Rewriting the “caoineadh”: Dermot Bolger’s The Lament for Arthur Cleary

Dermot Bolger’s play The Lament for Arthur Cleary is an experimental and innovative work focusing on the context of suburban Dublin life and on the character of a migrant worker. In the background of a Dublin that has become a prey of unemployment, poverty and heroin, Bolger reconstructs and rewrites the eighteenth-century Gaelic poem Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire in order to face and discuss issues of contemporary Irish life. However, the use and/or distortion of typical features of a traditional “caoineadh” are at the basis of the play, whose structure and organisation rework motifs and elements to be foundin Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire and in the keening tradition at large.The purpose of this essay is to analyse Bolger’s The Lament for Arthur Cleary vis-à-vis Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, identifying images and structural elements that are reworked and rewritten in the structural organisation of the play

Paper Knowledge. Books, Maps, Letters: the Written Word in Brian Friel’s Plays

Brian Friel’s plays often exploit the techniques of the short story writer, so that the presence of a character narrator, the use of extended monologues and direct address to the audience shed light on powerful acts of narration. The “narrative” strategy is recurring and often dominating, as in the case of Faith Healer, whose intergeneric or intermodal character is a challenge to dramatic action. However, the aural/oral dimension is counterbalanced by the presence of the written word on stage in the form of books, maps, letters, banners, newspapers, which remind the spectator/reader of the accomplishment of Friel’s plays as both literary and theatrical texts. The article investigates the use and the significance of the written word in Brian Friel’s oeuvre as a constant and obsessive presence. Books, maps, newspapers, letters, items that may seem negligible in isolation provide a recurring motif and turn out to be structurally relevant when pursued from play to play.Brian Friel’s plays often exploit the techniques of the short story writer, so that the presence of a character narrator, the use of extended monologues and direct address to the audience shed light on powerful acts of narration. The “narrative” strategy is recurring and often dominating, as in the case of Faith Healer, whose intergeneric or intermodal character is a challenge to dramatic action. However, the aural/oral dimension is counterbalanced by the presence of the written word on stage in the form of books, maps, letters, banners, newspapers, which remind the spectator/reader of the accomplishment of Friel’s plays as both literary and theatrical texts. The article investigates the use and the significance of the written word in Brian Friel’s oeuvre as a constant and obsessive presence. Books, maps, newspapers, letters, items that may seem negligible in isolation provide a recurring motif and turn out to be structurally relevant when pursued from play to play

Artists and Writers: the Shared Art(s) of Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Mary O’Donnell

An analysis of the work of Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Mary O’Donnell is away to honour the activities of the Brazilian Association of irish Studies, as both writers visited Brazil in 2016 and 2019, respectively, and their work has appeared in the ABEI Journal, along with critical essays on their creative production. Born in the same year, Ní Dhuibhne and O’Donnell are two of the most representative female voices in contemporary Irish writing, constantly crossing the borders between different interests, literary genres, and forms of artistic expression. In particular, both areconcerned with the awareness of the creative process, so that the conscious literariness of their fiction provides an interesting insight into the issue of writing itself. Throughout their careers, figures of artists, intellectuals, writers, students, teachers and academics constantly recur in their fiction, which displays an increasing concern with the figure ofthe artist and the writer, creativity and the act of writing. The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare artist figures in the fiction of Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Mary O’Donnell and relate them to their narrative strategies, focusing on creativity and on the consciousness of the creative process, disclosing hidden layers of meanings in their literary affinities

Darkness Visible. Insight and Visual Impairment in Brian Friel’s The Enemy Within

Considering the development of Brian Friel’s plays since the mid- 60s, one looks back at his first successful play The Enemy Within (1962) with fascination. In retrospection the play is seminal work as it develops the themes of exile, quest, displacement, nostalgia and memory that mark his later production. The Enemy Within is Friel’s first investigation into darkness, as it deals with the prototype of a split character, St. Columba, and the obscurities and shades of a psychic division later expressed in Public/Private Gar in Philadelphia. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to elements of darkness in Friel’s oeuvre and to the unifying motifs of darkness and blindness in The Enemy Within, which characterize the play and make it interesting per se. In fact, in spite of a certain naiveté in structure, The Enemy Within is built around a compact imagery based on polarities and parallelisms, in which darkness, disease and decay are counterbalanced by maybe too overt hints to light, resurrection and rebirth, thus highlighting a variety of “enemies within” to be fathomed and faced.Considering the development of Brian Friel’s plays since the mid- 60s, one looks back at his first successful play The Enemy Within (1962) with fascination. In retrospection the play is seminal work as it develops the themes of exile, quest, displacement, nostalgia and memory that mark his later production. The Enemy Within is Friel’s first investigation into darkness, as it deals with the prototype of a split character, St. Columba, and the obscurities and shades of a psychic division later expressed in Public/Private Gar in Philadelphia. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to elements of darkness in Friel’s oeuvre and to the unifying motifs of darkness and blindness in The Enemy Within, which characterize the play and make it interesting per se. In fact, in spite of a certain naiveté in structure, The Enemy Within is built around a compact imagery based on polarities and parallelisms, in which darkness, disease and decay are counterbalanced by maybe too overt hints to light, resurrection and rebirth, thus highlighting a variety of “enemies within” to be fathomed and faced

Institutional translation and interpreting. Assessing practices and managing for quality, by Fernando Prieto Ramos (Ed.)

Since Julianne House’sseminal paper (1977), proposals such as those of Sonia Colina (2008), Malcolm Williams (2009), Gloria Corpas Pastor (2006) or, more recently, Madeleine Schnierer (2020) are only a few examples of the growing scholarly attention devoted to translation quality assessment and control. As globalisation demands increasingly larger amounts of text to be handled in short periods of time, quality has in fact become a criticalissue, most especially in institutional settingsproducing documents of a sensitive nature, often with direct impact on peoples’ lives.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Cambridge Introduction to Intercultural Communication, by Guido Rings & Sebastian M. Rasinger, Cambridge University Press

As globalisation continues its relentless advance, its reach extends to even the farthest corners of the world, shaping societies, economies, and the very fabric of human interaction. In this era of unprecedented connectivity, the significance of intercultural communication has never been more pronounced. With diverse cultures converging in ways previously unimaginable, the necessity to bridge linguistic, social, and ideological gaps becomes not just pressing, but paramount. The once-localised intricacies of intercultural interaction have turned into a global tapestry of complex exchanges. Yet, as this tangled web of connections expands, it simultaneously becomes more nuanced, reflecting the multifaceted nature of the world's cultures.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Voice from Beyond. The Story of the Deirdre Story

The multiple life of the story of Deirdre and the Sons of Uisneach in the Literary Revival has its roots in the multiple life of its sources. Thoughmainly connected to the wide range of drama renditions in the background of the Irish Dramatic Movement, the Deirdre story is first of all a narrative concerning language. The Old Irish Version, Longes mac N-Uisleann (The Exile of the Sons of Uisneach) opens with a speech act below the level of articulation, unborn Deirdre’s cry from her mother’s womb. The prophecy of destruction that follows is thus a prescribed text. In medieval versions and folklore renditions, including the Middle Irish text, Oidhe Chloinne Uisneach (The Violent Death of the Children of Uisneach) the detail disappears or it is developed otherwise. However, in its various versions and remakes, words and language are relevant,as taboos, oaths and mutually exclusive words represent a structuring principle. The purpose of this essay is to examine the sources of the Deirdre story and its prose remakes in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, with particular reference to Standish O’Grady, Lady Gregory and James Stephens, shedding light on the way the power of language that characterises the old legend is developed in different cultural contexts

Abbondanza di litio nelle stelle nane di alone usando la fotometria Gaia

Il litio, secondo il modello di nucleosintesi del Big Bang, viene prodotto a seguito dell’espansione dell’Universo. Negli anni Ottanta, con l'avvento di spettrografi ad alta risoluzione, è stato possibile misurare l'abbondanza di Li in stelle nane di alone (Spite & Spite 1982). L'abbondanza di Li nelle stelle nane di Popolazione II mostra un valore costante in un ampio intervallo di metallicità e di temperatura effettiva. Tale andamento prende il nome di Plateau di Spite, ed è stato interpretato come una misura dell'abbondanza primordiale dell'elemento. Due decenni dopo la scoperta dello Spite Plateau, grazie alle misurazioni WMAP è stato possibile ottenere i valori delle costanti cosmologiche. Le abbondanze degli elementi leggeri previste dalla cosmologia sono in accordo con quelle misurate, tranne che per il litio. Il valore dello Spite Plateau è infatti inferiore di un fattore 3-4. Tale problema del litio rimane ancora oggi una sfida aperta. Un altro problema aperto riguarda la scoperta del Li-meltdown, ovvero una diminuzione di A(Li) nelle stelle nane con [Fe/H]<-2.5 dex. Nel seguente lavoro sono state studiate stelle nane con metallicità basse, prese da lavori passati. Una volta ottenuto il campione si è lavorato sui dati di Gaia. L'uso di Gaia sulle stelle di alone ha permesso di: lavorare su un campione formato da parametri omogenei e precisi, conoscere lo stato evolutivo delle stelle. Tale lavoro permette per la prima volta di discutere la distribuzione dell'abbondanza di Li nelle stelle nane alla luce del loro stato evolutivo. Il campione di Gaia conferma la presenza del Plateau di Spite con un valore di A(Li)= 2.29 dex, e una caduta dell'abbondanza e un aumento dello scatter per sorgenti [Fe/H]<-2.6 dex (Li meltdown). In particolare, viene dimostrato come il Li meltdown non possa essere spiegato semplicemente come dovuto a stelle binarie o post First Dredge Up

Evocação literária de Jorge Luis Borges

Comentário da figura e obra de Jorge Luis Borges, e da sua relação com a música e as tradições de Buenos Aires