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Aim. The aim of the research is the comparative study of literary cat characters in Children’s Literature texts in Greek and Spanish and their instructive function in the transmission of social stereotypes. Methods. The research subscribes to the field of Literary Animal Studies based on the theory of Children’s Literature (Lukens, 1999) and through the intercultural perspective of Comparative Children’s Literature (O’Sullivan, 2005). Published children’s books from Greece, Spain and Spanish-speaking America were compared using textual analysis methods of Imagology (Beller & Leersen, 2007). Stereotyped variants were identified and organized in categories related to name, physical appearance, gender, behavior, and function of literary cat characters. Results. After examining a corpus of 37 books, 23 in Greek and 17 in Spanish (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Spain), textual analysis findings were compared, organized, and classified by language, country and readers’ age groups to locate that literary cat characters are usually pets or feral, and they remain consistently stereotyped as anthropomorphic and subversive. Cats with seven lives and magical powers are common perceptions, dominating in both cultural contexts, stereotypes extended to strong superstitions about black cats. Conclusions. In Children's Literature texts, cats are linguistically, literally, and socially defined literary constructs, can have usually human-like features, intercultural influences, and are potentially shaped by intertextual relations. They serve also as a narrative motif for the transmission of social values about non-human animals and the textual familiarization of nonadult readers with society’s cultural stereotypes.

At fi rst glance, the movie by Jon Turteltaub entitled The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010) seems not to have any connections with Greco-Roman antiquity whatsoever. To fi nd the hidden connection we have to go back to year 1797 when Johann Wolfgang Goethe publi-shed his famous ballad Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice)Almost a century later, this work inspired a French composer Paul Dukas to write his masterpiece, the sympho-nic scherzo L’apprenti sorcier. Dukas’ music became the leitmotif of both Disney’s movies: Fantasia (1940) and Fantasia2000 (1999) whose action is based on Goethe’s ballad. Also, the basic elements of the plot were used in one of the episodes of the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1961). This is where we touch the ancient roots of the story. A good friend of J.W. Goethe, Christoph Martin Wieland, happened to have published in 1789 the fi rst complete German translation of Lucian of Samosata’s (120-180 AD) works, including a dialogue entitled Philopseudes (The Lover of Lies). The tenth story told in Philopseudes turned out to be very similar to the one written by J. W. Goethe and then adapted into Disney’s and Turteltaub’s movies. In my paper I try to show the transmission of the Lucianic text from antiquity to modern fi lm adaptations. The original Lucian tale, rewritten by J.W. Goethe, becomes very infl uential. The so-called “sorcerer’s apprentice syndrome” can be found at the root of many fantastic stories in which humans could not curb their creations (i.e. robots) which eventually would turn against their makers. The primary focus of this paper is on how the story of a young apprentice changed over centuries and how it was adopted by cinematography.

The paper is based on the results of the project All This Painting hasn’t Gone to Waste, 2011, which deals with early 16th century sacral wall paintings in southern Slovenia. It tries to resolve out some dilemmas in communication with the wider public and presents main objectives in regard to awareness-rising and promotion of art heritage, for example encouragement of insti-tutions and individual experts for more intensive study and/or conservation-restoration work.

At the beginning of the XXI century Ukrainian art observed activization of the artist’s interest for the political life of the country. The starting point was 2004, marked by protests against unfair elections in the country, the birth of the first “Maidan” and “Orange revolution”. In a number of artistic actions organized by art groups we can see the reflection of the revolution events and, later, the frustrations of its ideals. The most striking manifestation of political issues in contemporary art in Ukraine was the great creativity following the second “Maidan” (2013). In this spontaneous Performance everyone plays a role: the participants are the protesters, official persons, fighters of “Berkut” and interior force troops, journalists and others. Protesters’ tents, barricades, a statue of Lenin and “Maidan” itself (or Independence Square) as a place of free will and creativity became the Symbols of the “Maidan” and its own art objects.

This paper seeks to investigate what sports metaphors are used in Polish written commentaries on politics and what special purpose they serve. In particular, the paper examines structural metaphors that come from the lexicon of popular sports, such as boxing, racing, track and field athletics, sailing, etc. The language data, derived from English Internet websites, has been grouped and discussed according to source domains. Applying George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s approach to metaphor, the paper attempts to determine both the kind of source domains from which common metaphors are drawn and to what degree structural metaphors are used. The data suggests that many structural metaphors can be found in the language of politics. They are drawn from a wide variety of sports source domains, although the domains of boxing, racing, sailing, and soccer are of particular prominence. It seems that the primary function of structural metaphors in written commentaries is to facilitate the interpretation of facts in a way that is enormously appealing to the reader.

The ageing population is a great challenge for the whole world including churches, Christian communities, Christian families and the so-called “Christian countries”. The respect and support for elderly people is almost a common rule of social life in developed countries regardless of religious views. But in the Christian world this obligation has very strong religious justification – obligation enshrined in the Commandments of Old (the fourth/fifth Commandment) and New (the second one of The Greatest Commandments of Love) Testaments. Therefore between the Christianity – understood as a set of different communities sharing their beliefs in Jesus Christ – and aging population there are many very different connections including among others: honour and respect, privilege, obligations, giving – receiving relations, duty, charity, solidarity, dependency. They are present both in the teaching and the practice of different Christian communities starting with Churches, through NGOs and Christian societies, ending with Christian families. The paper shows some of these connections. It also tries – based on a case of Poland – to answer the question whether the Christianity is ready to face the aging of global population.

Mihai Eminescu is known as the Romanian national poet, the most important writer of the XIXͭʰ century in Romanian literature, whose writings have been intensely interpreted since his poetic debut. Therefore, this paper proposes a study of the way the literary dictionaries build the image of “the national poet”. This identity construct is significant to our investigation because it influences the interpretation of the poet figure through history. In order to have a wider view of the problem, we consulted a series of literary dictionaries and, also, dictionaries for students use to see how the figure of Eminescu is taught in schools. Moreover, we did not put aside foreign dictionaries, which bring a more objective perspective to the issue. The majority of Romanian dictionaries alter the poet’s portrait in favor of a “national construct”, created partly by the use of rhetoric figures. Another way of composing him a deformed image is accomplished by writing subjective and opaque interpretation of his poems. Consequently, such hermeneutics focuses on developing a myth that reflects mainly the way Romanians as nation want to be recognized and remembered.

The main task of our paper is to emphasize the relationship between the dominant historical paradigm which emerges at the end of the 19th Century and the contemporary embrace of crisis language. We will see that the dawn of the historical school and of historicism in general brings forth the dissolution of the last remains of the Absolute figures, thus leaving us in front of desolation and emptiness. Post-modern skepticism and relativism became the dominant features that shape our intellectual and moral landscape, trapping us within a seemingly inescapable situation of crisis which finds its own language and expressions. Our journey will trace back to the origins and main motivations of what has been described as a constancy of the post-modern condition as it is described by Kolakowski in one of his essays from 1989, finding along our way writers like Heidegger and Nietzsche which we think are our best witnesses of the main variations of the relation between the meaning of history and the crisis-consciousness.

Aim. The aim of this article is to investigate the patterns in the translation of sex-related vocabulary from English to Polish in search for any changes regarding the markedness, poetics, and linguistic variety. Methods. The study is conducted on the pairs of English erotic novels and their Polish translations. It involves both quantitative (corpus-based methods) and qualitative (Descriptive ranslation Studies) methods. Results. The results indicate significant change in the area of marked vocabulary. In English-Polish translation, a vast majority of the marked vocabulary related to sex is replaced with unmarked vocabulary, paraphrased, or simply deleted. The qualitative analysis also suggests certain changes in the poetics of text, introduced by the means of addition. These changes mostly result in sexual encounters becoming more romanticised in translation. Conclusions. While the observed trends in translation are unmistakeable, it cannot be concluded with certainty what have led to the changes of the source text. Since the analysed texts were all published around the same time, by different publishing houses, and were translated by different translators, we are leaning towards the hypothesis of self-censorship in translation.

The purpose of this presentation is to address the issue of female criminality in early modern Cluj, and to analyze women’s position before the law. Our investigation is based on the records of the secular Court from the town Cluj, where we have identified more than 250 cases of women accused of fornication, adultery, witchcraft, infanticide, theft and drunkenness, poisoning, swearing and slander. There were a significant number of female convictions during the century, from which most ended with light sentences, such as banishment, corporal punishments, stigmatizations with hot iron, mutilations and only occasionally death. We would like to analyze in detail the types of crime and their punishments presenting the legal background, the jurisdiction and the habitual practices of the Court. We would also like to underline the importance of the narrative strategies used in these inquisitorial trials, since our documents reveal female criminality from a male perspective, as in these times men ran the legal system, consequently the Court records, in our reading contain moral, legal and sexual elements of a male discourse on female crime.