Synergy

7

Authors: Luminiţa ANDREI COCÂRŢĂ

The present article focuses on some aspects of English vocabulary acquisition, starting from factors influencing this process and going through statistics of vocabulary size, approaches and strategies of language learning, as well as instances that could be considered barriers in the acquisition of English vocabulary.

10

Authors: Adriana CHIRIACESCU

Research activity, part and parcel of modern academic training, results in writing research papers. Success cannot be attained in this activity without knowledge and possession of specific reference skills, such as documentation, library/dictionary use, etc. Their acquisition by the students represents the task of the academic educational scheme, and specific training units including specific activities should be part of the modern languages department curriculum.

10

Authors: Iulia RĂŞCANU

Although the political and socio-economic aspects of the century that passed and of the one that has just started show us that money is the issue that creates debate and action, beauty remains a major factor capable of influencing attitudes and manners of behaviour within society. ‘Beauty’ is a word that should be linked to what is good and positive; but when related to gender, it undergoes some kind of curious transformation which turns it into something that is quite the opposite of what it initially denoted or at least something not really flattering. That is why you will find out that beauty is largely seen as a myth, a myth that theorists have tried to ‘demystify,’ to decompose or, in softer terms, to clarify.

12

Authors: Daniela GIURCULESCU

Paolo Ruffili (born at Rieti, Italy, in 1949) is the author of several volumes of poetry, among which Piccola colazione (“Breakfast”), Garzanti, American Poetry Prize, Diario of Normandia (“Diary of Normandy”), Amadeus, 1990, Montale Prize, Camera oscura (“The Dark Room”), Garzanti,1992, Nuvole (“Clouds”). The Italian critics underline the Montale influence on Ruffilli’s poetry. We are confronted with an existential cisis due to the absurdity of the world. Ruffilli’s poetry appeals to us not only because of the modernity of his surprising plot, but also because of the harmony and musicality of his wording. The metrics is typically Ungaretti’s but the musicality of his verse, the concrete presence of the objects in the landscape remind us of Montale. The photograph is both miracle and magic. The image fixed on the paper remains there for ever, while all the things that happened after the click of the camera have changed. This “moment’s eternity” is captured there for ever.

13

Authors: Carmen-Cristina CATARGIU

The article presents the main features of advertising in the modern consumer society. Does advertising shape our desires and promise eternal bliss? Does it force us into buying things we don’t really need? Is it a fierce business or mere entertainment? Is advertising the cause or rather the effect of consumerism? These are some of the questions the article tries to answer through the analyses of both classic and new adverts.

20

Authors: Raluca ŞERBAN

The article focuses on the different ways in which the postmodern author is reflected in/by his writing, on the relationships author – text, author – fictional world, author – characters, author-as-character – author, in non-autobiographical writing. The examples provided are two novels by American writers: John Barth’s Chimera and Paul Auster’s City of Glass, which are analyzed from this perspective. Consequently, special attention is given to the literary technique of la mise-enabyme, as it is used in these novels. One of the lessons taught by many postmodern authors is that nothing of what they say should be taken at face value. Or almost nothing. At least not when they are on duty, that is, not when they are writing novels. Postmodern writers, in the second half of the 20th century, started making their own rules for novel writing. The playful, inconsistent, ironic postmodern author, who prefers parody and metanarrative to any other form, keen to re-write old texts, their people’s ‘grand narratives’, as well as tradition itself3 , who questions everything, even his own role as an author, needed to be visible again for the reader. The easiest way to do it seemed to be stepping back into their novels, literally, doing away with the border between the real and the fictional. Maybe this is why la miseen-abyme (cf. Gide’s definition of the concept, 1948:41) is one of the favorite devices employed by some postmodern authors. In this paper I shall attempt to substantiate the following thesis: one of the most undeniable peculiarities of postmodern novel-writers is their stubbornness not to let the reader – especially the professional reader, the scholar – make much sense of their statements, in other words, their ironic playfulness. Two means of achieving this goal struck me as particularly important in the two novels I chose to discuss – John Barth’s Chimera and Paul Auster’s City of Glass: the first is the undermining of both the ‘real’ and the fictional world’s ontological stability, and, together with it, of the credibility, of the reliability of an authorial voice that toils – seemingly – to make a statement (about the novel, about the status and role of the author, about writing in general and even about broader issues like identity). I shall pay particular attention to the ways in which this boundary crossing, this destabilization is achieved: the construction of what Brian McHale, taking over a Foucauldian concept, named a ‘heterotopian space’, in which details of the ‘real’ world are mixed with fictional ones, the proliferation of authorcharacters, as unreliable as possible, and especially the projection of the author inside his fictional universe – what McHale called trompe-l’oeil and what, as I shall try to prove, would more appropriately be referred to as mise-en-abyme.