Volumen 5 Número 1

Editorial
Abderrahmane BAIBECHE | Universidad de Puerto Rico 

Romanitas has published five volumes in the past few years. These have been the product of team work and the journal continues publishing quality articles despite some publication delays. The years 2010 and 2011 were not a time of complete inactivity. Even though the journal went through a difficult period, Romanitas was able to remain faithful to its mission: to disseminate the latest research on romance languages and literatures.

Insultos e Elogios- Inversão de Predicados
Maria Isabel Dias Henriques | Universidade de Oporto 

This paper deals with predicate inversion, more precisely with qualitative sentences and with the predication within the Noun Phrase.
This study had the following aims: i) compare Portuguese and English studies about this topic; ii) determine if the predication is important within the NP (Dikken, 1998); iii) choose the best syntactic representation; iv) compare with partitive expressions and analyse semantic values; v) prove that the left position within the NP is not exclusive of quantifiers, adjectives (Brito, 1003: 369).; vi) compare these expressions with copulative sentences. After analysing several sentences, we reached the following conclusions: i) these expressions are a case of predication within the NP, since they predicate the noun; ii) they obey the rules of the inversion of predicates; therefore, we cannot separate N1 and N2, they are a part of a whole; iii) they have a pragmatic value and purpose.

Student Presentations in the Business French Classroom: Content, Techniques, and Assessment
Christophe IPPOLITO | Georgia Institute of Technology 

The main goal of the article is to assess the relevance of oral presentations for business language instruction. This will be accomplished through a review of six (6) different presentations made by students. This review will analyze the students' assessment of these assignments. Analysis will focus on articulation between learned material and learning objectives, students' choices, communicative abilities, and reactions to the material.

Chili : Littérature de jeunesse: Initiation à la lecture et transmission du folklore aux enfants dans les récits courts de Floridor Pérez Lavín
Cécile- Alice Jouannaux | Université de Poitiers 

Floridor Pérez Lavín est écrivain, poète, instituteur et universitaire. Après avoir précisé son appartenance à la lignée des spécialistes du folklore chilien, cet article à visée interdisciplinaire spécifie l’originalité de son travail de réécriture des récits traditionnels. Puis, il explicite le travail d’adaptation thématique et linguistique des récits que cet écrivain élabore en fonction des nouvelles conditions de vie et des attentes des jeunes lecteurs, se posant ainsi comme le « médiateur » entre la « tradition », ce patrimoine culturel immatériel à pérenniser, et ces derniers. Cet article analyse enfin la méthode pédagogique, appliquée en classe par Floridor Pérez Lavín, qui implique ses élèves dans la collecte des récits oraux.

Pater / Patria: Central Station and the Search for Identity in Post-Collor Brazil
Geoffrey MITCHELL | Maryville College 

Released in 1998, Central do Brasil (Central Station), received accolades from critics as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. The film is an allegory that eschews the typical, aesthetic representation of the sertão; that is to say, previous directors chose to present this space in film with bright, intense colors that emphasized the intensity of the sun and the plight of droughts. In Central do Brasil, Walter Salles opted to portray the sertão as a vital, important locus devoid of the negative representations in previous Brazilian films. In Salles’s film, the sertão can literally be a refuge for the inhabitant of the vast, cold, and frequently violent, urban centers of eastern Brazil. In essence, the return to the sertão is in opposition to the relocation of the retirantes who previously abandoned the region due to drought, thus shifting the demographics toward the city. Metaphorically, the pilgrimage to the sertão — more particularly Josué’s search for his father following his mother’s untimely death in Rio de Janeiro and Dora’s escape from her illicit business as a letter writer — is a search for a collective, national identity and meaning in the years following and during the economic and political uncertainties of the Collor and Cardoso administrations. Both literally and metaphorically, the father figure is a central figure in Central Station, one who — in many ways — continues to elude those who seek him.

Del Génesis al Apocalipsis: la psiquis atormentada en La ira del cordero de Roberto Arturo Menéndez
Miguel NÁTER | Universidad de Puerto Rico 

Este artículo se centra en el estudio de los referentes míticos y existenciales de la obra de teatro del salvadoreño Roberto Arturo Menéndez, La ira del cordero. Se destaca la función de lo que Erminio G. Neglia ha llamado la escenificación del fluir psíquico, en relación con las pugnas existenciales de los personajes principales. Además, se enfatiza la reescritura del mito de Caín y Abel en función de escenificar el rol de los padres en el proceso de la crianza de sus hijos en semejanza con los vínculos establecidos entre el dios hebreo y los hijos de Adán y Eva.

Dislocation identitaire et narrative dans la «littérature-monde» (Étude comparée de J. -M. G. Le Clézio, V. S. Naipaul et Roberto Bolaño)
Mélanie POTEVIN | Université de Paris X 

La notion de dislocation est de plus en plus présente dans la critique littéraire du roman contemporain pour exprimer les effets du nomadisme et de l'exil, dans le texte. C'est par une étude comparatiste que nous nous proposons d'analyser dans quelle mesure l'errance se retrouve dans une double posture de déconstruction et de reconstruction de la narration et des personnages. Cette analyse s'appuiera principalement sur trois écrivains considérés comme «nomades» : J. M. G. Le Clézio (1940-), V. S. Naipaul (1932-) et Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003). Les origines multiples de ces écrivains (Île Maurice/France ; Trinidad/Angleterre ; Chili/Mexique/Espagne) et leurs multiples pérégrinations dans le monde les rendent intéressants pour étudier l'existence d'une stratégie narrative spécifique à l'errance.

"À ‘f[ɨ]lor’ da pel([ɨ])” – Considerações sobre o acrescento e supressão do schwa no português europeu
Cláudia SILVIA 

From the "A-chrony" to a "Synchrony" and Vice Versa: The Proximity of the Beyond or Fantastic Literature and the Question of Time – The Invención de Morel Example
Rosalie SINOPOULOU

Fantastic literature is a genre that has always pushed imagination to its extremes, mainly because it sets off to re-present something that is not present. Given the «limits» of human perception, though, is it possible to establish a narrative outside language or time? How does time, a concept that has a rather conventional status, function in the margins of reality? From Cazotte to James many attempts have been made in order to distort the normal in the most believable way possible. In that sense attempts have been made to distort time –a prominent means of perceiving normality– as well. Bioy-Casares’ La Invención de Morel is a prominent example of that kind of effort. Repetition, a concept prominent in that novel, expresses and re-presents (?) a new reality that seems to negate our world for the sake of another, an ideal universe where today is always scarified for the sake of eternity. Like a writer, the hero gives up the present in order to achieve, through the eternal repetition, the ultimate representation: a representation in its purest form, i.e. one founded on a void, just like the fantastic itself.

Escribir animales. Sobre las pequeñas prosas zoológicas de Juan José Arreola y João Guimarães Rosa
Julieta YELIN | Universidad Nacional de Rosario 

El presente trabajo propone una lectura de Bestiario de Juan José Arreola y de los «Zooâ» de João Guimarães Rosa a la luz de la agudización de la crisis de los imaginarios de animales y de lo animal en los años de la segunda posguerra.

Reseña: Fondo y forma de la novela en España, de Juan Ignacio Ferreras
María José GUTIÉRREZ BARAJAS | Universidad de Alacalá de Henares 

Este artículo trata de presentar una obra, La Novela en España, en la que, quien esta reseña escribe, ha trabajado con su autor, Juan Ignacio Ferreras, en la inmensa tarea de coleccionar, escanear y corregir libros, artículos y otros ensayos suyos que, desde hace unos cuarenta años, se encuentran esparcidos por diferentes editoriales, revistas y hasta periódicos tanto españoles como extranjeros. La tarea era inmensa porque a lo ya publicado, había que añadir los cientos de cuartillas inéditas.

Reseña: Margaret Papillon, Noirs préjugés. Nouvelles. Miami 2010
Peter KLAUS | Freie Universität - Berlin 

Margaret Papillon a publié en 2010 un recueil de nouvelles intitulé Noirs préjugés. Ce ne sont pas ses premiers textes de fiction et elle n’est pas non plus à son premier recueil de nouvelles.