Meridian Critic

The fictional-gastronomic code in the novel Mâţa Vinerii perfectly coexists with the literary revival of Phanariot dynasties. Like a true and experienced archaeologist, Doina Ruşti unveils and reconstructs the history of a magical recipe guide and that of the followers of some obscure divinity called Sator. In this historical fiction, the two overlapping codes generate the illusion of parallel worlds - or of alternative worlds - within which factual reality (the socio-political norms and the human typology of that time) is doubled by a magical-mystical dimension, super-human in nature, in which Sator and his followers often use gastronomic tools to coordinate the world.

The Metamorphosis bears the marks of an introvert psychology where the debts of the father and the refuge in work, considered a social stigma, are in fact most appropriate for a man incapable of interpersonal relationships. Forbidden by the authority of an excessive yet protective self, food has played, ever since ancient times, a prominent role in the cohesion of human groups and in establishing fundamental rules of social structure that Gregor chose to reject. The character has strong feelings about the world and the people around him and the writer appears to punish him for indulging in various forms of alienation.

In an attempt to investigate a series of phraseological structures concerning alimentation, we will describe the Romanian mentality on nutrition and we will comment on the implications of the metaphorical use of such structures in relation to the general knowledge about humankind. The phrasemes in our corpus were selected from phraseological dictionaries and from Iuliu Zanne’s Proverbele românilor. Although it is common knowledge that phraseology represents the untranslatable side of any language, we will focus on identifying common patterns of representation and on providing our own gloss on the divergent mentality within the Neo-Latin culture, along with the cultural or linguistic stock that generated the phrasemes.

FOOD is one the most fruitful fields for the generation of phraseologisms in many languages. According to UNESCO, Mexican cuisine is one of the four World Heritage cuisines of mankind and it has given rise to an abundant phraseology in Mexican Spanish. Our paper offers a sample of complex lexias formed around forty-two lexemes in the culinary field, eight of which are chosen for the analysis of their phraseological formation. The analysis is synchronic and points to the cultural context in which the phraseological production is developed. Our approach focuses on significant referential data that could make the expression transparent and reveals the cultural framework underlying the production of phraseologisms in Mexican Spanish.

Big Night is an American film released in 1996 that deals with questions of identity and ethnicity expressed through food and art. It is the story of two brothers, Italian immigrants, living in 1950s America and trying to keep their restaurant in business by making and selling traditional Italian dishes, unknown to the average Americans who do not appreciate their exotic foods. The film records the clash between two cultures and the struggle of those caught in the middle. Food is central in the film as it is revealing of ethnicity, identity, it represents the language through which the protagonists express their feelings and thoughts, it is a manifestation of artistic talent and symbolic for the structure of the film and of the other characters. The protagonists are trying to adapt to the rigors of American capitalism while remaining true to their identity and heritage, two concepts that prove antagonistic and incompatible. This struggle will challenge their core beliefs and values.

Since cuisine is a vehicle for the core values of any society, the true foundation of identity and alterity, it is not surprising to find it in many Romanian fantastic tales. In the present paper we focus on some of the most representative elements of traditional cuisine in our tales and discuss the relationship between their textual representations or manifestations and their social, ideological, and cultural contexts in order to identify possible frameworks / or schemes in which they are placed and determine to what extent one can speak of adaptations to new gastronomic socio-cultural realities. It appears that the gastronomic praxis in our Romanian fantastic tales points to significant ethnological features.

The present paper considers a few key passages from Julian Barnes’ collection of articles The Pedant in the Kitchen and contrasts them with the Romanian translation. It addresses in particular the issue of how culture-specific culinary terms are adapted for the Romanian target reader while also assessing the restitution of the accompanying humour or irony they elicit in context (if any). As food vocabulary in any language is predominantly nominal, our analysis is mainly aimed at nouns and noun phrases which have to do with: cooking as an activity, cookings as a job, meals and dishes, ingredients (subcategory: partitive expressions), kitchen utensils and cookbooks. If the over-all strategy in translating names of dishes seems to be that of approximation, as far as the rest of the categories is concerned, sometimes each specific term calls for specific measures on the part of the translator.

The use of eating disorders and anorexia represent the main interests of this present paper as they will reveal some of the particularities of gender categories and their dynamics within the turbulent 60s. The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood centers on somatic metaphors which highlight important social issues such as gender inequality, the discrepancy between supply and demand as far as professional development is concerned and the struggle against the traditional patriarchal model within a capitalist society. Some of the chapters also present a short history of the body as a symbol through time and its relationship with a given cultural space.

Han Kang’s novel explores the relevance of food choices and eating habits to the articulation of gender relations and power structure in a family environment. The heroine’s vegetarianism and then anorexia, accompanied by escapist fantasies of withdrawal from the symbolic order of conformity and submission defining a patriarchal society, her quiet “rebellion”, which constitutes an assertion of autonomy, is subdued by literal and symbolic violence. Family and psychiatric hospital, the main settings for the action, represent places of normalisation, where the recalcitrant vegetarian and anorexic body is controlled and disciplined.

Orwell was a political writer who needed to see, touch, feel, smell and taste what he took to be reality, before it could affect him. Although Orwell had no interest in philosophy, his moral and political sensibility grew out of his direct experience of working class life. This made Orwell a more philosophical writer than he imagined himself to be, in that his moral and political attitudes arose from his moral sensibility, a combination of direct experience, sympathetic identification and moral understanding, as understood by the Scottish Enlightenment, and in particular, by Adam Smith. In this sense, sitting down beside the fire, having a relaxed conversation, drinking tea, and, above all, eating a slice of Mrs Searle’s cake were integral to the development of Orwell’s political sense.

Our article aims to analyze the symbolism of meals and food, as well as the act of eating in two novels written by Michel Tournier, based on the instruments of myth analysis and criticism. A type of literature deeply anchored in mythology, the Tournierien prose abounds in archetypal images and archaic symbols. In the mythical and mystical register, heroes become what they eat. Food creates a powerful bound between the character and the dimension it generates, triggering dramatic changes at an ontological level. Our approach takes into account the dynamic change that is specific to the profane registry and the installation of Taor de Mangalore and Abel Tiffauges in an authentic, augural, sacred position, which allows them to acknowledge their ontic potential, which had been tragically forgotten and ignored. We witness two cases of ontological metamorphosis, paradoxically generated by food, seemingly coarse matter, opaque, and without any transcendental opening. The inhuman hunger and oversized gastronomic desires of the two characters actually hide the nostalgia for the abundance and plenitude of the sacred beginnings, capable of appeasing the harshest hunger.

The present paper investigates two volumes of culinary recipes written/gathered by three Romanian literary authors: M. Kogălniceanu, C. Negruzi and Al. O. Teodoreanu. It is about the book 200 de reţete cercate de bucătărie românească şi alte trebi gospodăreşti, published in the middle of the 19th century, and Gastronomice, a volume containing Al. Teodoreanu’s recipes published one hundred years later in “Magazin” journal. The two cooking books offer multiple information about the quality and types of the ingredients, cooking rules and tips, about the habits associated with food serving and their dependence on a historical context, all these details drawing representations of national identity.

Most of Ion Creangă’s texts abound in references to food, gourmands, revelers and culinary customs. This was enough evidence for some critics to consider that the author pleaded for celebrating life and friendship. In the present paper we aim to demonstrate that his references to our Romanian gastronomic tradition and the whole range of culinary delights and artifacts mentioned in his autofictional novel and fantastic tales play multiple discursive and symbolic functions.

Due to its central position in our lives, the act of eating, besides being a mere physiological necessity governed by instinct, has become a marker of social interaction, a perfect vehicle for a collective ritual, a reflection of a whole culture. All food habits explain the existence of a multitude of locutions, idiomatic expressions and proverbs that refer to or describe the act of eating in all its forms of manifestation. It is not our intention to investigate all the figurative meanings of the verba edendi, nor do we pretend to analyze the paremiological inventory of the Romance languages on the act of eating; our paper aims to classify the constructions placed around such verbs in some relevant categories and verify if the common origin of the target languages is also reflected in the way of describing the act of eating.

The study attempts to demonstrate that literature is far more than language. The influence of linguistics has produced a semantic fundamentalism in critical schools. The author of the study distances herself from this position towards literature. At the same time, she opposes a mystique of the book and emphasizes the inbornness between man and story. The study questions the nature of fiction and non-fiction in order to relate them to the reality of the mind. The story told through fiction can be closer to the truth than the univocal nudity of non-fiction, by its ability to retain the plurality of meanings and the interrogating core of human realities. Therefore, rediscovering literature as a guiding story to knowledge may be a way to a new relationship of today's reader with literature.

In the present paper we reconsider the relationship between the ideological structure and the aesthetic option in the critical system that governs I. Negoiţescu’s History of Romanian Literature. In order to identify the critic’s specific vision, we decided to closely re-contextualize and re-examine some of the most prominent literary themes and writers of the 1848 Generation (also known as the early Romanian Romanticism). We commented upon some of Negoiţescu’s analyses and opinions, famous for their literary expressiveness, but whose axiology is generally ignored. Our aim was to demonstrate that the critic’s remarks and considerations are well grounded in a critical system imbued with a national militant spirit.

Mohamed Zefzaf’s tale entitled El árbol sagrado is not only an invitation to discover and understand the realm of trees as majestic physical elements of Nature, but also a perfect opportunity to rediscover their mythical dimension and their symbolic function in the becoming of Man. The author’s realistic narrative is a forum of debate on the roots of our complex human nature, sunk deep into traditions, superstitions, religion and politics.

The aim of this paper is to penetrate the superficial layers of Eminescu’s Egipetul through the analysis of the mirror myth and through the revelation of the poetic structures inviting its recurrence under new frames. Our inventory of mirror metamorphoses and their meanings enabled us to demonstrate the idea that these avatars are originally subordinated to the diurnal the moment when they prove their incapacity to transcend the empirical; they also become subordinated to the nocturnal when, fraught with magic, a mirror becomes a gate towards the oneiric and manages to establish the coordinates of an Egyptian world, just like a collective soul in a dreamy universe that communicates with the present.