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Edward Gorey’s works are commonly set within a hybrid Victorian/ Edwardian period and often elicit further confusion by containing comically anachronistic details and a nonsensical approach to time, all of which leads to Gorey’s characteristic “bewildering temporality” (Shortsleeve 2018: 104). As this paper shows with examples from The Broken Spoke (1976), The Object- Lesson (1958), and The Water Flowers (1976), Gorey employs manipulations of temporal boundaries within the framework of nonsense, such as simultaneity, digression, and repetition, which suggest timelessness and infinity. These are devices that necessarily draw the reader’s attention to the form, structure, and pattern of Gorey’s works, and the same is true of his intertextual quotation and nonsensical rearrangement of time-related motifs from other texts, as in the case of his parodic transplantation of Charles Dickens’ device of time-traveling ghosts (The Haunted Tea-Cosy, 1997). Nevertheless, despite a self-referential flaunting of form, Gorey’s works frequently accomplish a seriocomic confusion of tone that complicates any simplified reading of his tales as exclusively humorous. This effect, which has elicited descriptions of Gorey’s work as “radiat[ing] a melancholy and an existential unease” (Kindley 2018), is to some extent accomplished by his relatively frequent depiction of ghosts and apparitions, which inherently point toward the question of time, indicating both the past and the future. The paper concludes by exploring what implications such a bidirectional movement can have on the reader’s experience when encountering Gorey’s mysterious spectres.

This paper aims at a re-evaluation of the 'Temple', the final part of E. M. Forster's novel A Passage to India. Unlike its first two parts – 'Mosque' and 'Caves' – it is still, more often than not, perceived as somewhat lacking, a failure in general literary terms and, more specifically, even superfluous in terms of the novel's composition. To read the novel in this way is to misunderstand it, to favour the external, the event, over the internal, the innermost experience. This paper thus contributes to redirecting the reading of the novel from the political, sociological, postcolonial – as is usually the case – towards the contemplative, even mystical. It is argued that only such an approach does justice to the full scope of the novel, which is a symphonic movement from a world of fragmented visions and agonizing multiplicity towards a vision of ultimate unity. Due to spatial limitations, only the Hindu framework of the 'Temple' is here taken into consideration, with the festival of Gokul Ashtami as its focal point.

The recent development of the academic field of Japanese studies towards interdisciplinary cultural studies paradigm has been causing certain downfalls of traditional philological orientations within this area of scholarship. The aim of the present paper is to reflect on the tradition of Prague school’s functional-structuralist approach to language and text and present its application on contemporary Japanese studies programs. The functional-structuralist approach presented in the paper is based on the unified dichotomy of system (of signs) and texts (as sign formations), the latter being defined by the features of genre classification, situational binding and discourse tradition. The framework of ‘Encompassing philology’ applied to the field of Japanese studies aspires to fulfill the basic needs of a modern interdisciplinary orientation and at the same time strengthen the role of the Japanese language beyond the “tool for communication”.

Considering the global increase in the number of Japanese language learners, the need to establish educational institutions (primary, secondary, higher education, non-school education) for Japanese language learning also arose in Croatia and, subsequently, the necessity to foster a new generation of qualified teachers with sufficient theoretical and practical background in teaching Japanese as a foreign language. The purpose of this paper is to examine and describe the process of implementing the graduate course Practice Teaching of the Japanese Language and Culture, along with its challenges such as online classes due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper discusses the role of teachers as facilitators, the role of students as trainees and the role of learners, i.e. the participants of an intensive two-week Japanese language course, which is part of the abovementioned graduate course. Furthermore, the paper discusses the learner survey and the trainee self-evaluation report with respect to the improvement of their knowledge.

In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman empire underwent a series of changes that profoundly affected its political, economic, social and cultural organization. The long fourth century saw the growth of Christianity from a minor persecuted movement into the Roman state religion. In the wake of this process and with the generous support of Constantine the Great and his successors, Christian communities flourished throughout the empire. This paper will explore some of the many ways in which women were involved in ascetic Christian life in the late Roman West. It aims to sketch the range of new opportunities that may have followed the conversion to asceticism while also reflecting on the more conventional models of womanhood that were still present. In order to do so, the paper will present four small case studies of women who were partly or loosely associated with each other and who participated in the ascetic networks of the late Roman elite: the prominent example of Melania the Elder and the three lesser known case studies of Therasia, Amanda and Bassula.

This paper addresses the shifting identities of a disputed borderland territory, using the interwar Dobruja province as an example, and following the transformation of its political and ethnic boundaries through the eyes of various public participants in the dispute. Their views are explored as vital sources which reflect Bulgarian and Romanian policies in the region and their interactions with the Great Powers. The paper indicates that identity debates had very little influence on the actual population of the region, appealing mainly to various external powers and the political and intellectual “elites” of both countries. A state is viewed as a system of social networks, therefore a contested border becomes a space where those interconnections assume the roles of nationalizing markers. Therefore, the paper proposes to regard a borderland dispute not as a typical pattern of othering, but as an attempt to establish interconnections and make it even more “national” than the regions non-contested.

Departing from the well-known ontological parallel between the pointing gesture on the one hand, and linguistic deixis on the other, in this paper we analyse the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of the deictic terms ‘here’ in English, ‘hier’ in German and ‘ovdje’ in Croatian. We systematize the different usages of these terms – both intra- and cross-linguistically – and propose a reading of the semantics of the proximal deictic element for 'linguistic spatial location', which – as our analysis shows – ranges from the pure spatial locational function, via a temporal – more generally metaphorical segment - all the way to a series of discourse functions. We observe that the universality of usage patterns that is found at the spatial, and even spatio-temporal level, can still be found – albeit to a lesser degree – at the discourse level. What seems to be maintained at all levels is the primacy of the proximal segment in terms of referential prominence. We thus conclude that what physical proximity is in the spatial sense, can largely be understood as pragmatic proximity in the linguistic sense.

The interpretation of poetry is certainly an intellectually demanding, and ultimately fulfilling task, and one of the means by which the scholar can approach the work of a great poet is when he/she encounters the work of a great precursor to which the latter poem is indebted, but one must bear in mind that the latter work, must be one in which there is an authentic voice. In this paper the endeavour is to investigate one such instance: the relationship between Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’ (1820) and Thomas Hardy’s ‘Shelley’s Skylark’ (1901). The conjecture here is that Hardy’s poem is not one in which the mere influence of an earlier poem is predominant, but evinces an intentional irony. Furthermore, irony is manifested in Hardy’s poem not only in statement but also in form. After an introduction on the reception of Shelley’s poetry both in criticism and among poets, a close reading of both poems, and how they interact, follows.

Although in many cases scientific terminology used in Modern Japan was originally coined in the West and then imported and translated, there are certain original terms. Among them this paper focuses on two humanistic and sociological terms, shinso-bunka and choten-bunka. The former indicates the initial condition of culture, the latter its achievements. As they are not imported terms, we need to translate them into Japanese. The deep culture and the peak culture are their respective translations, both proposed by the author. We may observe and discuss the forms of deep culture and peak culture everywhere in the world. Concerning Japan, there are many contemporary sub-cultures with high reputation such as anime, but here, five classic forms of culture shall be mentioned as peak cultures, that is, No-drama, Sado-tea-ceremony, Bushido-warrior’s-way, Shinto-religion and Waka-poetry. After analyzing deep culture roughly, its peaks shall be depicted rather ideally.

This paper discusses similarities in the choices of plots and motifs in the short stories The Tattooer (1910) by Japanese writer Tanizaki Jun'ichirō and Tale of a Mad Painter (1935) by Korean writer Kim Dong-in, and hypothesizes a possible connection between them. In order to find out whether these works are really connected, common literary influences on both stories and analyzed stories’ structures and motifs were compared in this thesis. Results revealed that these two works were written under the influence of the same literary works: the theme of the relationship between art and violence and the motif of the artist obsessed with the desire to create an artistic masterpiece in The Tattooer and Tale of a Mad Painter are most likely inspired by Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Oval Portrait, while motifs of sexual perversions are inspired by Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing. Not only two stories were written under the same influences, but the story Tale of a Mad Painter itself intertextually reworked Tanizaki’s The Tattooer adjusting motifs to Korean realities and making the structure more complex.

The intensification of the spread of Japanese media and play products has inspired academic research into transnational fan involvement with Japan as the country of origin of these media. Scholars from various fields have established a connection with anime and manga fandom and Japanese language learning. Distinguished from regular audiences by degree of investment, fans value certain competencies that better equip them to access, understand and engage with this media. This research is based on interviews with Croatian anime and manga fans and inquires into their motivation to learn the Japanese language and culture. This paper uses Susan Napier’s notion of fantasyscape to illustrate why fans move across already blurred outlines of what constitutes fans’ interest. I assert that as particularly active media consumers it is the value fans put on specific competencies, along with a cosmopolitan curiosity, that motivates anime and manga fans to expand their focus of interest. Knowledge of the Japanese language and culture facilitates understanding of texts and at the same time functions as a matter of fandom specific “subcultural capital”.

Wilhelm Dilthey once admitted that Matthias Flacius Illyricus either appropriated the fourth book of Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana in detail or took advantage of all of the early Christian exegesis in general in his Clavis Sacrae Scripturae. The aim of this paper is partly polemical. While Flacius himself frequently proved Dilthey’s unfavorable judgment to be correct, he also followed the innovatory footsteps of biblical philologists such as Gianozzo Manetti, Lorenzo Valla and Desiderius Erasmus in order to reaffirm and concretize the Lutheran principle of the intelligibility of Scripture based on its strictly immanent, that is to say grammatical, investigation. Consequently, I would like to discuss the Clavis Sacrae Scripturae as the confessional yet deliberate outcome of the grammatical and rhetorical curriculum of studia humanitatis. All of this, however, will not lead to the conclusion that the Clavis should still remain the enterprise of a less distinguished follower. For decisions made by Flacius regarding the tradition of patristic, medieval, and humanistic exegesis was constantly founded upon the heuristically critical and genuinely hermeneutical principle. Therefore, it is worth asking what this principle was, or more precisely, how can man use philological tools that do not deprive God of his unconditioned sovereignty

The second Punic war is a relatively well-known episode from Roman history. Reliable, detailed ancient sources such as Livy and Polybius, however, don’t say much on the topic of Hannibal’s provisions from his native Carthage. One of the questions related to the provisions is where Hannibal’s elephants came from after the battle of Cannae, as after traversing the Etrurian swamp Hannibal only had one elephant left (Livy XXII 2). Immediately after the victory at Cannae Hannibal sends a delegation requesting logistics and the Carthaginian senate decides to send him military aid, among which were 4000 Numidians and 40 elephants (Livy XXIII 11-13). In the meantime, Hannibal penetrates Campania already accompanied by elephants at the Siege of Casilinum (Livy XXIII 18). The authors of this paper believe that Hannibal’s path to Cannae was part of a premeditated military plan, according to which the Carthaginian army needed to pick up supplies near Cannae, with the Liburnians playing an important role in opening channels of communication and supplies. Several facts support this theory, most importantly the following: – one of the few suitable ports that Hannibal could count upon to be less guarded by the Romans than more northern ports, such as Ariminum, is found near Cannae; – an enormous amount of money from Africa is in circulation in Liburnia right at the time of the war with Hannibal; It is known that political entities on the eastern coast of the Adriatic had an anti-Roman political agenda during the time of the second Punic war, coordinating themselves with Macedonia among others, which became an ally of Hannibal and with which Rome went to war in 214 B.C, with which the two Illyrian wars right before and right after the war with Hannibal are related. The authors believe that the sources point to a sort of coalition for transport, trade and communication between Hannibal, the Liburnians and Carthage, which should be viewed in the context of the operations of the anti-Roman coalition of political entities on the eastern shores of the Adriatic.

Around 1490 Cracow saw the development of humanist interests in geography, as well as in the works of Claudius Ptolemaeus (circa 100-147) and other ancient geographers. The stay of the renown German humanist, Conradus Celtes, in Cracow (1446-1495) most likely contributed to this shift. Laurentius Corvinus (circa 1465- 1527), Silesian humanist and Neo-Latin poet, who between 1484- 1494 studied and then lectured in Cracow as docens extraneus non de facultate (his lectures were attended by, for example, young Nicolaus Copernicus), belonged to Celtes’ circle. As a result of his lectures in Cracow, Corvinus wrote the textbook entitled Cosmographia dans nanuductionem in tabulas Ptolemai [...], which was then published in Basel, in 1496. This paper presents the main facts concerning Corvinus’ life and discusses the content of his work. It also presents the circles of contemporary Renaissance humanists in Cracow, in particular scholars of geography and astronomy. This work played an important role in developing geographical knowledge among the humanists of Cracow. It also influenced humanist circles in Basel, Nuremberg and Tubingen. Today, Corvinus’ Cosmographia is a rather forgotten work, not often analyzed by researchers of the history of Polish geography and historians of older literature.

In the academic year 2015/2016, the first generation of students enrolled in the single and double major study program Japanese Language and Culture at the Faculty of Humanities, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, shortly after we received accreditation for the first and only Japanese studies undergraduate degree study program in Croatia. Two years later, in January of 2017, we organized our first international symposium on Japanese studies, entitled The International Symposium on Japanese Language and Culture in Southeastern Europe (Croatian: Međunarodni simpozij o poučavanju japanskoga jezika i kulture u Jugoistočnoj Europi, Japanese: 東南ヨーロッパにおける日本語・日本文化教育についての国際 シンポジウム). The symposium marked the establishment of Japanese studies in Pula, initiated broader cooperation among experts in our region, and introduced current research topics and Japanese experts in the region and beyond to our students. This edition of Tabula presents a collection of papers written by some of the participants of this symposium, and is also a special edition in honour of the establishment of Japanese studies in Pula. At the international symposium, we hosted lecturers and researchers in Japanese studies from collaborating institutions and from neighboring countries in Southeastern Europe, primarily from the University of Ljubljana, where the 20th anniversary of the founding of Japanese studies was celebrated a few years ago, the University of Belgrade, where the 40th anniversary of the establishment of Japanese studies was recently laureated, and the University of Zagreb and Rijeka. Our Japanese language trainees from partner universities in Japan, the University of Hiroshima and the University of Tsukuba, also participated in the event. During the symposium, we managed to socialize well, exchange knowledge and expertise, and discuss future endevours in a comfortable and motivating atmosphere, and we were especially proud of many of our students who actively assisted in the organization, attended lectures, and learned from their seniors with great interest. This volume of proceedings touches on many important topics from the symposium. We are more than grateful to all of the authors who contributed to this special edition. We would also like to thank all the reviewers for their contributions, as well as the editorial board, the Faculty, and the University, for allowing these Japanese topics to see the light of day in our journal, Tabula.

Identity and identities at the national and regional levels may be perceived as being in a constant state of flux. They are, however, primarily and continuously subject to negotiation. The narratives of history in tourist media provide space for this negotiation and facilitate mediation of discourses on identity conceptualisation. The present paper will thus investigate how the conceptualisations of regional identity in Istria are mediated through tourist historiography. In the introductory part, relations between identity formation and tourism will be discussed. The empirical part will then investigate tourist historiography from Istria and discourses on regional identity with specific emphasis on representational and narrative strategies used to mediate these discourses to a tourist audience.

Since ancient times, the Eastern Adriatic has been the intersection of routes from different regions of Europe and one of the main maritime hubs for trade with the East. Many officials, foreign travellers and travel writers left their written testimonies in the form of manuscripts, various accounts and travelogues about the places they had visited, the people who lived there, their customs, occupations, and other matters of interest. In creating perceptions of the Eastern Adriatic, a special role was certainly played by travel books, due to their interesting contents and availability to the general public. Although the introduction of printing made exchanges of information more widespread and faster, and the conditions for improving knowledge of the observed areas had arisen, the quality of information in them did not improve significantly. There were several reasons for this: the negative legacy from earlier periods, the uncritical assumption of information from other authors, and the existence of ingrained distorted images, misconceptions and stereotypes. The aim of this paper is to refer to some aspects of perceptions of the Eastern Adriatic and its population, and to highlight certain incorrect interpretations and stereotypes that resulted from them. This article will mainly focus on Italian travel books, as they were most numerous among this form of literature and contributed most to the expansion of knowledge about the Eastern Adriatic in Early Modern Age.

The paper deals with the Croatian and Italian idiomatic phrases containing the somatism eye. The idioms are taken out from the monolingual Croatian and Italian dictionaries and phraseological dictionaries. The research is based on the contrastive analysis of the Croatian and Italian idioms. The aim of the analysis is to group the idioms according to their common semantic features and then, inside the semantic groupings, find the differences in the lexis expressing these common ideas, and thereafter see if these differences in the idiomatic language implicate also some cultural differences. The idiomatic phrases which are entirely equivalent in the two languages will be given less attention in the analysis. The results of the analysis show that there are many common features but also some contrastive peculiarities between Croatian and Italian phraseology, such as a more frequent tendency towards a subtle representation in the Italian idiomatic language, and a more frequent tendency towards a more explicit representation in the Croatian idiomatic language.