and Power, Critical Inquiry, Vol.8, No.4, Summer, University of Chigago Press, 1982; 777-795. 31. Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977. 32. Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality. Volume 1. New York: Random House, 1990. 33. Fletcher, Pauline. Victorian Poetry 34, no. 1 (spring 1996): pp.87-99). 34. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. 35. Galea, Ileana, Victorianism &Literature, Editura Dacia/Dacia Publishing House, Cluj- Napoca,1996, p.9.

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36. Gilbert, Sandra M., Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic-the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, West Hanover: Halliday Lithograph, 1980, p. 492. 37. Gilmour, Robin, Using the Victorians: the Victorian Age in Contemporary Fiction, pp.190-213, p.190, in Rereading Victorian Fiction,Edited by Alice Jenkins and Juliet John, Palgrave, 2002. 38. Gray, Frances, Jung, Irigaray, Individuation, Routledge, (2008). 39. Hal Stanley G.l and. Hartwell, E.M., Bilateral Asymmetry of Function, Mind 9, 33 (January 1884): 93–109, 102. 40. Hall, Stuart, and Paul Du Gay. Questions of Cultural Identity, London, Sage Publications, 2005, quoted by Rodica Dimitriu in Dimitriu, Rodica. The Cultural Turn in Translation Studies, Iasi: Institutul European, 2005, p.32. 41. Harding, Jason, ed., T. S. Eliot in Context, Cambridge University Press, p.208. 42. Harrington, Anne, Medicine, Mind and the Double Brain: A Study in Nineteenth- Century Thought. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), p. 136. 43. Heilmann A. and Llewellyn M.Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999-2009,, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 44. Hubbard, Phil and Kitchin, Rob, Key Thinkers on Space and Place, Second Edition, Loughborough University, 2011. 45. Ingham, Patricia. The Language of Gender and Class-Transformation in the Victorian Class.New York: Routledge. 2003. 46. Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. New York: Cornell University Press, 1974. 47. Johnson, Allan. The Gender Knot: Unravelling Our Patriarchal Legacy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005. 48. Jung, C. G. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Volume VIII, 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 1969. 49. Jung, C. G. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Transformation Symbolism in the Mass. Volume XI, 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 1969.

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50. Kaplan, Caren, Questions of Travel: Postmodern Siscourses of Displacement. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996. 51. Kristeva, Julia. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. 52. Kristeva, Julia. Revolution in Poetic Language. Trans. M. Waller, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. 53. Klapp, O.E. Heroes, Villains and Fools. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1962. 54. Knapp, Bettina Liebowitz. Exile and the Writer: Exoteric and Esoteric Experiences: A Jungian Approach. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. 55. Krupnick, Mark. ed. Displacement:Derrida and After. Bloomongton: Indiana University Press, 1953: p.15. 56. Lacan, Jacques. God and the Jouissance of the Woman. Seminar XX. 1975. 57. Leerssen, Joep. History and Method. Imagology— The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters (A Critical Survey). Eds. Beller, Manfred and Joep Leerssen. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007: 17-32. 58. Lewis, C. S. The Four Loves. U.S.A., Helen Joy Lewis, 1960. 59. Mircea Mihaies, Victorian Fiction, Editura Mirton, 1998.p.7. 60. Moi, Toril. Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture, New Literary History, Vol 22, No 4, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991: 1071-1049. 61. Moi, Toril. From Femininity to Finitude: Freud, Lacan, And Feminism, Again, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, volume 29, no. 3, 2004: 841-878. 62. Nistor,E. A Blossom of Words in a Dusty Ray of Sunlight, .Contemporary British Women Poets (1950-2005), Bucharest, Tracus Arte, 2012, p.411. 63. Montaigne, M. de. The Complete Essays. (transl. M. A. Screech). London: Penguin Books, 1991. 64. Parrinder, Patrick. Victorian Criticism: The Republic of Letters. In Authors and Authority: English and American Criticism 1750-1990, pp. 117-206. London: Macmillan, 1991.

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65. Reading, Hugo F. Dictionary of the Social Sciences. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. 66. Robertson, I. Sociology. 3rd Ed. New-York: Worth, 1987. 67. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage, 1994 68. Said, Edward W. Reflection on Exile: And Other Literary and Cultural Essays. London: Granta Books, 2001: 173-186. 69. Schmidt, Michael and Grevel Lindop (Eds.). Introduction’. British Poetry Since 1960. A Critical Survey. Oxford: Carcanet Press Ltd. 1972. 1-9. 70. Sejourne Philippe, The Feminine Tradition in English Fiction, Iasi: Institutul European, 1999. 71. Showalter, Elaine Dr. Jekyll’s Closet, in The Haunted Mind: The Super-natural in Victorian Literature, ed. Elton E. Smith and Robert Haas. London: Scarecrow Press, 1999, p. 75. 72. Stanley, G. Hall and E. M. Hartwell, Bilateral Asymmetry of Function, Mind 9, 33 (January 1884): 93–109, 102. 73. Stangor, Charles, Schaller, Mark. Stereotypes as Individual and Collective Representations, Stereotypes and Stereotyping. Eds. C. Neil Macrae, Charles Stangor, Miles Hewstone, 1996: 3-40. 74. Stets, Jan E., Burke, Peter J. “A Sociological Approach to Self and Identity”. Handbook of Self and Identity. New York: Guilford Press, 2005: 128-152. 75. Stevenson, R.L. My First Book (1894), in Treasure Island , ed. Emma Letley (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 192–200, 195. 76. Stiles, Anne, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Volume 46, Number 4, Autumn,Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, pp. 879-900. 77. Springer Sally P. and Deutsch Georg, Left Brain, Right Brain: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience, 5th edn. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1997), chapter. 3. 78. Thornton, Margaret. Public and Private: Feminist Legal Debates. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

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79. Verstraete, Ginette. Imagology— The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters (A Critical Survey). Eds. Beller, Manfred and Joep Leerssen. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007: 328-29. 80. Weedon, Chris. Feminism, Theory and the Politics of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. 81. Wellek, René. “English Criticism.” In A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, Volume 3: The Age of Transition, pp. 86-92. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965 82. Warren, Alba H., Jr. The Topics of English Poetic Theory, 1825-1865. In English Poetic Theory, 1825-1865, pp. 3-34. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950.

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