Representations of Otherness in Romanian Philological Studies

The volume opens with a study by Stela Pleșa that looks at the importance of the radical alterity of the other, focusing on the alternative space in-between the binaries of autism. By way of Pearson’s archetypes (the inner Orphan, the inner Warrior, the inner Caregiver, the inner Seeker, the inner Destroyer, the Lover, the Creator, the Sage, and the Magician), the potential of Caitlin (Erskine’s character in Mockingbird) for self-accomplishment is analyzed via her capacity of elevating her individual self into the realm of the social self through dialog and empathy. Amid inner confusion and doubts, she manages to surpass her own subjectivity and to show that empathy (for others) is genuinely superior to other (self) values.

The volume continues with more emphasis placed on sameness in the less-examined field of phonosemantics. In a study (on Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky”) that seeks to demonstrate the existence of nonarbitrary associations between sound patterns and their semantic meaning, Bianca Bosoiu underscores the complexity of sameness and otherness in language that mobilizes arbitrary and nonarbitrary elements in the process of coding and decoding meaning. In a different manner, yet confined within the intersemiotic realm of translations, the next study by Dana Percec and Loredana Pungă, while focusing on the translatability of otherness, argues for an artistic appreciation of otherness. The authors work their argument through the agency of several paintings inspired by a number of Shakespearean plays, in which the artist, in intersemiotic translation, transposes a text (or parts of it) into multimodal artefacts thereby enjoying more liberty in making translation choices. The selection of text elements, scenes, or passages and their representation in the pictures welcome (and carry) at the same time the meaning of the whole original text, marking an ontological process of a return to sameness.

The core of the volume is represented by translation studies and the openness toward otherness as a fascination for the diversity of forms, insights, renditions, procedures, metaphorical processes, and options. From Antoanela Mardar’s showcasing formal and semantic equivalence, in imitative and cultural adaptation, and Daniela Dălălău’s contrastive analysis of deliberate and nondeliberate uses of metaphors using grounded methodology, to Anca Martin’s new leads into the origins of the lost, widely available and recently found renditions of Bram Stoker’s classic and Titela Vilceanu’s analysis of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice in the field of literary translation – as demonstrated by the Romanian literary translator’s needs and professional market – all contributions explore the dynamics found in the othering processes of translation as a field, practice, theory, and method, in point of form and content.

With Diana Ciobanu’s study, in which the theme of otherness through the framework of linguistic and social implications of exclusion is approached, a turning point in the volume is made even more visible, one that is marked by a more focalized perspective on the concept. This new angle makes, via the examination of Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other and James Joyce’s Ulysses, a significant inroad into the nexus between otherness, language, and belonging. Emerging issues pertaining to artistic singularity and individual voice(s) are addressed within the framework of alienation and psychological implications of being “the other.”

Coming full circle, two studies, one by Rodica Grigore on Andrei Codrescu’s fiction and one by Alexandru Oltean-Cîmpean on Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, offer their own individual discussions of otherness at the point of intersection in contemporary literature where irony is subtly concentrated by its asking significant questions of its own. While Grigore dissects Codrescu’s “experiences of dissociation” behind the masks (or narrative instances) that he himself made from of the nothingness of his own irony, Oltean shows how vector models can aid in understanding authors’ habits and intentions in the literary interpretation of humor. Both contributors engage with issues, including irony of otherness, literary and philosophical explorations of forms of irony and (of) otherness, and the necessarily changing face of interpretation.

The Editors

Stela Pleșa