ROMANIAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES Editura Universităţii de Vest Timişoara 2011 A journal of The Romanian Society of English and American Studies This journal is published with the support of Universitatea de Vest, Timişoara Cover Design: Corina Nani © Romanian Journal of English Studies, no. 8, 2011 ISSN 1584-3734 EDITOR Luminiţa Frenţiu Assistant editor Andreea Şerban ADVISORY BOARD HORTENSIA PÂRLOG, University of Timişoara PIA BRÎNZEU, University of Timişoara MIHAELA IRIMIA ANGHELESCU, University of Bucureşti MIRCEA MIHAIEŞ, University of Timişoara ISABELLE SCHWARTZ – GASTINE, University of Caen DAVID SNELLING, University of Trieste CHRISTO STAMENOV, University of Sofia STEPHEN TAPSCOTT, MIT, Cambridge, MA PETER PELYVAS, University of Debrecen MIHAI ZDRENGHEA, University of Cluj-Napoca CONTENTS I CULTURAL STUDIES ADINA BAYA TELEVISUAL HISTORY IN DON DELILLO’S LIBRA ALINA-ANDREEA DRAGOESCU THE ‘GARDEN VERSUS WILDERNESS’ MYTH IN WESTERN IMAGINATION PATRICIA-DORLI DUMESCU COLONIAL VERSIONS OF A POSTCOLONIAL REALITY GYÖRGY E. SZÖNYI PROMISCUOUS ANGELS. ENOCH, BLAKE, AND A CURIOUS CASE OF ROMANTIC ORIENTALISM DANA VASILIU MEDIEVAL IMAGES OF THE CREATOR: GOD AS SCRIBE, GEOMETER AND ARCHITECT OF THE WORLD BOJANA VUJIN THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH YELLOW BRICK: EMERALD CITY AS POP-CULTURE’S METAPHOR FOR DISILLUSIONMENT II ELT STUDIES CORNELIA COŞER THE CONTEXT HAS CHANGED – SO SHALL THE TEACHER MIHAELA COZMA BUILDING CULTURAL COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRAINING: CHALLENGES AND POSSIBILITIES CSABA CZEGLÉDI RETHINKING LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY LUMINIŢA FRENŢIU and CODRUŢA ENGLISH AND THE WORLD OF WORK: GOŞA ENHANCING CAREER OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH ENGLISH MEDIUM EXAMS VALENTINA CARINA MUREŞAN IN PURSUIT OF AUTHENTIC ORAL COMMUNICATION IN THE EFL CLASSROOM ALINA NISTORESCU THE USE OF YouTube VIDEOS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING MONICA OPRESCU and FLORIN ALTERNATIVE METHODS IN TEACHING OPRESCU LITERATURE.TRANSFORMING THE LITERARY CANON III LANGUAGE STUDIES ELENA CROITORU TRANSLATING IDENTITY: RETHINKING, RIGHT WORDING AND RECONCEPTUALIZATION DANIEL DEJICA IDENTIFYING AND ANALYSING PROFESSIONAL GENRES’ PECULIARITIES FOR TRANSLATION PURPOSES: A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH GORDANA DIMKOVIĆ- ASPECTUAL ADVERB DISTRIBUTION AND TELEBAKOVIĆ LICENSING ANTOANELA MARTA DUMITRAŞCU COLLOCATIONS ARE BACK IN ‘BUSINESS’ LOREDANA FRĂŢILĂ and COGNITIVE METAPHORS IN TEACHING ROMANIŢA JUMANCA MATHEMATICS CATHERINE MACMILAN TO JOIN OR NOT TO JOIN? AN ANALYSIS OF BRITISH POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON TUTKEY’S EU ACCESSION ANCA-MARIANA PEGULESCU USING CONCEPTUAL MAPPING TO ANALYZE ROMANIAN AND ENGLISH PROVERBS MEANING RODICA SUPERCEANU CULTURE - SPECIFIC ITEMS IN THE TRANSLATION OF OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS OF VITAL EVENTS: A MODEL OF LEGAL- ADMINISTRATIVE CULTURE ALBERT VERMES THE PROBLEM OF NON-NEUTRAL FOCUS IN ENGLISH-TO-HUNGARIAN TRANSLATION NADINA VIŞAN FREE TEMPORAL VARIATION IN LITERARY TRANSLATION CRISTINA-MIHAELA ZAMFIR SEMANTIC DENSITY: STATE CHANGING WORDS IN THE BUSINESS LANGUAGE IV LITERATURE E STUDIES INTERSECTIONS IN HAROLD PINTER’S FLORENTINA ANGHEL ONE FOR THE ROAD ANA CRISTINA BĂNICERU STORYTELLERS AND HISTORIANS IN MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN AND THINGS FALL APART F. ZEYNEP BILGE AND ŞEBNEM IDENTITIES RE-CONSIDERED / MYTHOLOGY SUNAR RE-WRITTEN CRISTINA CHEVEREŞAN “I TALK WHITE” ECATERINA LIA HANȚIU EXPRESSING CANADIAN IDENTITY THROUGH ART: THE GROUP OF SEVEN’S IMPACT ON LITERATURE AND MUSIC NOORBAKHSH HOOTI SEARCH FOR SELF-RECOGNITION IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ 'THE GLASS MENAGERIE' DECONSTRUCTION AND/OR ARTUR JAUPAJ RECONSTRUCTION OF THE BRITISH WEST INDIES HISTORY IN CARYL PHILLIPS’S CAMBRIDGE TEODOR MATEOC APOCALYPSE NOW IN DON DELILLO’S WHITE NOISE RODICA MIHĂILĂ WHERE IS LITERATURE NOW IN THE FIELD OF AMERICAN STUDIES? OCTAVIAN MORE “THE LAST LARGENESS, BOLD TO SEE”: A BOHMIAN READING OF WALLACE STEVENS’S EARLY POETRY DAN NEGRUŢ THE MAD, BAD AND DANGEROUS TO KNOW HEATHCLIFF ESZTER ORMAI CHANGING STANDARDS FOR INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT IN NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S TALES TOMISLAV M. PAVLOVIĆ THE PLATONIC DIALOGUES IN ROBERT GRAVES’S HISTORICAL NOVELS DANA PERCEC and ANDREEA YOUTH AND THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE ŞERBAN MARTIN POTTER ART AS STATE OF MIND IN HENRY JAMES’ THE TRAGIC MUSE MIRNA RADIN-SABADOŠ SELVES ON THE MOVE – ALEKSANDAR HEMON’S LAZARUS PROJECT ADRIAN RADU MONKS AND WORLDLY WAYS ADRIANA RADUCANU THE URBAN GOTHIC AS A BORSALINO HAT IN GREGORY DAVID ROBERT’S SHANTARAM LAURA TOMMASO “WHEN BEGGARS DIE, THERE ARE NO COMETS SEEN”: THE ROLE OF PROPHECY IN SHAKESPEARE’S JULIUS CAESAR SECTION ONE: CULTURAL STUDIES TELEVISUAL HISTORY IN DON DELILLO’S LIBRA ADINA BAYA University of Timisoara Abstract: The current paper analyzes how the media images and clips connected to the assassination of President Kennedy function as arguments for the rendering of history as televisual experience in Don DeLillo’s Libra. Explanations for television’s power to shape historical framings are explored in the works of, among others, Walter Benjamin and later representatives of the Frankfurt School. Keywords: Don DeLillo, mass-media, the Kennedy assassination, the Frankfurt School. 1. Introduction Televised media and the impact of its omnipresent discourse in contemporary society are identified as constant themes throughout DeLillo’s literary work. From his 1970s to his 2000s novels, characters are constantly exposed to the ever-growing power of the media. From Great Jones Street to Cosmopolis, the author displays an obvious interest in how the lives of audiences are affected by visual media consumption; how it influences the way they talk, think and act. However, it is only in Libra that DeLillo visibly explores the complex relationship between history and television. The arguments for the association between the two are provided by history itself, since the novel’s theme—the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—was represented in the eyes of the American public primarily by means of a few media images and short films. Kennedy’s shooting captured by the amateur camera of Abraham Zapruder, Oswald’s killing by Jack Ruby in front of live television cameras, as well as Oswald’s famous “backyard photos”—these are the main visual instruments that influenced the way in which the event was recorded in the collective memory of American audiences and thus entered history. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the media images and clips that are connected to the assassination function as arguments for the rendering of history as televisual experience in DeLillo’s novel Libra. Potential explanations for television’s power to shape how an event is framed and enters history are explored in the works of Walter Benjamin and later representatives of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Issues pertaining to the reconfiguration of the relationship between on-screen performers and their audiences, as well as the fascination of stardom that nurtures the desire of characters like Oswald to enter history at any cost are also analyzed in the works of French media critics Guy Debord and Gilles Lipovetsky, together with the mechanisms that ensure the TV screen’s mesmerizing power, analyzed in some of Pierre Bourdieu’s critical work. 2. The “Heat And Light” Of The Past The few seconds of the Zapruder film capturing the head shot of President Kennedy during his Dallas motorcade, together with Oswald’s shooting by Jack Ruby represent two key episodes in the historical reconstruction of the JFK assassination case. To represent the latter scene in his novel Libra, DeLillo chooses to render actions as if through the lens of a television camera. What he does in fact is retell not the event as such, but the way in which the event was mirrored by television. In other words, he portrays its climactic sections from the point of view of the television camera. The scene in the novel starts with Jack Ruby’s preparation, his morning at home, his phone conversation with Brenda Jean Sensibaugh, one of the women working in his club, and then the distinct outlining of the intention to kill Oswald and the projection of the event as an item in his morning schedule (“If he hurried he could wire twenty-five dollars to Brenda and then go shoot that bastard Oswald”). This is followed by second thoughts reflected in his reliance on the haphazard power of destiny (“If I don’t get there in time, it’s decreed I wasn’t meant to do it”), his way from home to where Oswald was detained, and finally his face-to-face encounter with Oswald. Whereas the preparation is represented through a constant switch between a third-person limited point of view and first person, the actual shooting is depicted through the perspective of the camera lens. Short and fragmentary sentences, imitating the language of media headlines, reconstruct the climactic moment from puzzle-like bits and pieces, from images whose chaotic sequence reflects the anxious trepidation of the moment, the surprise and outrage it generates. They are printed in italics and listed one beneath the other, including several repetitions and disjointed sentences, whose style lacks the coherence of previous and following paragraphs, and which seem to represent the recordings of the panicky statements of a reporter who transmits live from the scene, as the events are happening: “A shot. There’s a shot. Oswald has been shot. A shot rang out. Mass confusion here.” (DeLillo 1988:438-9) The illustration of events as if seen through the lens of the camera, the reproduction of the anarchic sequence of images that characterizes the filming of a live event, as well as the general use of journalistic