Researcher at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi (The Centre of Biblical-Philological Studies “Monumenta linguae Dacoromanorum”), holding a PhD in Philology (2012) for the thesis The Lord's Prayer in Romanian (linguistic and philological study). Organizer of the International Symposium “Exploring the Romanian and European Biblical Traditions” and editor of the Conference proceedings: Receptarea Sfintei Scripturi: între filologie, hermeneutică şi traductologie [The Reception of the Holy Scripture: at the crossroads of Philology, Hermeneutics and Translation]. Postdoctoral researcher (2013-2015) on the subject Linguistic Aspects of Romanian Shepherding in the Western Carpathians (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi). Collaborator (2009-2010) in the Romanian Language Dictionary (DLR), new series (“A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology). Teaching associate for several semesters at the Faculty of Letters, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi (seminars on linguistics and the history of literary Romanian). Founding member (2010- ) and vice-president (2017- ) of the Romanian Association of Philology and Biblical Hermeneutics.
Receptarea Sfintei Scripturi: între filologie, hermeneutică şi traductologie, 2023
The oldest preserved Romanian text is the Hurmuzaki Psalter (ca. 1491- 1504), a unilingual versio... more The oldest preserved Romanian text is the Hurmuzaki Psalter (ca. 1491- 1504), a unilingual version extracted from a bilingual Psalter. The present research attempts to shed light on the issue of the origin and the context in which the Psalter was translated and disseminated at the beginning of Romanian vernacular writing. The main source of the translation and the model for the composition of the bilingual Psalter was a Church Slavonic commentated Psalter. Several data suggest that the Psalter was not translated in Romanian countries: the sources used for the translation are recorded predominantly in medieval Serbia and Mount Athos; some peculiarities of spelling, punctuation, and translation show that the text was composed or transmitted in a Greek environment; some linguistic peculiarities indicate that among the translators and copyists, there were undoubtedly Aromanians (Vlachs). As for the oldest copy, the Hurmuzaki Psalter, it was written on Mount Athos itself, most likely at the Zograf Monastery. All these data suggest that the translation may have been done in one of the monasteries of Mount Athos. The Psalter was translated into Romanian by decision of the Church, which wanted to create an auxiliary for the understanding of Slavonic liturgy by novices. This happened in the context of the flourishing of monasticism, when novices who did not speak Church Slavonic were arriving in the monastery. Among these novices were Aromanians, as the linguistic features of the manuscripts show, who came from a Greekspeaking area and therefore needed a tool for understanding the official language of the Church.
This article offers an explanation for the priority of translating the Psalter into Romanian, whi... more This article offers an explanation for the priority of translating the Psalter into Romanian, which represents the oldest and most popular Romanian text. Some researchers, who were basing on a wrong dating of the Romanian Psalter, explained its appearance by the important role of the psalms in the Protestant communities. New data proves that the Romanian Psalter was translated into an Orthodox monastery in the 15th century. Looking for an explanation for this, the important cultic function of the Psalter in the Byzantine Commonwealth is traced, as it emerges from monastic literature and Byzantine monastic foundation documents: being seen as a spiritual panoply and a teacher of prayer, an unsleeping presence in public worship and private devotion, it was often learned by heart, a practice which survived into present days. The importance of the Psalter in everyday life determined its use as a didactic tool, being also a way of learning of the liturgical language. All this explains why the Psalter occupies a central place in the spiritual and cultural history of the Christian world.
The oldest Romanian text, Hurmuzaki Psalter (ca. 1491–1516), was copied from a bilingual Slavic-R... more The oldest Romanian text, Hurmuzaki Psalter (ca. 1491–1516), was copied from a bilingual Slavic-Romanian antigraph, from which the scribe carelessly took several textual and paratextual elements. The present article analyzes these elements, showing that they belong to the Athanasian catena on Psalms: Slavonic words and comments on the title; rubrication elements, punctuation, marginal notes. The arrangement of the sequences of psalms and commentaries seems to have been one below the other, as in the BrankoMladenović Psalter, or alternatively, as the most common type of Slavic catena on Psalms. The conclusion is that the Old Church Slavonic catena on Psalms was not only the source of the translation, but also the model for composing the first Romanian bilingual version.
Cele mai vechi Psaltiri româneşti, care datează din sec. al XVI-lea, provin dintr-o singură tradu... more Cele mai vechi Psaltiri româneşti, care datează din sec. al XVI-lea, provin dintr-o singură traducere, efectuată din slavonă la o dată necunoscută. Aceste Psaltiri se împart în două sub-familii: A (Hurmuzaki şi Voronet) şi B (Psaltirea Scheiană, Psaltirea moldovenească şi cele trei psaltiri tipărite de Coresi). Sursa traducerii se crede că este înrudită cu Psaltirea lui Branko Mladenović (Codex Bucurestinus). Pe baza particularităţilor redacţionale ale Psaltirii slavone, studiate de Catherine MacRobert, am urmărit deosebirile pe care le prezintă cele două grupuri, scoţând în evidenţă înrudirea Psaltirilor româneşti cu trei redacţii ale Psaltirii slavone: grupul A, care este şi cel mai vechi, conservă trăsăturile redacţiei ruseşti; în particular, Psaltirea Hurmuzaki prezintă şi urme ale redacţiei arhaice; grupul B urmează de obicei fidel redacţia athonită.
The oldest Romanian Evangelion has been written in 1682, taking over the text of the oldest Roman... more The oldest Romanian Evangelion has been written in 1682, taking over the text of the oldest Romanian New Testament (1648), carefully reviewed using the Greek text. The edition printed by Anthim the Iberian at Snagov, in 1697, takes over the text from 1682, but it’s been a subject to a careful revision. This article demonstrates that the reviewer has used the Slavonic and Greek Bible, Staico’s Slavo-Romanian lexicon, but also Berynda’s Slavo-Ruthenian lexicon and the Bucharest Bible. The revision is attributed to Damaschin, a teacher of the Slavonic school, the main translator of liturgical texts in Romanian and a collaborator of Anthim. The revision has removed literal translations and neologisms due to Greek source and the aim is to modernize the language. The resulting edition represents a flowing text, suitable for reading in the church, announcing a new phase in the evolution of the Romanian literary language.
The oldest Romanian Psalters, which are actually the oldest Romanian language monuments, date bac... more The oldest Romanian Psalters, which are actually the oldest Romanian language monuments, date back to the 16th century, and they include four manuscripts and four printed documents. Based on their redactional features, the texts are divided into two groups, A and B. Previous research has linked these Psalters to Codex Bucurestinus and the archaic versions of the Slavonic Psalter. Our investigations have shown that the source of the oldest Romanian Psalter is a Slavonic Psalter related to Belgrade Psalter (13th century). The Romanian version bearing these particularities, conventionally called A, constitutes the source of the Hurmuzaki Psalter and the Psalter from Voroneț. Version A was later revised according to a Psalter related to the Oxford Serbian Psalter (14th century) and resulted in version B, which constitutes the source of the Scheian Psalter, the Moldavian Psalter and the printed Psalters. Some clues identified in the oldest Romanian Psalter point to a connection to the archaic and commentated Psalters. These elements seem to originate in the Slavonic version, which is present in the antigraph of the Hurmuzaki Psalter.
The shepherding tradition in Romanic peoples enjoyed some interest among linguists in the first h... more The shepherding tradition in Romanic peoples enjoyed some interest among linguists in the first half of the 20th century. However, this tradition has been misunderstood, poorly known, or even completely ignored. Therefore, starting from a suggestion by Alf Lombard, we took up this research direction, discussing several issues revealed by the study of Eastern Romanity. These are the rustic character of the Romanian language bearing pastoral traits; the Carpathian-Balkan space in which the language was born and the issue of continuity in the North Danube area; and the dialectal configuration of the Romanian, having four relatively homogeneous historical dialects and language varieties. In this direction, we relied on linguistic, ethnographic, historical and archaeological research, in order to emphasize the importance of shepherding in the research of Eastern Romanity.
Genealogically, Romanian is defined as the Latin language spoken continuously in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, from the Carpathians to the Balkans, with the changes that have taken place throughout history. The pastoral character of Eastern Romanity is rendered by the early medieval chronicles; even the exonym vlah (Wallachian) designating the Romanic population has acquired the meaning of ‘shepherd’. The specificity of this community is supported by numerous linguistic facts: semantic evolutions (e.g. animal ‘living creature, animal’ > nămaie ‘sheep’), specific derivations (a înţărca ‘wean’, derived from ţarc ‘corral, enclosed area for animals’, which initially meant ‘getting the lamb into a corral, so it stopped sucking’), expressions (a închega un gând ‘crystallise thoughts’, where the verb used is a închega ‘coagulate’) or even morphologic elements (the structure of the Romanian numeral from 11 to 19, linked to the scoring system).
Throughout time, shepherding has been associated with the controversial issue of the territory in which the Romanian language and the Romanian people were born. Ethnological research has revealed the existence of four types of shepherding: local – agricultural – one, two types characterised by short transhumance, and the last one, associated with long-distance transhumance. Of the three types of transhumant shepherding, none identifies itself with the nomadic lifestyle and, therefore, the existence of a balkanische Hirtenromania (Balkan pastoral Romanity) does not imply the phenomenon of migration, as it was erroneously believed. Shepherding, through the forms described by ethnologists, explains both the sedentary character and the mobility of Oriental Romanity. Linguistic and archaeological arguments support G. Ivănescu’s view identifying the origins of the Romanian language in both the north and south of the Danube.
The pastoral character of Romanity led to a population mobility that influenced the language at diatopic level. There is, on the one hand, a dialectal diversity due to population movements, and, on the other hand, a surprising linguistic unit, due to transhumant shepherds whose travels played a linguistic levelling role. This fact explains the linguistic unity of the Romanian language, despite its territorial spread and development in several historical provinces separated by natural boundaries.
While shepherding explains some important issues in the history of Eastern Romanity, there is still need for systematic study on this topic. A comparative study of shepherding at the level of the entire Romanity is required in order to draw a complete picture of the lifestyle that characterized Romanity especially in the mountainous areas of Europe, bearing influence on the historical languages that we can only guess nowadays.
Receptarea Sfintei Scripturi: între filologie, hermeneutică şi traductologie, 2019
In this article we study the sixth petition of the Pater Noster in the Greek text, in the patrist... more In this article we study the sixth petition of the Pater Noster in the Greek text, in the patristic hermeneutics and in the Romanian translations from the 16th century until today. The sixth petition, in its present form (nu ne duce pe noi în ispită „ne nos inducas in tentationem”), is attested in the earliest versions of the Pater Noster, dating back to the 16th century. The changes made in the last centuries reflect not different hermeneutical perspectives, but the lexical dynamics of the Romanian language during its history.
Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Philologica, 2017
OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXTS PUBLISHED IN BUDA BETWEEN 1814 AND 1815 CONCERNING THE NAPOLEONIC WARS
... more OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXTS PUBLISHED IN BUDA BETWEEN 1814 AND 1815 CONCERNING THE NAPOLEONIC WARS
Six Romanian booklets on the Napoleonic wars printed in Buda in 1814-1815 were considered anonymous until the present time. We re-initiated the discussion on their paternity with linguistic and philological arguments, proving that the author of five of them is Ioan Theodorovici, the priest of the Greek-Romanian church in Pesta and one of the authors of the Lexicon of Buda (1825). The sixth booklet, containing the biography of Tsar Alexander I, remains anonymous. Zaharie Carcalechi’s collaboration proves that the six brochures can be considered the beginning of the print media in the Romanian language.
First two „universal geographies” printed in the Romanian language come from between the end of t... more First two „universal geographies” printed in the Romanian language come from between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century; both of them have its source from the Universal Geography by Claude Buffier. The first one, Gheografie de obşte (Jassy, 1795), was the translation of the Italian version of François Jacquier, done by Bishop Amfilohie of Hotin. In our article we bring new arguments in order to support the opinion that the second book, Gheografia sau scrierea pământului (Buda, 1814–1815), was a reedition of the Bishop Amfilohie of Hotin’s translation, with some extensive insertions from contemporary historical and geographical books and many contemporary news, the most important of which were about the Napoleonic wars. If Nicola Nicolau’s contribution to the preparing of this edition is known and accepted, we launched the hypothesis that his collaborator was the intellectual Ioan Theodorovici, the parish priest of the Greek-Wallachian church in Pesta and a representative of the Romanian Enlightenment.
The New Testament from Bălgrad (1648) has known a large distribution on the Romanian land by be... more The New Testament from Bălgrad (1648) has known a large distribution on the Romanian land by being quoted, copied or included in the religious texts of the epoch. A review of this text was included in The Bible from Bucharest (1688). The results presented in this research prove that there was also another more detailed review, published in The Gospel dating from 1682. This first edition of the Romanian Gospel was improved and republished by Antim Ivireanul in 1697. The edition from 1697 was constantly republished in the printing centers belonging to the Romanian regions until the 19th century. Therefore, the New Testament, translated and printed in Alba Iulia, stays as the basis of the textual tradition of the Gospel.
Les plus anciennes versions roumaines de la prière « Notre Père » gardent la forme de
singulier c... more Les plus anciennes versions roumaines de la prière « Notre Père » gardent la forme de singulier ciel, à la place du pluriel demandé par la tradition biblique grecque, latine et viex slave. Egalement présent dans d‟autres espaces culturels, ce fait linguistique s‟explique soit par l‟influence de l‟originel hébreu, soit par la circulation orale de la prière, en anticipant le singulier du vers suivant. En roumain, où on ne peut pas parler d‟une traduction selon l‟originel hébreu aux débuts de l‟écrit roumain, la présence de la forme du singulier ciel dans l‟oraison dominicale prouve la circulation orale de la prière dans le XVIe siècle. Ce fait démontre également que la prière Notre père est plus ancienne que le premier texte roumain découvert.
Lucrarea oferă o incursiune în istoria rugăciunii Tatăl nostru în limba română, începând cu cea m... more Lucrarea oferă o incursiune în istoria rugăciunii Tatăl nostru în limba română, începând cu cea mai veche versiune existentă, păstrată în Evangheliarul slavo-român din 1551-1553, şi încheind cu cele actuale. Sunt analizate detaliat, pornind de la sursele greceşti, slavoneşti şi latineşti, opţiunile textuale ale traducătorilor, prefacerile pe care le-a suferit textul rugăciunii de-a lungul timpului şi procesul prin care Tatăl nostru românesc s-a standardizat în epoca unificării limbii române literare, prin activitatea lui Antim Ivireanul. Lucrarea se încheie cu un corpus de texte care cuprinde peste 200 de versiuni ale rugăciunii din toate epocile scrisului românesc, păstrate în manuscrise şi tipărituri, incluzându-le pe cele care au circulat în Occident ca specimene de limbă începând cu secolul al XVI-lea.
In the volume Romania at Lund University Lucian Vasile Bâgiu edits the texts of seven scientific ... more In the volume Romania at Lund University Lucian Vasile Bâgiu edits the texts of seven scientific conferences held by seven Romanian guest lecturers at Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, as a result of seven travel and research grants acquired by Romanian Studies Department from various Swedish academic funds. The essays edited by Lucian Vasile Bâgiu offer a comprehensive image of Romania’s language, literature and culture, from its early beginnings up to present days. Romania at Lund University is a captivating initiative which testifies to the tenacious activity deployed by the visiting Romanian lecturer, Lucian Vasile Bâgiu, at Lund University, Sweden, during three years. While being in residence there he managed the sophisticated administrative apparatus and invited six Romanian academics to deliver lectures on various topics: linguistics and etymology, literary world’s specificities, contemporary Romanian literature, and Romanian folklore. Consequently, the present volume displays a generous array of interpretations and scientific enterprises.
In the second volume of Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies we are delighted to welcome ten artic... more In the second volume of Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies we are delighted to welcome ten articles and four book reviews on Romanian language, literature, translation, culture and theatre, written in English, French or Romanian, by academics from various traditional universities. Literature section is illustrated by authors with affiliation to The “A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology, Iași, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, and West University of Timișoara. The articles advance novel insights when inquiring into enticing subjects such as: the bodily community and its representations in the common space of the members of Viața românească literary group, analysed through Roland Barthes’s and Marielle Macéʼs theories; the remix of hajduk fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century Romanian literature, conveying a modern lifestyle; the exile and nostalgia for the native lands in a comparative reading of the works of two seemingly unrelated writers: Andreï Makine and Sorin Titel, both of whom revealed to undergo a pilgrimage to reinvent themselves. Translation studies is a perfect ground for “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia to present a paper dealing with a view on the concept of fidelity in literary translation with an analysis of the Romanian poet Mircea Ivănescu’s work on the overture of episode eleven, “Sirens”, from James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. The paper is not intended to elicit the imperfections of the translation but rather to illustrate the intricacy of the task, the problems of non-equivalence that are difficult to avoid by any literary translator. Theatre section benefits from the original intuitions of academics from National University of Music Bucharest and Military Technical Academy, Bucharest, concentrating on modernity: the importance of the Romanian theatrical project – DramAcum, as a new type of theatre and dramaturgy, within the larger European influence of the verbatim dramatic style performed in theatres under the slogan of the in-yer-face; staging O’Neill’s Hughie by Alexa Visarion makes way for an investigation of several drama reviews that discuss the play’s first night, revealing that the performance was a successful attempt at communicating and debating the conflicted values of American pragmatism and equally a crowning of the Romanian director’s effort to unfold the “anti-materialism” and the fatalistic approach to existence of the American playwright. Owing to University of Bucharest in Cultural studies we witness the reconstruction of the attitudes of Romanian peasants towards the vestiges of prehistoric material culture, finding out what people thought about the origin of prehistoric artefacts and what meanings were associated to them. In the Linguistics section thanks to Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, and Lund University we are introduced to three perspectives on Romanian language: the destiny of the Latin in the East is interpreted through the pastoral character of Romanity, which led to a population mobility that influenced the language at diatopic level, with a focus on the transhumant shepherds whose travels played a linguistic levelling role, despite the territorial spread of the language; the modern French impact on the Romanian language (the redefining of the neo-Latinic physiognomy of the Romanian language) is detailed from a chronological perspective, the influence of French language being considered from a linguistic perspective, but also with a view to the various social circumstances; last but not least, we are proposed a plea in favor of a linguistic updating, namely the acceptance into the literary language of feminized denominations of professions. Due to University of Oradea, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, and University of Craiova the Book reviews section engages: a tome written by Paul Cernat, an essential study for those interested in the phenomenon of the Romanian avant-garde; a book by Carmen Mușat, which analyzes and systemizes the relational character of literature and the discourses on literature, a plea for the theorist and his presence in the world, retaining a valid purpose; a volume proposing multiple interpretations, in which Carmen Dărăbuş traces the (evolutionary) trajectory of male characters, by highlighting the permanent capabilities of metamorphosis of the primordial pattern; a literary magazine bringing into attention of the contemporary readers the cultural activity of the Romanian intellectuals from exile, with a focus on Camilian Demetrescu. Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies is published in collaboration with “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania, and welcomes contributions from scholars all over the world.
MUSEIKON: A Journal of Religious Art and Culture | Revue d'art et de culture religieuse, 2019
Following in the footsteps of the two conferences of Poitiers (Heresy and Bible translation in th... more Following in the footsteps of the two conferences of Poitiers (Heresy and Bible translation in the Middle Ages and at the dawn of the Renaissance, October 27, 2017, Centre d’Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale) and Alba Iulia (Vernacular Psalters and the Early Rise of Linguistic Identities, June 27-28, 2018, Museikon), the nucleus of researchers already collaborating in a previous Museikon publication (Vernacular Psalters and the Early Rise of Linguistic Identities: The Romanian Case, 2019) decided to expand the scope of their common effort and see how a comparative philological approach would work on a practical level. The idea of this collective research and paper came naturally in the early stages of the preparation of a future project dealing with a comparative approach of vernacular Psalters and Gospels both in relation to their high-prestige Greek, Latin, or Church Slavonic sources, and at an intravernacular level, where some of them could have influenced the others. The comparisons between vernacular translations are useful for the identification of translation clusters active in several languages and for the reconstruction of a pan-European forma mentis which shaped the early vernacular renderings of the Bible. The present paper is also an editorial test. While experimenting with format, the contributors equally tested how common publications such as this may be replicated in the near future, in a journal dedicated only to a comparative philological study of early Bible translations. The current subject (musical instruments terminology) was chosen in order to provide a representative prospective section of the entire corpus. New collaborators were invited to join in and contribute to the exploration of the more difficult aspects of the study, thus anticipating the opening of philology to a wider array of disciplines, according to the needs of the explored realia. Since the topic is far from being exhausted and since many European languages are not yet dealt with, the study will be continued in the next issue of Museikon.
Receptarea Sfintei Scripturi: între filologie, hermeneutică şi traductologie, 2023
The oldest preserved Romanian text is the Hurmuzaki Psalter (ca. 1491- 1504), a unilingual versio... more The oldest preserved Romanian text is the Hurmuzaki Psalter (ca. 1491- 1504), a unilingual version extracted from a bilingual Psalter. The present research attempts to shed light on the issue of the origin and the context in which the Psalter was translated and disseminated at the beginning of Romanian vernacular writing. The main source of the translation and the model for the composition of the bilingual Psalter was a Church Slavonic commentated Psalter. Several data suggest that the Psalter was not translated in Romanian countries: the sources used for the translation are recorded predominantly in medieval Serbia and Mount Athos; some peculiarities of spelling, punctuation, and translation show that the text was composed or transmitted in a Greek environment; some linguistic peculiarities indicate that among the translators and copyists, there were undoubtedly Aromanians (Vlachs). As for the oldest copy, the Hurmuzaki Psalter, it was written on Mount Athos itself, most likely at the Zograf Monastery. All these data suggest that the translation may have been done in one of the monasteries of Mount Athos. The Psalter was translated into Romanian by decision of the Church, which wanted to create an auxiliary for the understanding of Slavonic liturgy by novices. This happened in the context of the flourishing of monasticism, when novices who did not speak Church Slavonic were arriving in the monastery. Among these novices were Aromanians, as the linguistic features of the manuscripts show, who came from a Greekspeaking area and therefore needed a tool for understanding the official language of the Church.
This article offers an explanation for the priority of translating the Psalter into Romanian, whi... more This article offers an explanation for the priority of translating the Psalter into Romanian, which represents the oldest and most popular Romanian text. Some researchers, who were basing on a wrong dating of the Romanian Psalter, explained its appearance by the important role of the psalms in the Protestant communities. New data proves that the Romanian Psalter was translated into an Orthodox monastery in the 15th century. Looking for an explanation for this, the important cultic function of the Psalter in the Byzantine Commonwealth is traced, as it emerges from monastic literature and Byzantine monastic foundation documents: being seen as a spiritual panoply and a teacher of prayer, an unsleeping presence in public worship and private devotion, it was often learned by heart, a practice which survived into present days. The importance of the Psalter in everyday life determined its use as a didactic tool, being also a way of learning of the liturgical language. All this explains why the Psalter occupies a central place in the spiritual and cultural history of the Christian world.
The oldest Romanian text, Hurmuzaki Psalter (ca. 1491–1516), was copied from a bilingual Slavic-R... more The oldest Romanian text, Hurmuzaki Psalter (ca. 1491–1516), was copied from a bilingual Slavic-Romanian antigraph, from which the scribe carelessly took several textual and paratextual elements. The present article analyzes these elements, showing that they belong to the Athanasian catena on Psalms: Slavonic words and comments on the title; rubrication elements, punctuation, marginal notes. The arrangement of the sequences of psalms and commentaries seems to have been one below the other, as in the BrankoMladenović Psalter, or alternatively, as the most common type of Slavic catena on Psalms. The conclusion is that the Old Church Slavonic catena on Psalms was not only the source of the translation, but also the model for composing the first Romanian bilingual version.
Cele mai vechi Psaltiri româneşti, care datează din sec. al XVI-lea, provin dintr-o singură tradu... more Cele mai vechi Psaltiri româneşti, care datează din sec. al XVI-lea, provin dintr-o singură traducere, efectuată din slavonă la o dată necunoscută. Aceste Psaltiri se împart în două sub-familii: A (Hurmuzaki şi Voronet) şi B (Psaltirea Scheiană, Psaltirea moldovenească şi cele trei psaltiri tipărite de Coresi). Sursa traducerii se crede că este înrudită cu Psaltirea lui Branko Mladenović (Codex Bucurestinus). Pe baza particularităţilor redacţionale ale Psaltirii slavone, studiate de Catherine MacRobert, am urmărit deosebirile pe care le prezintă cele două grupuri, scoţând în evidenţă înrudirea Psaltirilor româneşti cu trei redacţii ale Psaltirii slavone: grupul A, care este şi cel mai vechi, conservă trăsăturile redacţiei ruseşti; în particular, Psaltirea Hurmuzaki prezintă şi urme ale redacţiei arhaice; grupul B urmează de obicei fidel redacţia athonită.
The oldest Romanian Evangelion has been written in 1682, taking over the text of the oldest Roman... more The oldest Romanian Evangelion has been written in 1682, taking over the text of the oldest Romanian New Testament (1648), carefully reviewed using the Greek text. The edition printed by Anthim the Iberian at Snagov, in 1697, takes over the text from 1682, but it’s been a subject to a careful revision. This article demonstrates that the reviewer has used the Slavonic and Greek Bible, Staico’s Slavo-Romanian lexicon, but also Berynda’s Slavo-Ruthenian lexicon and the Bucharest Bible. The revision is attributed to Damaschin, a teacher of the Slavonic school, the main translator of liturgical texts in Romanian and a collaborator of Anthim. The revision has removed literal translations and neologisms due to Greek source and the aim is to modernize the language. The resulting edition represents a flowing text, suitable for reading in the church, announcing a new phase in the evolution of the Romanian literary language.
The oldest Romanian Psalters, which are actually the oldest Romanian language monuments, date bac... more The oldest Romanian Psalters, which are actually the oldest Romanian language monuments, date back to the 16th century, and they include four manuscripts and four printed documents. Based on their redactional features, the texts are divided into two groups, A and B. Previous research has linked these Psalters to Codex Bucurestinus and the archaic versions of the Slavonic Psalter. Our investigations have shown that the source of the oldest Romanian Psalter is a Slavonic Psalter related to Belgrade Psalter (13th century). The Romanian version bearing these particularities, conventionally called A, constitutes the source of the Hurmuzaki Psalter and the Psalter from Voroneț. Version A was later revised according to a Psalter related to the Oxford Serbian Psalter (14th century) and resulted in version B, which constitutes the source of the Scheian Psalter, the Moldavian Psalter and the printed Psalters. Some clues identified in the oldest Romanian Psalter point to a connection to the archaic and commentated Psalters. These elements seem to originate in the Slavonic version, which is present in the antigraph of the Hurmuzaki Psalter.
The shepherding tradition in Romanic peoples enjoyed some interest among linguists in the first h... more The shepherding tradition in Romanic peoples enjoyed some interest among linguists in the first half of the 20th century. However, this tradition has been misunderstood, poorly known, or even completely ignored. Therefore, starting from a suggestion by Alf Lombard, we took up this research direction, discussing several issues revealed by the study of Eastern Romanity. These are the rustic character of the Romanian language bearing pastoral traits; the Carpathian-Balkan space in which the language was born and the issue of continuity in the North Danube area; and the dialectal configuration of the Romanian, having four relatively homogeneous historical dialects and language varieties. In this direction, we relied on linguistic, ethnographic, historical and archaeological research, in order to emphasize the importance of shepherding in the research of Eastern Romanity.
Genealogically, Romanian is defined as the Latin language spoken continuously in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, from the Carpathians to the Balkans, with the changes that have taken place throughout history. The pastoral character of Eastern Romanity is rendered by the early medieval chronicles; even the exonym vlah (Wallachian) designating the Romanic population has acquired the meaning of ‘shepherd’. The specificity of this community is supported by numerous linguistic facts: semantic evolutions (e.g. animal ‘living creature, animal’ > nămaie ‘sheep’), specific derivations (a înţărca ‘wean’, derived from ţarc ‘corral, enclosed area for animals’, which initially meant ‘getting the lamb into a corral, so it stopped sucking’), expressions (a închega un gând ‘crystallise thoughts’, where the verb used is a închega ‘coagulate’) or even morphologic elements (the structure of the Romanian numeral from 11 to 19, linked to the scoring system).
Throughout time, shepherding has been associated with the controversial issue of the territory in which the Romanian language and the Romanian people were born. Ethnological research has revealed the existence of four types of shepherding: local – agricultural – one, two types characterised by short transhumance, and the last one, associated with long-distance transhumance. Of the three types of transhumant shepherding, none identifies itself with the nomadic lifestyle and, therefore, the existence of a balkanische Hirtenromania (Balkan pastoral Romanity) does not imply the phenomenon of migration, as it was erroneously believed. Shepherding, through the forms described by ethnologists, explains both the sedentary character and the mobility of Oriental Romanity. Linguistic and archaeological arguments support G. Ivănescu’s view identifying the origins of the Romanian language in both the north and south of the Danube.
The pastoral character of Romanity led to a population mobility that influenced the language at diatopic level. There is, on the one hand, a dialectal diversity due to population movements, and, on the other hand, a surprising linguistic unit, due to transhumant shepherds whose travels played a linguistic levelling role. This fact explains the linguistic unity of the Romanian language, despite its territorial spread and development in several historical provinces separated by natural boundaries.
While shepherding explains some important issues in the history of Eastern Romanity, there is still need for systematic study on this topic. A comparative study of shepherding at the level of the entire Romanity is required in order to draw a complete picture of the lifestyle that characterized Romanity especially in the mountainous areas of Europe, bearing influence on the historical languages that we can only guess nowadays.
Receptarea Sfintei Scripturi: între filologie, hermeneutică şi traductologie, 2019
In this article we study the sixth petition of the Pater Noster in the Greek text, in the patrist... more In this article we study the sixth petition of the Pater Noster in the Greek text, in the patristic hermeneutics and in the Romanian translations from the 16th century until today. The sixth petition, in its present form (nu ne duce pe noi în ispită „ne nos inducas in tentationem”), is attested in the earliest versions of the Pater Noster, dating back to the 16th century. The changes made in the last centuries reflect not different hermeneutical perspectives, but the lexical dynamics of the Romanian language during its history.
Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Philologica, 2017
OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXTS PUBLISHED IN BUDA BETWEEN 1814 AND 1815 CONCERNING THE NAPOLEONIC WARS
... more OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEXTS PUBLISHED IN BUDA BETWEEN 1814 AND 1815 CONCERNING THE NAPOLEONIC WARS
Six Romanian booklets on the Napoleonic wars printed in Buda in 1814-1815 were considered anonymous until the present time. We re-initiated the discussion on their paternity with linguistic and philological arguments, proving that the author of five of them is Ioan Theodorovici, the priest of the Greek-Romanian church in Pesta and one of the authors of the Lexicon of Buda (1825). The sixth booklet, containing the biography of Tsar Alexander I, remains anonymous. Zaharie Carcalechi’s collaboration proves that the six brochures can be considered the beginning of the print media in the Romanian language.
First two „universal geographies” printed in the Romanian language come from between the end of t... more First two „universal geographies” printed in the Romanian language come from between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century; both of them have its source from the Universal Geography by Claude Buffier. The first one, Gheografie de obşte (Jassy, 1795), was the translation of the Italian version of François Jacquier, done by Bishop Amfilohie of Hotin. In our article we bring new arguments in order to support the opinion that the second book, Gheografia sau scrierea pământului (Buda, 1814–1815), was a reedition of the Bishop Amfilohie of Hotin’s translation, with some extensive insertions from contemporary historical and geographical books and many contemporary news, the most important of which were about the Napoleonic wars. If Nicola Nicolau’s contribution to the preparing of this edition is known and accepted, we launched the hypothesis that his collaborator was the intellectual Ioan Theodorovici, the parish priest of the Greek-Wallachian church in Pesta and a representative of the Romanian Enlightenment.
The New Testament from Bălgrad (1648) has known a large distribution on the Romanian land by be... more The New Testament from Bălgrad (1648) has known a large distribution on the Romanian land by being quoted, copied or included in the religious texts of the epoch. A review of this text was included in The Bible from Bucharest (1688). The results presented in this research prove that there was also another more detailed review, published in The Gospel dating from 1682. This first edition of the Romanian Gospel was improved and republished by Antim Ivireanul in 1697. The edition from 1697 was constantly republished in the printing centers belonging to the Romanian regions until the 19th century. Therefore, the New Testament, translated and printed in Alba Iulia, stays as the basis of the textual tradition of the Gospel.
Les plus anciennes versions roumaines de la prière « Notre Père » gardent la forme de
singulier c... more Les plus anciennes versions roumaines de la prière « Notre Père » gardent la forme de singulier ciel, à la place du pluriel demandé par la tradition biblique grecque, latine et viex slave. Egalement présent dans d‟autres espaces culturels, ce fait linguistique s‟explique soit par l‟influence de l‟originel hébreu, soit par la circulation orale de la prière, en anticipant le singulier du vers suivant. En roumain, où on ne peut pas parler d‟une traduction selon l‟originel hébreu aux débuts de l‟écrit roumain, la présence de la forme du singulier ciel dans l‟oraison dominicale prouve la circulation orale de la prière dans le XVIe siècle. Ce fait démontre également que la prière Notre père est plus ancienne que le premier texte roumain découvert.
Lucrarea oferă o incursiune în istoria rugăciunii Tatăl nostru în limba română, începând cu cea m... more Lucrarea oferă o incursiune în istoria rugăciunii Tatăl nostru în limba română, începând cu cea mai veche versiune existentă, păstrată în Evangheliarul slavo-român din 1551-1553, şi încheind cu cele actuale. Sunt analizate detaliat, pornind de la sursele greceşti, slavoneşti şi latineşti, opţiunile textuale ale traducătorilor, prefacerile pe care le-a suferit textul rugăciunii de-a lungul timpului şi procesul prin care Tatăl nostru românesc s-a standardizat în epoca unificării limbii române literare, prin activitatea lui Antim Ivireanul. Lucrarea se încheie cu un corpus de texte care cuprinde peste 200 de versiuni ale rugăciunii din toate epocile scrisului românesc, păstrate în manuscrise şi tipărituri, incluzându-le pe cele care au circulat în Occident ca specimene de limbă începând cu secolul al XVI-lea.
In the volume Romania at Lund University Lucian Vasile Bâgiu edits the texts of seven scientific ... more In the volume Romania at Lund University Lucian Vasile Bâgiu edits the texts of seven scientific conferences held by seven Romanian guest lecturers at Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, as a result of seven travel and research grants acquired by Romanian Studies Department from various Swedish academic funds. The essays edited by Lucian Vasile Bâgiu offer a comprehensive image of Romania’s language, literature and culture, from its early beginnings up to present days. Romania at Lund University is a captivating initiative which testifies to the tenacious activity deployed by the visiting Romanian lecturer, Lucian Vasile Bâgiu, at Lund University, Sweden, during three years. While being in residence there he managed the sophisticated administrative apparatus and invited six Romanian academics to deliver lectures on various topics: linguistics and etymology, literary world’s specificities, contemporary Romanian literature, and Romanian folklore. Consequently, the present volume displays a generous array of interpretations and scientific enterprises.
In the second volume of Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies we are delighted to welcome ten artic... more In the second volume of Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies we are delighted to welcome ten articles and four book reviews on Romanian language, literature, translation, culture and theatre, written in English, French or Romanian, by academics from various traditional universities. Literature section is illustrated by authors with affiliation to The “A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology, Iași, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, and West University of Timișoara. The articles advance novel insights when inquiring into enticing subjects such as: the bodily community and its representations in the common space of the members of Viața românească literary group, analysed through Roland Barthes’s and Marielle Macéʼs theories; the remix of hajduk fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century Romanian literature, conveying a modern lifestyle; the exile and nostalgia for the native lands in a comparative reading of the works of two seemingly unrelated writers: Andreï Makine and Sorin Titel, both of whom revealed to undergo a pilgrimage to reinvent themselves. Translation studies is a perfect ground for “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia to present a paper dealing with a view on the concept of fidelity in literary translation with an analysis of the Romanian poet Mircea Ivănescu’s work on the overture of episode eleven, “Sirens”, from James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. The paper is not intended to elicit the imperfections of the translation but rather to illustrate the intricacy of the task, the problems of non-equivalence that are difficult to avoid by any literary translator. Theatre section benefits from the original intuitions of academics from National University of Music Bucharest and Military Technical Academy, Bucharest, concentrating on modernity: the importance of the Romanian theatrical project – DramAcum, as a new type of theatre and dramaturgy, within the larger European influence of the verbatim dramatic style performed in theatres under the slogan of the in-yer-face; staging O’Neill’s Hughie by Alexa Visarion makes way for an investigation of several drama reviews that discuss the play’s first night, revealing that the performance was a successful attempt at communicating and debating the conflicted values of American pragmatism and equally a crowning of the Romanian director’s effort to unfold the “anti-materialism” and the fatalistic approach to existence of the American playwright. Owing to University of Bucharest in Cultural studies we witness the reconstruction of the attitudes of Romanian peasants towards the vestiges of prehistoric material culture, finding out what people thought about the origin of prehistoric artefacts and what meanings were associated to them. In the Linguistics section thanks to Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, and Lund University we are introduced to three perspectives on Romanian language: the destiny of the Latin in the East is interpreted through the pastoral character of Romanity, which led to a population mobility that influenced the language at diatopic level, with a focus on the transhumant shepherds whose travels played a linguistic levelling role, despite the territorial spread of the language; the modern French impact on the Romanian language (the redefining of the neo-Latinic physiognomy of the Romanian language) is detailed from a chronological perspective, the influence of French language being considered from a linguistic perspective, but also with a view to the various social circumstances; last but not least, we are proposed a plea in favor of a linguistic updating, namely the acceptance into the literary language of feminized denominations of professions. Due to University of Oradea, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, and University of Craiova the Book reviews section engages: a tome written by Paul Cernat, an essential study for those interested in the phenomenon of the Romanian avant-garde; a book by Carmen Mușat, which analyzes and systemizes the relational character of literature and the discourses on literature, a plea for the theorist and his presence in the world, retaining a valid purpose; a volume proposing multiple interpretations, in which Carmen Dărăbuş traces the (evolutionary) trajectory of male characters, by highlighting the permanent capabilities of metamorphosis of the primordial pattern; a literary magazine bringing into attention of the contemporary readers the cultural activity of the Romanian intellectuals from exile, with a focus on Camilian Demetrescu. Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies is published in collaboration with “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania, and welcomes contributions from scholars all over the world.
MUSEIKON: A Journal of Religious Art and Culture | Revue d'art et de culture religieuse, 2019
Following in the footsteps of the two conferences of Poitiers (Heresy and Bible translation in th... more Following in the footsteps of the two conferences of Poitiers (Heresy and Bible translation in the Middle Ages and at the dawn of the Renaissance, October 27, 2017, Centre d’Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale) and Alba Iulia (Vernacular Psalters and the Early Rise of Linguistic Identities, June 27-28, 2018, Museikon), the nucleus of researchers already collaborating in a previous Museikon publication (Vernacular Psalters and the Early Rise of Linguistic Identities: The Romanian Case, 2019) decided to expand the scope of their common effort and see how a comparative philological approach would work on a practical level. The idea of this collective research and paper came naturally in the early stages of the preparation of a future project dealing with a comparative approach of vernacular Psalters and Gospels both in relation to their high-prestige Greek, Latin, or Church Slavonic sources, and at an intravernacular level, where some of them could have influenced the others. The comparisons between vernacular translations are useful for the identification of translation clusters active in several languages and for the reconstruction of a pan-European forma mentis which shaped the early vernacular renderings of the Bible. The present paper is also an editorial test. While experimenting with format, the contributors equally tested how common publications such as this may be replicated in the near future, in a journal dedicated only to a comparative philological study of early Bible translations. The current subject (musical instruments terminology) was chosen in order to provide a representative prospective section of the entire corpus. New collaborators were invited to join in and contribute to the exploration of the more difficult aspects of the study, thus anticipating the opening of philology to a wider array of disciplines, according to the needs of the explored realia. Since the topic is far from being exhausted and since many European languages are not yet dealt with, the study will be continued in the next issue of Museikon.
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Papers by Iosif Camara
Genealogically, Romanian is defined as the Latin language spoken continuously in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, from the Carpathians to the Balkans, with the changes that have taken place throughout history. The pastoral character of Eastern Romanity is rendered by the early medieval chronicles; even the exonym vlah (Wallachian) designating the Romanic population has acquired the meaning of ‘shepherd’. The specificity of this community is supported by numerous linguistic facts: semantic evolutions (e.g. animal ‘living creature, animal’ > nămaie ‘sheep’), specific derivations (a înţărca ‘wean’, derived from ţarc ‘corral, enclosed area for animals’, which initially meant ‘getting the lamb into a corral, so it stopped sucking’), expressions (a închega un gând ‘crystallise thoughts’, where the verb used is a închega ‘coagulate’) or even morphologic elements (the structure of the Romanian numeral from 11 to 19, linked to the scoring system).
Throughout time, shepherding has been associated with the controversial issue of the territory in which the Romanian language and the Romanian people were born. Ethnological research has revealed the existence of four types of shepherding: local – agricultural – one, two types characterised by short transhumance, and the last one, associated with long-distance transhumance. Of the three types of transhumant shepherding, none identifies itself with the nomadic lifestyle and, therefore, the existence of a balkanische Hirtenromania (Balkan pastoral Romanity) does not imply the phenomenon of migration, as it was erroneously believed. Shepherding, through the forms described by ethnologists, explains both the sedentary character and the mobility of Oriental Romanity. Linguistic and archaeological arguments support G. Ivănescu’s view identifying the origins of the Romanian language in both the north and south of the Danube.
The pastoral character of Romanity led to a population mobility that influenced the language at diatopic level. There is, on the one hand, a dialectal diversity due to population movements, and, on the other hand, a surprising linguistic unit, due to transhumant shepherds whose travels played a linguistic levelling role. This fact explains the linguistic unity of the Romanian language, despite its territorial spread and development in several historical provinces separated by natural boundaries.
While shepherding explains some important issues in the history of Eastern Romanity, there is still need for systematic study on this topic. A comparative study of shepherding at the level of the entire Romanity is required in order to draw a complete picture of the lifestyle that characterized Romanity especially in the mountainous areas of Europe, bearing influence on the historical languages that we can only guess nowadays.
Six Romanian booklets on the Napoleonic wars printed in Buda in 1814-1815 were considered anonymous until the present time. We re-initiated the discussion on their paternity with linguistic and philological arguments, proving that the author of five of them is Ioan Theodorovici, the priest of the Greek-Romanian church in Pesta and one of the authors of the Lexicon of Buda (1825). The sixth booklet, containing the biography of Tsar Alexander I, remains anonymous. Zaharie Carcalechi’s collaboration proves that the six brochures can be considered the beginning of the print media in the Romanian language.
singulier ciel, à la place du pluriel demandé par la tradition biblique grecque, latine et
viex slave. Egalement présent dans d‟autres espaces culturels, ce fait linguistique
s‟explique soit par l‟influence de l‟originel hébreu, soit par la circulation orale de la
prière, en anticipant le singulier du vers suivant. En roumain, où on ne peut pas parler
d‟une traduction selon l‟originel hébreu aux débuts de l‟écrit roumain, la présence de la
forme du singulier ciel dans l‟oraison dominicale prouve la circulation orale de la prière
dans le XVIe siècle. Ce fait démontre également que la prière Notre père est plus ancienne
que le premier texte roumain découvert.
Books by Iosif Camara
Pentru detalii: http://www.editura.uaic.ro/produse/editura/ultimele-aparitii/rugaciunea-tatal-nostru-in-limba-romana-studiu-istorico-filologic-1767/1
Romania at Lund University is a captivating initiative which testifies to the tenacious activity deployed by the visiting Romanian lecturer, Lucian Vasile Bâgiu, at Lund University, Sweden, during three years. While being in residence there he managed the sophisticated administrative apparatus and invited six Romanian academics to deliver lectures on various topics: linguistics and etymology, literary world’s specificities, contemporary Romanian literature, and Romanian folklore. Consequently, the present volume displays a generous array of interpretations and scientific enterprises.
Literature section is illustrated by authors with affiliation to The “A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology, Iași, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, and West University of Timișoara. The articles advance novel insights when inquiring into enticing subjects such as: the bodily community and its representations in the common space of the members of Viața românească literary group, analysed through Roland Barthes’s and Marielle Macéʼs theories; the remix of hajduk fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century Romanian literature, conveying a modern lifestyle; the exile and nostalgia for the native lands in a comparative reading of the works of two seemingly unrelated writers: Andreï Makine and Sorin Titel, both of whom revealed to undergo a pilgrimage to reinvent themselves.
Translation studies is a perfect ground for “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia to present a paper dealing with a view on the concept of fidelity in literary translation with an analysis of the Romanian poet Mircea Ivănescu’s work on the overture of episode eleven, “Sirens”, from James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. The paper is not intended to elicit the imperfections of the translation but rather to illustrate the intricacy of the task, the problems of non-equivalence that are difficult to avoid by any literary translator.
Theatre section benefits from the original intuitions of academics from National University of Music Bucharest and Military Technical Academy, Bucharest, concentrating on modernity: the importance of the Romanian theatrical project – DramAcum, as a new type of theatre and dramaturgy, within the larger European influence of the verbatim dramatic style performed in theatres under the slogan of the in-yer-face; staging O’Neill’s Hughie by Alexa Visarion makes way for an investigation of several drama reviews that discuss the play’s first night, revealing that the performance was a successful attempt at communicating and debating the conflicted values of American pragmatism and equally a crowning of the Romanian director’s effort to unfold the “anti-materialism” and the fatalistic approach to existence of the American playwright.
Owing to University of Bucharest in Cultural studies we witness the reconstruction of the attitudes of Romanian peasants towards the vestiges of prehistoric material culture, finding out what people thought about the origin of prehistoric artefacts and what meanings were associated to them.
In the Linguistics section thanks to Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, and Lund University we are introduced to three perspectives on Romanian language: the destiny of the Latin in the East is interpreted through the pastoral character of Romanity, which led to a population mobility that influenced the language at diatopic level, with a focus on the transhumant shepherds whose travels played a linguistic levelling role, despite the territorial spread of the language; the modern French impact on the Romanian language (the redefining of the neo-Latinic physiognomy of the Romanian language) is detailed from a chronological perspective, the influence of French language being considered from a linguistic perspective, but also with a view to the various social circumstances; last but not least, we are proposed a plea in favor of a linguistic updating, namely the acceptance into the literary language of feminized denominations of professions.
Due to University of Oradea, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, and University of Craiova the Book reviews section engages: a tome written by Paul Cernat, an essential study for those interested in the phenomenon of the Romanian avant-garde; a book by Carmen Mușat, which analyzes and systemizes the relational character of literature and the discourses on literature, a plea for the theorist and his presence in the world, retaining a valid purpose; a volume proposing multiple interpretations, in which Carmen Dărăbuş traces the (evolutionary) trajectory of male characters, by highlighting the permanent capabilities of metamorphosis of the primordial pattern; a literary magazine bringing into attention of the contemporary readers the cultural activity of the Romanian intellectuals from exile, with a focus on Camilian Demetrescu.
Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies is published in collaboration with “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania, and welcomes contributions from scholars all over the world.
Articles by Iosif Camara
Genealogically, Romanian is defined as the Latin language spoken continuously in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, from the Carpathians to the Balkans, with the changes that have taken place throughout history. The pastoral character of Eastern Romanity is rendered by the early medieval chronicles; even the exonym vlah (Wallachian) designating the Romanic population has acquired the meaning of ‘shepherd’. The specificity of this community is supported by numerous linguistic facts: semantic evolutions (e.g. animal ‘living creature, animal’ > nămaie ‘sheep’), specific derivations (a înţărca ‘wean’, derived from ţarc ‘corral, enclosed area for animals’, which initially meant ‘getting the lamb into a corral, so it stopped sucking’), expressions (a închega un gând ‘crystallise thoughts’, where the verb used is a închega ‘coagulate’) or even morphologic elements (the structure of the Romanian numeral from 11 to 19, linked to the scoring system).
Throughout time, shepherding has been associated with the controversial issue of the territory in which the Romanian language and the Romanian people were born. Ethnological research has revealed the existence of four types of shepherding: local – agricultural – one, two types characterised by short transhumance, and the last one, associated with long-distance transhumance. Of the three types of transhumant shepherding, none identifies itself with the nomadic lifestyle and, therefore, the existence of a balkanische Hirtenromania (Balkan pastoral Romanity) does not imply the phenomenon of migration, as it was erroneously believed. Shepherding, through the forms described by ethnologists, explains both the sedentary character and the mobility of Oriental Romanity. Linguistic and archaeological arguments support G. Ivănescu’s view identifying the origins of the Romanian language in both the north and south of the Danube.
The pastoral character of Romanity led to a population mobility that influenced the language at diatopic level. There is, on the one hand, a dialectal diversity due to population movements, and, on the other hand, a surprising linguistic unit, due to transhumant shepherds whose travels played a linguistic levelling role. This fact explains the linguistic unity of the Romanian language, despite its territorial spread and development in several historical provinces separated by natural boundaries.
While shepherding explains some important issues in the history of Eastern Romanity, there is still need for systematic study on this topic. A comparative study of shepherding at the level of the entire Romanity is required in order to draw a complete picture of the lifestyle that characterized Romanity especially in the mountainous areas of Europe, bearing influence on the historical languages that we can only guess nowadays.
Six Romanian booklets on the Napoleonic wars printed in Buda in 1814-1815 were considered anonymous until the present time. We re-initiated the discussion on their paternity with linguistic and philological arguments, proving that the author of five of them is Ioan Theodorovici, the priest of the Greek-Romanian church in Pesta and one of the authors of the Lexicon of Buda (1825). The sixth booklet, containing the biography of Tsar Alexander I, remains anonymous. Zaharie Carcalechi’s collaboration proves that the six brochures can be considered the beginning of the print media in the Romanian language.
singulier ciel, à la place du pluriel demandé par la tradition biblique grecque, latine et
viex slave. Egalement présent dans d‟autres espaces culturels, ce fait linguistique
s‟explique soit par l‟influence de l‟originel hébreu, soit par la circulation orale de la
prière, en anticipant le singulier du vers suivant. En roumain, où on ne peut pas parler
d‟une traduction selon l‟originel hébreu aux débuts de l‟écrit roumain, la présence de la
forme du singulier ciel dans l‟oraison dominicale prouve la circulation orale de la prière
dans le XVIe siècle. Ce fait démontre également que la prière Notre père est plus ancienne
que le premier texte roumain découvert.
Pentru detalii: http://www.editura.uaic.ro/produse/editura/ultimele-aparitii/rugaciunea-tatal-nostru-in-limba-romana-studiu-istorico-filologic-1767/1
Romania at Lund University is a captivating initiative which testifies to the tenacious activity deployed by the visiting Romanian lecturer, Lucian Vasile Bâgiu, at Lund University, Sweden, during three years. While being in residence there he managed the sophisticated administrative apparatus and invited six Romanian academics to deliver lectures on various topics: linguistics and etymology, literary world’s specificities, contemporary Romanian literature, and Romanian folklore. Consequently, the present volume displays a generous array of interpretations and scientific enterprises.
Literature section is illustrated by authors with affiliation to The “A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology, Iași, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, and West University of Timișoara. The articles advance novel insights when inquiring into enticing subjects such as: the bodily community and its representations in the common space of the members of Viața românească literary group, analysed through Roland Barthes’s and Marielle Macéʼs theories; the remix of hajduk fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century Romanian literature, conveying a modern lifestyle; the exile and nostalgia for the native lands in a comparative reading of the works of two seemingly unrelated writers: Andreï Makine and Sorin Titel, both of whom revealed to undergo a pilgrimage to reinvent themselves.
Translation studies is a perfect ground for “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia to present a paper dealing with a view on the concept of fidelity in literary translation with an analysis of the Romanian poet Mircea Ivănescu’s work on the overture of episode eleven, “Sirens”, from James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. The paper is not intended to elicit the imperfections of the translation but rather to illustrate the intricacy of the task, the problems of non-equivalence that are difficult to avoid by any literary translator.
Theatre section benefits from the original intuitions of academics from National University of Music Bucharest and Military Technical Academy, Bucharest, concentrating on modernity: the importance of the Romanian theatrical project – DramAcum, as a new type of theatre and dramaturgy, within the larger European influence of the verbatim dramatic style performed in theatres under the slogan of the in-yer-face; staging O’Neill’s Hughie by Alexa Visarion makes way for an investigation of several drama reviews that discuss the play’s first night, revealing that the performance was a successful attempt at communicating and debating the conflicted values of American pragmatism and equally a crowning of the Romanian director’s effort to unfold the “anti-materialism” and the fatalistic approach to existence of the American playwright.
Owing to University of Bucharest in Cultural studies we witness the reconstruction of the attitudes of Romanian peasants towards the vestiges of prehistoric material culture, finding out what people thought about the origin of prehistoric artefacts and what meanings were associated to them.
In the Linguistics section thanks to Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, and Lund University we are introduced to three perspectives on Romanian language: the destiny of the Latin in the East is interpreted through the pastoral character of Romanity, which led to a population mobility that influenced the language at diatopic level, with a focus on the transhumant shepherds whose travels played a linguistic levelling role, despite the territorial spread of the language; the modern French impact on the Romanian language (the redefining of the neo-Latinic physiognomy of the Romanian language) is detailed from a chronological perspective, the influence of French language being considered from a linguistic perspective, but also with a view to the various social circumstances; last but not least, we are proposed a plea in favor of a linguistic updating, namely the acceptance into the literary language of feminized denominations of professions.
Due to University of Oradea, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, and University of Craiova the Book reviews section engages: a tome written by Paul Cernat, an essential study for those interested in the phenomenon of the Romanian avant-garde; a book by Carmen Mușat, which analyzes and systemizes the relational character of literature and the discourses on literature, a plea for the theorist and his presence in the world, retaining a valid purpose; a volume proposing multiple interpretations, in which Carmen Dărăbuş traces the (evolutionary) trajectory of male characters, by highlighting the permanent capabilities of metamorphosis of the primordial pattern; a literary magazine bringing into attention of the contemporary readers the cultural activity of the Romanian intellectuals from exile, with a focus on Camilian Demetrescu.
Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies is published in collaboration with “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania, and welcomes contributions from scholars all over the world.