TABLE OF CONTENTS/TABLE DES MATIÈRES/INHALTSVERZEICHNIS ENGLISH STUDIES .............................................................................. 2 FOREGROUNDING ALTERNATIVE PARADIGMS IN CHICK LIT ................................................................................. 3 Anemona Alb ........................................................................................................................ 3 LANGUAGE AND SILENCE IN BECKETT’S “ENDGAME” ................................................................................... 10 Carmen Chiruc .................................................................................................................... 10 FAILURE IN SCOTT FITZGERALD’S CHARACTERS .......................................................................................... 19 Ioana-Maria Cistelecan ....................................................................................................... 19 CONSTRUCTING/REFLECTING ON OTHERNESS ............................................................................................. 24 Magda Danciu ..................................................................................................................... 24 RESEARCH IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES – A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE ............................................................... 31 Maria Elena Gherdan .......................................................................................................... 31 HUMOUR AND SATIRE IN EDGAR ALLAN POE’ ABSURD STORIES ...................................................................... 36 Ecaterina Hanţiu ................................................................................................................. 36 MOCKING THE MONK IN ROMANIAN SHORT STORIES; CALISTRAT HOGAŞ AND VASILE VOICULESCU ............................... 42 Andrada Marinǎu ................................................................................................................ 42 JOLLITY AND GLOOM IN COLONIAL AMERICA: THE CASE OF MERRY MOUNT ......................................................... 47 Teodor Mateoc .................................................................................................................... 47 NOLI ME TANGERE:ID-ENTITIES IN D.H. LAWRENCE’S “THE PRICESS” ............................................................... 54 Dan Negruţ ......................................................................................................................... 54 THE TRANSLATOR VS. THE TRANSLATED .................................................................................................. 61 Mădălina Pantea, Giulia Suciu ............................................................................................. 61 SPACE AND THE IMAGINARY IN J. M. SYNGE’S THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD ........................................... 66 Éva Székely ........................................................................................................................ 66 ETUDES LITTÉRAIRES FRANÇAISES .................................................... 71 LE ROMAN FRANÇAIS POSTMODERNE. SÉBASTIEN DOUBINSKY - LE LIVRE MUET ....................................................... 72 Dana Maria Cipău ............................................................................................................... 72 REPRÉSENTATIONS DE L’HISTOIRE DANS LE ROMAN PALESTINE D’HUBERT HADDAD ................................................... 79 Floarea Mateoc ................................................................................................................... 79 LANGAGE SYMBOLIQUE ET REPRÉSENTATION DU MONDE AU MOYEN AGE ............................................................... 87 Oana Aurelia Gencărău ....................................................................................................... 87 RÉÉCRITURE ET INTERTEXTUALITÉ: SOUS LE SIGNE DE LA « MALÉDICTION » ? ........................................................ 94 Maria do Rosário Girão Ribeiro dos Santos ......................................................................... 94 QUELQUES ASPECTS DE LA VISION DRAMATIQUE D’ALFRED JARRY ..................................................................... 105 Ioana Alexandrescu .......................................................................................................... 105 GERMANISTISCHE BEITRÄGE ........................................................... 110 JOHANNES MARIO SIMMEL. LITERARISCHE VERWANDTSCHAFT ......................................................................... 111 MIT ANDEREN DEUTSCHEN UND INTERNATIONALEN AUTOREN ........................................................................... 111 Andrea Hamburg ............................................................................................................. 111 FEMINISTISCHE ANSÄTZE IN INGEBORG BACHMANNS WERK ........................................................................... 122 ZUR PATHOLOGIE DES PHANTASMAS BEI E. T. A. HOFFMANN ....................................................................... 131 Till Breyer ......................................................................................................................... 131 MONA LISA. BETRACHTUNGSWEISEN IM VERGLEICH: .................................................................................. 146 LEONARDO DA VINCI UND KURT TUCHOLSKY ........................................................................................... 146 Hajnalka Hegyesi .............................................................................................................. 146 1 English Studies 2 Foregrounding Alternative Paradigms in Chick Lit Anemona Alb University of Oradea Résumé: Cet article se propose d’analyser le jeu paradigmatique identifiable dans le genre ‘chick lit’, littérature pour les jeunes filles. Keywords: paradigms, eco-feminism, secondary characters, chick lit. 1. Introduction Subverting the canon in terms of, inter alia, well-established paradigms is part and parcel of postmodernism. What I am looking at in this paper is the interplay between conflicting paradigms, i.e. more or less mainstream, canonized paradigms in chick lit, more specifically at the usurping of paradigms of consumerist hedonism by the newly-appropriated eco-feminism/green discourse paradigms that chick lit seems to have appropriated recently. 2. Theoretical Underpinnings Eco-feminism is a recent development of the feminist strand in terms of epistemological considerations. It celebrates “a pre-historic era, destroyed by patriarchal scientific culture, an era in which women were held in high-esteem.” (Danciu and Alb, 2010: 104). Indeed the tenets of matriarchy, fertility as a basic function in the – remote or contemporary – community, stability and cohesion, i.e. the cohesion of the group, woman as cohesive factor are the main staples of eco-feminism. The question crops up, what of these functions has been preserved in an age of assisted in vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers, of gender-blind career upward mobility, as a result of globalization, the leveler of time and space, whereby local, traditional images of women are blurred in the efficiency frenzy of the postmodern world? Danciu and Alb (2010) quoting Carr (2000) states that (Eco-feminism) demonstrates the relationship existing between women and Nature through the revival of ancient rituals centred on goddess worship, on the veneration of the moon, it observes and links animals and female reproductive systems considering that both women’s biology and Nature are sources of female power to resist technology (man-created power of domination); their recurrent motif is the image of the soil as mother and people as her offspring not her masters (Danciu and Alb, 2010: 105). Ergo, I would argue, filiation and not submission. Indeed, it is Jessica’s modus operandi (Jessica is the long-lost sister of the shopaholic character in the novel under scrutiny here and a secondary character-turned-main character) to work within the ecological framework, namely to engage in nature-protective clamour, vehemently voicing green discoursal preoccupations and organizing pickets and street demonstrations for a ‘cleaner’ planet. And equally saliently, to recycle massively in her private life. Among the theorists that have recently laid out the eco-feminist manifesto, the following stand out in point of their conceptual contributions: Glynis Carr, Carol Cantrell, Janice Crosby, 3 Greta Gaard, Patrick Murphy, Elizabeth Waller (all quoted in Carr, 2000). Their work is preeminently interdisciplinary, bordering on hybrid fields such as environmental justice, bio-ethics, the ecology of language etc. 3. The data The novel I am looking at as source of data for analysis belongs to Sophie Kinsella’s the Shopaholic series1 whereby the tenets of consumerism are placed under scrutiny via Becky, the consummate shopaholic whose life of hedonism and cornucopia revolves around mismanipulation of finance, in the sense that this anti-heroine is perpetually in debt as a result of her compulsive buying, spending. In this particular novel in the series, Shopaholic and Sister (2004), Kinsella has her protagonist discover a long-lost half-sister whose existence had been unknown to the family as a result of a surreptitious affair of Becky’s father in his youth. The newly-found half-sister (Jessica), who is brought onto the stage in a twist of fate ( a rare medical condition that she has and that requires blood compatibility in order to be