10.

2478/ewcp-2019-0017

Absurdity in Ernest Hemingway’s

The Sun Also Rises

MIRUNA CIOCOI-POP
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania
and
EMILIAN TÎRBAN
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania

Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to capture and convey, through the use
of different works of philosophy that encapsulate thoughts on the
same idea, the motif of the absurdity of life in Ernest Hemingway’s
first novel The Sun Also Rises. The concept of the absurd will be,
first and foremost, examined through absurdist criticism of the
novel, using the philosophical thought of Albert Camus, Soren
Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and other philosophers who
captured the essence of the absurd in their philosophy, all in order
to represent this concept in Hemingway’s novel and to show how it
truly manifests itself upon some of the most important characters’
psychology and their actions, portrayed throughout the three parts
of the book. Mention will be made of the concept of “Lost
generation” as it is the cornerstone to understanding, firstly, the
characters’ background and current psychological status and the
effects that the war had on an entire generation, leading them to an
unwilling search for meaning in what this essay strives to present as
a meaningless life.

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160 East-West Cultural Passage

Keywords: absurdity, alcoholism, trauma, psychology,

emasculation, resentment, meaninglessness

“You are all a lost generation.” Gertrude Stein’s statement

regarding the generation that came of age during WWI was, truly,
the spark that lit the fire of imagination in Ernest Hemingway’s
mind and that of sudden revelation regarding his peers but also his
own self, admitting that “for whatever is going to happen to this
generation of which I am part has already happened” (xvi).
Willingly or not, this reception of how the author’s generation
suffered, because of the terrible conflict, managed to turn his novel
The Sun Also Rises, not only in an elegy for the “loss of innocence,
of religion, of our old comforting myths […]” (qtd. on the novel’s
back cover) but also in a deeply philosophical work that finds its
philosophical roots ebbed in the psychology of its characters and
the way they react on a daily basis, struggling with unsolved trauma
of which they are mostly unaware. Because of the disastrous events
of WWI, the generation that managed to return to life out of its
ashes succumbed to a tragic way of existence, suffering from a
mental illness, which we today call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
disillusionment with their society’s values always in search of a
bohemian style of life drowned in alcohol and trips, these being
greatly connected to most of the flaws that the characters in the
book have, alcoholism, rage, promiscuity. The novel centers around
Jake Barnes, the character-narrator of the story, and the adventure
that follows his meeting up with former war veterans and friends,
now expatriates, who form an unlikely group set out to watch the
Fiesta and the bullfights in Spain, among city-breaks, night-
drinking, day-drinking, endless chatting and arguing. The endeavor
reveals hidden and subversive lingering feelings of love/hate
between the group’s members who, during their excursion, initially
organized in hopes of their forgetting the stressful life of the city,
begin to express their contempt towards each other and also to
become rivals for the love of the flamboyant female figure of the
group, Lady Brett Ashley. Initially perceived as a trite description
of a few drunk former war veterans in search of a relaxing pastime,

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 Miruna Ciocoi-Pop & Emilian Tîrban 161

the novel masterfully unveils the unconscious afflictions of each

character; these afflictions are ultimately what drive the characters
to combative behavior between each other and shatter the bonds of
companionship. As in Albert Camus’ philosophical essay The Myth
of Sisyphus, the heroes are eternally forced in an endless loop of
rolling the boulder up the mountain, in search of a concrete
meaning of life only to find out that their efforts are utterly
worthless. Camus states that “a man is always prey to his truths
[…]” (The Myth 30); the truth of the characters and the entire “Lost
Generation” is the fact that they were part of the war and now its
effects still simmer deep inside the hearts of men/women. As we
are about to see of Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley who are
evidently in love with each other, yet unable to form a communion,
mainly because of the effects that the experience of war still exerts
on them, yet Camus reinforces his idea of the man being chased by
his truths by saying that man is also capable and entrusted to escape
the affliction that constantly degrades his universe “[…] he should
strive to escape the universe of which he is the creator” (The Myth 30).
The absurdity of life is seeking meaning in life by knowing
that life is inherently meaningless, thus allowing man to chase
something in order to give it meaning. Soren Kierkegaard proposes
religion as one of the means of attaining meaning, that by
constantly behaving in order to please a greater power outside of
the human’s absurd reality, man can find meaning; he termed this
way of living based on the presupposition that an unearthly holy
power awaits the soul after death as a “leap of faith.” Camus
counters Kierkegaard’s solution for the absurd by saying that “He
[Kierkegaard] makes of the absurd the criterion of the other world,
whereas it is simply a residue of the experience of this world” (The
Myth 36), naming such an existentialist approach to the absurd as
“philosophical suicide” (The Myth 27), yet in Hemingway’s novel,
the loss of religion, the banishing of man because of it, are
portrayed, firstly because of Jake Barnes’ answer “I don’t know”
(99), to the question “Are you really a Catholic?” (99), secondly
because of Robert Cohn’s mistreatment by his peers only because
he is Jewish, or the alien in the group of expatriates, being regarded

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162 East-West Cultural Passage

by Brett and the others as the symbolic stranger in the band of

friends, also because he is not a war veteran.
Robert Cohn is the starting point of the novel as the first
paragraph of it is exclusively about him and his life. Though he is,
throughout the novel, the most quixotic type of character due to his
code of values and strong passion for Brett which turns into a
restless pursuit of her love, Cohn being completely infatuated like
most male characters in the novel, his mind ultimately gets crushed
because their affair meant nothing more but an earthly pleasure for
Brett, which, in turn, for him proved to be almost a wedding service
“The more one loves the stronger the absurd grows” (Camus, The
Myth 67). Henceforth, Robert Cohn’s being is completely trapped
in an absurd loop of getting Lady Brett to love him, which led to
aggressive behavior and resentment from his peers. Nevertheless, in
the second chapter of the book, Robert Cohn is the one to initiate
the great adventure that is to follow by simply admitting to his own
absurdity and that until this point he did not feel contempt with his
life: “I can’t stand to think my life is going so fast and I’m not
really living it” (9). Though a mediocre author, Robert Cohn also
tries his hand at writing, which from an absurdist/existentialist
point of view is one of the ways of finding worth in a life that is
meaningless, as Nietzsche puts it “Art and nothing but art, we have
art in order not to die from the truth” (qtd. in Sefler 415). Robert
Cohn’s cruel reality is that he is constantly frowned upon by his
peers for being a Jew and for being a weak-willed man as he is
constantly controlled by his mother, wife and lover, Lady Brett
turning him into her personal squire of sorts. The
psychological/behavioral changes seen in Robert Cohn are results
of this constant harassment from his group of expatriates and the
fact that he cannot fulfill any of his goals, regarding Brett or any
other aspect of his life. Robert Cohn’s ‘romantic’ way of living is
what makes him truly absurd in relation to the other characters of
the novel, as he is trapped in a world where love is usually a result
of boredom, and it is much more plausible than being trapped by
emotional consequences, though Robert Cohn is hemmed in a self-
made universe where love is still seen as pure and required for

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 Miruna Ciocoi-Pop & Emilian Tîrban 163

man’s well-being, from which he is unable to escape, being more of

a man-child (he bursts into crying more than once) that sometimes
cannot control his aggressive urges. His sudden exeunt proves that
he was finally unable to cope with the fact that Lady Brett, whom
he thought womanly and adequate, is actually promiscuous when
he finds out about her affair with Romero, thus his alien existence
finds no soothing in this nihilistic environment.
Jake Barnes, on the other hand, is presented as the stoic side
of Robert Cohn, the boxer being his exact opposite. The narrator
and protagonist of the novel, Jake Barnes is the absurd hero that
ultimately cannot understand his situation and admits defeat in front
of a cold/dejected universe that is his life. Jake is constantly
psychologically affected by the war, as he is the emasculated
character that cannot communicate nor consummate his burning
feelings for Brett Ashley. Throughout the story, Jake is in love with
her, yet they cannot form a bond as this effect on Jake’s masculinity
hinders his ability to truly convey feelings and to act upon them. He
is portrayed as a workaholic and also a heavy drinker, these being
two of the ways in which the protagonist unwittingly finds meaning
in his life, the disillusionment caused by the war pushes him
towards alcoholic tendencies, though no more than Mike Campbell,
who is truly the one absolute drunkard in the story. Because of his
inability to act upon love, he finds pleasure in a non-dramatic way
of living, drinking, working, and going fishing, which ultimately
proves to be a retreat from the bustle of the crowded cities. Jake can
be seen leisurely spending his time going to the beach, his actions
being carefully narrated in great detail. If it were not for Brett’s
message, he probably would have gone on with that style of life
endlessly, as he is unable to escape the universe of constantly
“rolling the boulder” thus being captured in his wake-up-work-
drink-rest-sleep-repeat routine. This characteristic of Jake, that he
finds solace in his usual routine is what Camus stated in his famous
line “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” (The Myth 119), because
no matter of how endless the process is, one can be happy with it
going on forever as it is a way of not accepting the absurd, thus
fighting against it, finding meaning in life, despite it being

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164 East-West Cultural Passage

somewhat destructive and pointless as it indirectly becomes a day-

to-day reprieve from the inherent lack of meaning of life. Jake
Barnes truly follows Hemingway’s code for his hero as he is truly a
man of work/action and enjoys the small things in life, which,
ultimately, are ways of escaping the truth that life is inherently
meaningless and ends in death, which in turn, because of his
continued enjoyment of small things turns him into an absurd hero,
like Sisyphus, who was portrayed by Camus happy in his endless
struggle.
At the end of the book, Jake Barnes is seen next to Brett
Ashley, in a moment where love can truly be achieved, yet the
protagonist gets denied that satisfaction both because of his
psychological inability to speak his mind effectively and Brett’s
inability of committing to love: “Oh, Jake, […], we could have had
such a damned good time together” (198), to which Jake responds
dejectedly and content with the fact that his purposeless pursuit of
love is finally over and that life can start over again in a new
fashion “‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’” (198), this final
acceptance of the lack of meaning can be closely related to Camus’
ending of The Stranger when Meursault finally admits being happy
with the lack of meaning and interest on part of the universe in the
human condition:

And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that
great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and,
gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the
first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference
of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made
me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. (64-65)

Lady Brett Ashley can be seen as an absurd chaser of meaning by

means of liaisons because of lost true love during the war. Her
trauma is deeply rooted in what used to be her perfect connection
with a person which ended terribly and now left her to search for
meaning in other ways, such as drinking, dancing, smoking,
partying and being promiscuous, easily falling in love with the
young toreador Romero, whose name hints at Shakespeare’s

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 Miruna Ciocoi-Pop & Emilian Tîrban 165

Romeo. Though one of the most flamboyant characters of the

novel, Brett is trapped in her endless search for love/meaning, to
which she finally surrenders admitting “I do feel such a bitch” to
Jake, who out of sincere, yet unrequited love, does not agree with
her, but she makes of her condition the only thing that constantly
fuels the absurdity of her life, and finally she admits that being
knowledgeable of it and fighting it holds the position of God in
one’s life “You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to
be a bitch. […] It’s sort of what we have instead of God” (197).
This sudden revelation came after her departure from Romero, who
was a very picky lover, as he made her cut her hair and other things
in order for him not to feel ashamed with her in front of his family,
which Brett declined, finally putting an end to her amorous liaison,
admitting to the absurd, yet it is unknown if it will repeat, as her
destiny concludes with this triumphant victory against what seemed
to her to be promiscuity. At the end of the book Brett manages to
escape the endless cycle, yet she does not manage to acquire true
love again, proof of the fact that her truth (war trauma) is indeed
endless. As opposed to Jake, Brett Ashley does not elude the
Absurd, as Camus put it in his philosophical thought, eluding the
absurd would result in the inability to confront it thus rendering it
inescapable.
“Life has no intrinsic worth, but is kept in motion merely by
desire and illusion” (Schopenhauer 1918) is the perfect description
of the characters’ journey as it is, truly, absurdism in motion. Every
action that takes place, can be described from an
absurdist/existentialist point of view as an irregular search for
meaning. Beginning with the city break that the protagonists have
undergone through Paris, which is alcohol filled, resulting in what
Arthur Schopenhauer called “desire.” Everything that the characters
do during this journey through Paris is a constant search for
pleasure, pertaining to the idea of distancing oneself from the usual
routine. During this first part of the novel, the protagonists can be
seen drinking heavily, aimlessly wandering through the town at
night, and their constant loitering and drinking can be interpreted as
an unconscious lingering psychological effect of the war. The Lost

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166 East-West Cultural Passage

Generation is constantly disillusioned with what they are supposed

to do in contrast with what they are actually doing. In the novel,
this first part is the starting point of projection of the characters’
behaviour and their different personalities revealed by their many
chats in pubs, one example being Robert Cohn’s combative
response to comments about Brett “You asked me what I knew
about Brett Ashley. […] I didn’t ask you to insult her” (32), him
being once again a defender of her honour as per the chivalric code
that he follows absurdly. “Understanding the world for a man is
reducing it to the human and stamping it with his seal” (Camus, The
Myth 15-16) perfectly describes the world of the characters during
this first part of the novel as they ‘stamp’ the world in which they
were placed, in which they unknowingly suffer, with what is
‘human,’ that is pleasure, which fills the void that the War had left
so hollow, yet only for this time being and ultimately this effort
proves futile and only leads to a plethora of other conflicts, this part
is the boiling point of the hate that would, later on, be pointed
towards Robert Cohn.
The fishing trip is one of the most important aspects of the
book, as it concerns the protagonist Jake Barnes, deeply hurt by the
war, who is searching for a safe retreat that might soothe his
thoughts, as he is most in pain when left alone with his impressions.
He is accompanied on this safe retreat by his friend Bill Gorton,
who is unscarred by the war, thus his lively and jokingly
mannerism and view of life, and his being unburdened by neurosis,
make him the best companion for this trip; also, as he is the only
character of the book not to feel compelled by Brett’s beauty, such
a character might provide an antidote for Jake Barnes’ condition,
but it does not. In terms of philosophical thought, of Camus and
even Kierkegaard, this type of safe retreat can be easily seen as
‘escaping existence’ or basically ‘suicide,’ metaphorically
speaking, as this is the most serene part of the book in which the
characters truly get to feel themselves commune with nature,
especially after meeting Harris, another war-stricken character that
admits to Jake “I’ve not had much fun since the war” (103), the
mood of the scene is greatly more optimistic and dismissive of any

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 Miruna Ciocoi-Pop & Emilian Tîrban 167

war wound left, mainly because of the absence of Brett. Another

important aspect is that the relationship between Jake and Bill
remains unchanged following the events of the book; it is the only
one that did not sustain any considerable damage, this fishing trip
being somewhat also a retreat from the absurd while unconsciously
amounting to it. In this part, Bill also jokes around talking in a
pastoral tone, revealing to the reader the fact that Jake does not
cope with religion, admitting that he cannot decide whether he is a
Catholic or not. Fishing is also what Jake Barnes prefers doing
most, thus pointing toward Schopenhauer’s idea that life is only
powered by desires and pleasures; this kind of safe retreat also finds
its way into the absurd as it does not fight it, but merely fuels it
since freedom cannot be achieved beyond what the absurdity of
existence permits.
The Fiesta is the main point of the entire novel as it can be
closely connected and compared to the War itself. Again, it
represents a ‘battleground’ of constant shouting and running and
sometimes dying. This part of the book truly admits to the idea that
people can never escape their current afflicting realities, and
always return, unconsciously, to the harsh truth of their life in their
attempt to overcome it “One always finds one’s burden again”
(Camus, The Myth 119). “For believe me: the secret for harvesting
from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment
is-to live dangerously!” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science 228), the state
of adrenaline and exuberance of liveliness is what makes life
fruitful. The Fiesta/Bull Fights are nothing more but a way of
finding pleasure in dangerous activities, sometimes brutal,
pertaining to the human’s aggressive nature, the destructive instinct
that is inherent (death drive in psychoanalytic terms). Hemingway
himself saw the bullfights as man’s struggle against death/way to
avoid death which, in an inherently meaningless and pointed-
toward-death-life is impossible, but can indeed prove to be one of
the ways in which man is indebted to himself to find meaning in
life. During this final and most intense part of the story most of the
characters’ inner truths are revealed, Robert Cohn’s aggressive

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168 East-West Cultural Passage

temper, Jake Barnes’ alcohol addiction, work addiction,

emasculation, and Brett Ashley’s promiscuity.
“Life must be understood backwards […] but must be lived
forwards” (Kierkegaard qtd. in Moore 263), for only by knowing
the background of the characters could one truly observe their
behavior in detail related to whatever trauma they suffer from. The
Sun Also Rises is indeed a roman a clef (with a key) as it is
concerned with real-life aspects, the fiesta, the war, Paris, formerly
about real-life people, later changed into fictitious ones, that truly
gives us a fruitful canvas of endless psychological/philosophical
discovery regarding the people of “The Lost Generation.” The
opening epigraph, from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which Harold
Bloom calls the most nihilistic book (Bloom’s Guides 2) of The
Bible, truly sets the mood not only for the passing of generations
but also for the way in which present generations can deal with
present afflictions: “One of the most poignant of all American
elegies, it affirms the virtues of giving a style to despair and of
enduring the loss of love with something like a tragic dignity”
(Bloom’s Modern 2).
Ultimately, based on the analysis conducted on the few
characters, and the three parts of the novel in which the inner,
unwilling motives of the characters in regard to the absurd and the
lack of meaning of life are presented, it is safe to say that these
three characters of The Sun Also Rises are indeed in a constant
search for meaning, each character having their own afflictions,
reasons and ways of dealing with the absurd while also being aware
of it (Cohn, Brett), while all the while Jake Barnes is presented as
the true absurd hero bent on life, yet ignorant of its absurdity.
Therefore, the absurdity of life in Hemingway’s novel The
Sun Also Rises divides itself into two parts, firstly the psychological
trauma inflicted upon the characters by the war or by their peers,
and, secondly, the futile pursuit of love revolving around Lady
Brett Ashley. Both of these aspects can be compared to
characteristics of the theatre of the absurd, ex. Waiting for Godot by
Samuel Beckett, in which the entire action revolves around a
character that, supposedly, does not exist. Likewise, the motives

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 Miruna Ciocoi-Pop & Emilian Tîrban 169

and actions of the three characters mentioned above are just

fruitless incentives for a failed pursuit of meaning in life through
adventure and ultimately unrequited love. To end this essay on a
positive note, since the characters fail to achieve love, at the end of
the day “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved
at all.”

Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Bloom's
Modern Critical Interpretations. 2nd ed. New York: Chelsea,
2012. Print.
---. Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (Bloom's Guides). New
York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2007. Print.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. New York:
Vintage, 1991. Print.
---. The Stranger. 1942. New York: Vintage, 1961. Print.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. 1926. New York:
Scribner, 2016. Print.
Moore, Charles E. Provocations: Spiritual Writings of
Kierkegaard. New York: Orbis, 2003. Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes
and an Appendix of Songs. 1882. New York: Vintage, 1974.
Print.
---. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. 1872. Cambridge UP,
1999. Print.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. World as Will and Representation. 1819.
New York: Dover, 1966. Print.
Sefler, George F. “The Existential vs. the Absurd: The Aesthetics
of Nietzsche and Camus.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism 32.3 (1974): 415–421. JSTOR. Web. 20 Oct. 2019.
<www.jstor.org/stable/428426>.

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Notes on Contributors

Raluca ANDREESCU is assistant professor in the Modern

Languages Department at the University of Bucharest, Romania.
She holds an M.A. in American Studies and a Ph.D. in Philology
from the Doctoral School of Literary and Cultural Studies, both
with the University of Bucharest. Her main research interests are in
the area of American Cultural Studies, American law and literature,
Gothic literature and culture, academic fiction. She is the author of
a volume about Female Gothic in the American Century, with a
focus on works by Edith Wharton, Shirley Jackson and Joyce Carol
Oates, as well as of articles in the above-mentioned fields of
interest.
E-mail: raluca.andreescu@lls.unibuc.ro

Estella CIOBANU is an associate professor at the Faculty of

Letters, Ovidius University of Constanţa, Romania. She teaches
Identity and Gender in the USA, Culture and Religion in the USA,
Postmodernism, and British and American Cultural Icons. Her
academic interests include iconisation studies and gendered
representations of the body in literature, medieval theatre,
cartography, anatomo-medical practices and the arts. She is the
author of Representations of the Body in Middle English Biblical
Drama (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), The Body Spectacular in
Middle English Theatre (Ed. Etnologică, 2013), The Spectacle of
the Body in Late Medieval England (Lumen, 2012; revised edition
forthcoming) and over fifty articles, and co-author (with Petru
Golban) of A Short History of Literary Criticism (Üç Mart Press,
2008).
E-mail: estella_ciobanu@yahoo.com

Miruna CIOCOI-POP is an assistant teacher of both literature and

language at „Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu. She is currently
teaching seminars on the Romantic paradigm, text interpretation,

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cultural and linguistic mediation, as well as English as a foreign

language to non-philological students. She has published several
articles on comparative literature and language teaching
methodology and holds a PhD in comparative literature.
E-mail: miruna.ciocoipop@ulbsibiu.ro

Anke KLITZING lectures on food literature, media, and

communications as well as the history and sociology of food and
eating at the Technological University Dublin, Ireland, where she
also does PhD research in food and literature. Her research interests
include food writing, literature, media and communications;
gastrocriticism; food culture, history and anthropology, and literary
nonfiction writing (food writing, travel writing, essays, memoirs,
reportage) in theory and practice. She holds an MA in Food Culture
and Communication from the University of Gastronomic Sciences
in Italy and a BA in English Literature and Sociology from UCD
(Ireland). Her professional experience in Ireland, Italy, and
Germany includes restaurant and bar management, as well as
journalism, communications, and PR in the agro-culinary and NGO
sectors. She has published on food, literature and society in Irish,
German and Italian publications.
E-mail: anke.klitzing@TUDublin.ie

Carmen MARTINAŞ FLORESCU teaches English at “Constantin

Brătescu” National Pedagogical High School, Constanţa, where she
also acts as a teaching advisor for trainee primary school teachers
and English teachers. She holds a Master’s degree in Romanian
Studies (2004) and a doctoral degree in English (2018) from
Ovidius University of Constanţa. She has participated in
international conferences with papers on Shakespeare’s drama.
Publications: “Turning the Body of Texts into Spectacle: Titus
Andronicus, Gender Performances and the Objectification of
Lavinia” (Annals of Ovidius University of Constanţa, Philology
Series, 2015); “(Mis)reading Matters in Titus Andronicus:
Ekphrastic Displacements and the Aemulatio Game on the
Renaissance Stage” (East-West Cultural Passage, 2016); “The

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172

Orient within in Western Imagination: Ovid, Shakespeare and the

Mutilation of Women” (Polifonii culturale: Limba, cultura şi
civilizaţia turcă în lume. Studii de caz, ed. L. Berechet et al.,
Bucureşti: Ed. Universitară, 2016); (with Estella Ciobanu) “Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus: Madness,
Revenge, Echoes, and the Politics of Aemulatio” (Răzbunarea
barbarilor: 2000 de ani fără Ovidius la Tomis, ed. Dorin Popescu,
Bucureşti: Ideea europeană, 2017).
Contact: carmennflorescu@gmail.com

Dr. C. Peter MAGRATH, who served as president of Binghamton

University, State University of New York between 2010-2011, is a
graduate of the University of New Hampshire with a bachelor's
degree in political science, and from Cornell University with a PhD
in political science.. His scholarly interests include American
constitutional law, constitutional history and the operations of the
U.S. Supreme Court, as well as higher education administration
and leadership, public policy and financing as well as
international affairs.
Magrath's extensive higher education adminsistation
experience includes serving as associate dean of the graduate
school at Brown University; as dean of arts and sciences, dean of
faculties (provost) and interim president of the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln; as president of Binghamton University from
1972-1974; and as president of the four-campus University of
Minnesota for 10 years. Magrath also served as president of the
University of Missouri System from 1985-1992, before assuming
the presidency of the National Association of State Universities and
Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), now the Association of Public
and Land-Grant Universities (APLU).
E-mail: pmagrath@binghamton.edu

Clementina Alexandra MIHĂILESCU, graduated from Lucian

Blaga University of Sibiu and is an Associate Professor, PhD,
teaching Postmodernism, Stylistics and Fuzzy Grammar. She is
currently a doctoral adviser at Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad. She

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has published several books as well as various articles and reviews

in specialized journals and collective volumes.
E-mail: mihailescuclementina @yahoo.com

Stela PLEȘA graduated from Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu in

2004, majoring in English language and literature. In 2008, she
took her master degree in Translation Studies at Lucian Blaga
University, Sibiu. Currently, she is a Doctoral Candidate at The
University of Craiova, in the field of literature for children, writing
articles and reviews in specialized journals.
E-mail: mihailescuclementina @yahoo.com

Najoua STAMBOULI is a doctor of English language and

literature. She obtained her doctorate from the Faculty of Arts and
Human Sciences of Sousse, Tunisia. Her Ph. D thesis is entitled
Motherhood in the Works of Contemporary American Women
Poets: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, and Sharon Olds.
Stambouli is currently a teaching assistant of English Language and
Literature at the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences of Sfax,
University of Sfax. Her areas of interest are feminism, maternal
studies, gender studies, psychoanalysis, American culture, and
contemporary American literature.
E-mail: najoua.stambouli@gmail.com

Cristina STANCIU is an associate professor of English at Virginia

Commonwealth University, where she teaches US Multiethnic and
Indigenous literatures. She has published and has essays
forthcoming in AIQ/American Indian Quarterly, MELUS/
Multiethnic Literatures of the United States, SAIL/Studies in
American Indian Literatures, College English, NAIS/Native
American and Indigenous Studies, JGAPE: Journal of the Gilded
Age and Progressive Era, and others. She is the co-editor of Our
Democracy and the American Indian and Other Writings by Laura
Cornelius Kellogg (Syracuse UP, 2015) and the co-editor of the
MELUS special issue, “Pedagogy in Anxious Times” (Winter
2017). Her first monograph is forthcoming from Yale University

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Press. Her research has been supported by research grants at the

Newberry Library and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, a post-doctoral fellowship from the American Association
of University Women (AAUW), an NEH summer stipend award,
and others. She is a recent recipient of an Obama Fellowship at
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, and a
Fulbright Scholar Award to Romania during the 2019-2020
academic year.
Email: cstanciu@vcu.edu

Emilian TÎRBAN is a senior student enrolled in the English-

German Letters programme at “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu
and is currently prompted by the fire of new-found inspiration
during the first year of college when he got introduced to the
Elizabethan period. He is particularly interested in Shakespeare,
thus allowing him to pursue deeper research of his plays. Greatly
compelled by the immense pool of meaning that the English
language provides its speakers with, bent on discovering as many
peculiarities and subtleties of the language and to manage to
intercept and to convey them in the most natural way possible, he
has participated in numerous translation competitions.
E-mail: tirbanemilian@yahoo.com.

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