Orpheus Noster

Lectori salutem

2025-08-11T06:04:52+00:00

“Saxon in a Basilica”: Marilynne Robinson and the Reformed Tradition

2025-08-11T06:08:08+00:00

Vehement as she is in her endeavour to rehabilitate Calvin and the Puritans, Marilynne Robinson’s treatment of the Protestant theological and spiritual tradition is both selective and biased. In this paper, I propose to treat these biases as significant shifts in interpretive emphasis, and I explore possible motives underlying her rereading project.

Jesus the Trickster?

2025-08-11T06:18:24+00:00

The figure of the Trickster is a universal cultural hero, a significant character also in Native American spirituality. After colonization most Native Americans adopted Christianity, and recently they have been making it their task to reconcile their ancient beliefs with Christianity and enrich traditional theological categories with those of their native ones. In this paper I consider one of these categories, that of the Trickster, and, based on the ideas of both native and some Western theologians, examine ways of linking this character with the person of God and Jesus.

Accurate and Understandable: Linguistic Insights from the Prefaces of Modern Canonical Bible Translations

2025-08-11T06:14:25+00:00

The Scripture is a text read and researched by inspired readers. However, Scripture can also be read and researched as an important cultural-historical, desacralized text. This study presents linguistic and translation-theoretical approaches to the prefaces of the Hungarian Bible translations prepared in the 20th and 21st centuries: how publishers and translators approached the communication of linguistic and translation solutions and problems of the Hungarian target language texts. Finally, the study also attempts to support or refute Christiane Nord’s claim that the prefaces to the Bible translations do not deal with theoretical and practical linguistic issues.

From Sacred Goddess to Divine King: Continuity in the Rhetoric of Power

2025-08-11T07:00:20+00:00

The paper will analyse possible links between elements of late Elizabethan royal representation and early Jacobean rhetoric on monarchical power. Through the close reading of a sermon by John Howson on 17 November 1602 and a speech to his Parliament by King James I on 21 March 1610, it will draw attention to the similarities and thematic continuities of the texts to highlight how James I’s early speeches revitalized elements of Queen Elizabeth’s late propaganda. The paper will argue that the strategy of heaping excessive praise upon Queen Elizabeth in the post-Armada years found a direct continuation in the early popular reception of James I as a divinely ordained monarch with exceptional powers. However, it will also contend that the close semblance of the phrasing of the orations disguised fundamental differences in the two epoch’s understandings of royal authority.

The Bible, Shakespeare and Faulkner: Inspiring Texts That Can Be Used for Teaching Linguistics

2025-08-11T07:02:42+00:00

This article describes some possibilities for using literary and Biblical texts in linguistics classes in order to achieve certain learning outcomes. The first part focuses on excerpts from Shakespeare and the King James Bible and how to exploit their potential for introducing students to Early Modern English in a “History of the English Language” course; while the second discusses how William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury can provide an inspiring starting point for students to explore some features of African-American Vernacular English in a “Varieties of English” class.

Symbolic Interpretations of Weather in William Faulkner’s South

2025-08-11T07:05:57+00:00

This paper aims to explore how the American South is translated into weather images in Faulkner’s three novels, Light in August, As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom! set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Inspired by the American South, Faulkner’s work integrates regional geography and family history. The study highlights how weather elements, integral to local geography, symbolize aspects of Southern family life within its socio-cultural and historical context. For the analysis, which aims to reveal the significance of weather imagery in portraying Southern realities and its broader implications in Faulkner’s regionalist narrative, the paper uses Adamson’s concept of regionalism, which encompasses geographical, historical, and socio-cultural elements.

British Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century: Preliminary Considerations

2025-08-11T07:08:13+00:00

This paper is based on an introductory lecture from a lecture course with Katalin G. Kállay on 18th and 19th century British and American literature. It considers the problems of defining distinct periods in literary history such as the Augustan age or Romanticism. Through the example The Battel of the Books by Jonathan Swift, it highlights the inherent tensions shaping the literary canon and argues that key concepts of literary history are created retroactively, through the interplay of conflicting perspectives. The second half of the paper discusses aspects of the Restoration and the literature of the long 18th century highlighting the dynamic between modernization and the return to past models. The writings of John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Johnson are used to illustrate key points.

London in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane: Intergenerational Trauma and the Limits of Healing

2025-08-11T07:11:26+00:00

This article explores Monica Ali’s Brick Lane as a diasporic Bildungsroman that depicts the limits of psychological and social development in London. Similar to other diasporic novels such as Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen, and Doris Lessing’s In Pursuit of the English, Ali’s novel portrays the main character’s transformation in London after migrating from a postcolonial country, showcasing how the Western metropolis fosters yet delimits her development. This article points out that the transformation Ali’s protagonist goes through needs to be analysed in the context of her intergenerational trauma: Nazneen’s memories, which evoke her childhood spent in East Pakistan, not only haunt her in London but are also projected onto the urban environment. Therefore, I argue that London, apart from demarcating the limits of Nazneen’s freedom, becomes a creative and healing space in Brick Lane.

Searching for a Sense of Belonging: Lewis Namier, a Champion of Galician Ukrainians at a Crossroads of Identities

2025-08-11T07:14:22+00:00

Three years of war in our eastern neighborhoods has put Ukraine in the spotlight. The paper describes the life of Lewis Namier, a Polish Jewish-born advocate of Ukrainian interests as well as a British diplomat at the Versailles Peace Conference, who struggled to find his identity. Although the historian finally found a home in Britain, the recognition of Ukraine, which has recently undergone a radical shift in historical memory policy, is still yet to come.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Deprecatoria ad Deum

2025-08-11T07:21:49+00:00

Kim Salmons – Tania Zulli (szerk.): Migration, Modernity and Transnationalism in the Work of Joseph Conrad, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, 256 pp.

2025-08-11T07:19:31+00:00