Ramona L. Ceciu

The relations between literature and other arts are multifarious, and manifest themselves differently in each case, enabling the emergence of fresh artistic expressions. By looking at language in "intermedial metamorphosis," I argue that, in multilingual cultures, simultaneously united and separated by several factors, the transactions between language, culture, and the arts require a constant multiperspectivism as well as new enquiries that need to constantly alter language itself and its processes of intermedial transference into new, evolving literary/artistic idioms. The intermedial exchange between different arts entails transformations not only on the linguistic level, but also in terms of image selection, presentation, and performance, where culture-specific elements reshape the source themes and narrative devices towards a new architectonics. Moreover, in Indian culture, intermediality belongs to the inherent structure of various art forms, and is, in fact, as I call it, an epigenetic intermediality; it is a process leading to the creation of art forms containing performative elements which develop under epigenetic factors into complex intermedial structures. The article draws on examples from various Indian arts, such as the traditional patachitra performance, and Kathakali and other styles of dance-drama.

CITATION:  Ceciu, Ramona L. 2021. “Language and Intermedial Metamorphoses in Indian Literature and Arts” (551-562). In Ferstl, Paul ed. Dialogues between Media. Berlin: De Gruyter. ISBN: 978-3-11-064503-0. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110642056-041.

In her article "Fiction, Film, Painting, and Comparative Literature" Ramona L. Ceciu proposes a view of comparative literature as a "language in a process of ascertaining its proper grammar." She argues that like any language in order to survive, comparative literature must allow for a constant rejuvenation of its vocabulary and methods it must keep an "open" structure that would accommodate fresh extra-methodological approaches through a procedure of re-invention and expansion. Ceciu posits that in this process the comparatist's "objective creativity" plays a crucial role and draws on Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek's concept of a "new comparative literature" and applies the concept to literature, painting, and film in India.

CITATION:  Ceciu, Ramona L. 2013. “Fiction, Film, Painting, and Comparative Literature”. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 15.6 (2013), Purdue University, USA. http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2360.

"This paper traces a line of thought in representations of the Indian woman across literary and visual genres, from the so-called traditional to modern conceptualizations. It discusses the manner in which the woman was variously represented in line with the cultural architectonics that assigned her particular identities––from the woman as goddess/mother, located in the private space to the woman as modern entity located within the public (urban) domain, as well as the outcast woman and the virtual woman. I attempt an inter-textual reading of the literary/visual corporeal and textual selves, by drawing mainly on Bakhtin's concepts of "architectonics" and "answerability". I emphasize these concepts with regard to the dialogue between artists and authors, and between the work of art and its readers.
Keywords: woman, self, literature, painting, film, Bakhtin, Indian culture"

CITATION:  Ceciu, Ramona L. 2013. “The ‘Architectonics’ of Corporeal and Textual Selves: From Durga via Charulata and Banalata Sen to the ‘Virtual’ Indian Woman”. Asian Studies journal, I (XVII), 1, pp. 65–90. http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/247.

"This paper presents the evolution of the myth of Durga, the famous Indian goddess, outlining a circular trajectory: it begins with the present-day festival organized to venerate the Goddess, then it undertakes a short journey into the past to unravel some mysteries of history and the legend of Durga in the cultural context, and lastly it revisits the tumultuous contemporary India bringing the gift of the old Sanskrit 'ślokas' that live in splendid glory even today. Durga embodies the feminine energy of the universe and, as this article purports to emphasize, she has appeared over the years in various figures (murti) entailing different meanings, symbols and aesthetic values determined by the social change and the historical events; also, the festival has become a sort of modern tradition. The paper foregrounds just a few, and the most important, of the innumerable forms and manifestations the Goddess has in Indian culture.
Keywords: Goddess Durga, religious festival, visual culture, India, mythology, legend, tradition, Bengal"

CITATION:  Ceciu, Ramona L. 2013. “Durgā: De la Timpul Mitologic la Contemporaneitatea Indiană” (Durgā: From Mythological Time to Contemporary India). Hiperboreea journal. New Series, 3 (6) 2013: 88-96.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/hiperboreea.2.3-6.0088.

In her paper “Journeys of Myths and Words between Indian and European Cultures”, RAMONA L. CECIU takes up the concept of the "dialogical self" from the domain of psychology to suggest that there are many relatively autonomous selves in the "landscapes of the mind’ and moving through time and space each of these selves can be in dialogic relation with one another. In such a situation it would be natural to think of a heterogeneous world system with numerous ‘Easts’ and numerous ‘Wests’ so that comparative frameworks privileging certain clusters and areas of comparisons and marginalization of others would not arise. Future possibilities seem to lie in the deprovincialization of cultures, and the central trope in the process is multilingualism.

CITATION  Ceciu, Ramona L. 2018. “Journeys of Myths and Words between Indian and European Cultures” (137-153). In Knauth, Alfons K. and Subha C. Dasgupta (eds). Figures of Transcontinental Multilingualism (Poethik Polyglott 4). Zürich: LIT-Verlag, 2018. ISBN: 978-3-643-90953-4.

The present article examines trauma in the multicultural context of India based on an interdisciplinary and comparative study drawing on theories from psychology, neuroscience, genetics, comparative literature, arts and cultural studies. The focus is on various forms of trauma – psychological, physical, individual, collective – and the way they shape distinct worldviews, problematic identities and conflictual selves rooted in the dialectic union of tradition and modernity that characterizes South Asian cultures in varied degrees. It is argued that these traumas get integrated into the self through a series of negotiations, emotional reverberations and transactions, yet constantly carry within them the potential of implosion/ explosion in certain situations; they lead to creative and critical subversions of social norms, to the deconstruction of language and the everyday, the emergence of new discourses, as well as to processes of restructuring the self (and psyche) through dialogica...

This paper presents the evolution of the myth of Durga, the famous Indian goddess, outlining a circular trajectory: it begins with the present-day festival organized to venerate the Goddess, then it undertakes a short journey into the past to unravel some mysteries of history and the legend of Durga in the cultural context, and lastly it revisits the tumultuous contemporary India bringing the gift of the old Sanskrit ślokas that live in splendid glory even today. Durga embodies the feminine energy of the universe and, as this article purports to emphasize, she has appeared over the years in various figures (murti) entailing different meanings, symbols and aesthetic values determined by the social change and the historical events; also, the festival has become a sort of modern tradition. This essay foregrounds just a few, and the most important, of the innumerable forms and manifestations the Goddess has in Indian culture.

This paper traces a line of thought in representations of the Indian woman across literary and visual genres, from the so-called traditional to modern conceptualizations. It discusses the manner in which the woman was variously represented in line with the cultural architectonics that assigned her particular identities––from the woman as goddess/mother, located in the private space to the woman as modern entity located within the public (urban) domain, as well as the outcast woman and the virtual woman. I attempt an inter-textual reading of the literary/visual corporeal and textual selves, by drawing mainly on Bakhtin’s concepts of “answerability” and “unfinalizable selves.” I emphasize these concepts with regard to the dialogue between artists and authors, and between the work of art and its readers.    

This paper delves into the Romanian and Indian (Bengali) literatures to discover the concept of self in poetic art in relation to nature and divinity, keeping in the spotlight two major literary figures belonging to these different cultures: Mihai Eminescu and Rabindranath Tagore. I roughly argue firstly that the authors and their works embody metachronotopic entities that enable points of convergence and divergence, as well as varied articulations of ‘reality’, and secondly that ‘some self of Eminescu’ and ‘some self of Tagore’ meet into a ‘global cultural unconscious’ from where intriguing revelations emerge. I illustrate these instances of emergence by comparative critical analysis of their works, fragments of their lives and ‘selves’. [