Тhe aim of this article is to examine and analyze the tone of communication in selected examples from the Neo-Assyrian state archive, published in the State Archives of Assyria series, through the lens of Searle's Speech Act Theory. Participants in this communication include Assyrian kings who reigned during the 8th–7th centuries BCE, high-ranking officials and administrators, as well as members of the scribal elite, also known as scholars, at the royal court. The period of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (10th–7th centuries BCE) marks a turning point in world history due to a number of significant innovations in administration and social regulation introduced by the Assyrian monarchs. The study of written communication sheds light on a more specific aspect of state governance, revealing essential elements of the hierarchical relationships between the ruler and his subordinates. These communications define the boundaries of what is permitted, but they also delve into issues such as professional conflicts and competition. Last but not least, they have the potential to reveal typical patterns of response in specific situations that remain hidden in more concise types of sources, such as Assyrian royal inscriptions.
Keeping what the French call a journal intime, writers of all cultures and ages write against the ticking of the clock, the passage of time, and disappearance. It is in the intimate space of the diary that they record their experiences while those are fresh and immediate. This paper purports to look into the diaries of two Romanian diarists whose main purpose was to explore the subtlest transformations and nuances of their own perceptions of time. Matei Călinescu’s Un altfel de jurnal. Ieşirea din timp (Another Kind of Diary. Escaping Time) (Humanitas Press, 2016) and Radu Vancu’s Boala & războiul. Jurnal, 2020-2024 (Illness & War. A Diary, 2020-2024) (Polirom Press, 2024) are troubling testimonies of what it means to literally write against the clock, while a terminal illness eats at your body (Matei Călinescu’s situation) or the suffering, isolation and death brought about by the COVID epidemic is a constant reminder of one’s mortality and impending death (Radu Vancu’s situation shared by a whole planet).
This research comments on the three-person correspondence between the Russian writer Ivan Bunin, the Bulgarian professor of Slavic literature Boyan Penev, and Penev’s wife – the poetess Dora Gabe. Emigrating from Russia, Bunin stayed in Sofia for 18 days between February and March 1920. During this period, he personally met the Penev family. Acquainted with Bunin’s work, prof. Penev made every effort to support the writer and showed him academic socialization by inviting Bunin to work as a “professor” of “new Russian literature” at Sofia University. However, while the procedure for the approval of the Russian émigré scholar was in progress, Bunin left Sofia for Belgrade and then Paris. He never returned to Sofia to take up the chair offered to him. From Paris, Bunin sent to Boyan Penev two letters, kept in the Scientific Archives of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and published long ago, in which he explained the circumstances that led to his decision. Until now Bulgarian literary scholars have believed that Penev reacted to these letters with silence. During archival searches, however, letters in reply to Bunin were found. They were written by the poetess Dora Gabe, who responded to Bunin “instead of” her husband. These documents are kept in the I. A. Bunin Collection of the Leeds Russian Archive (University of Leeds). Written in the first-person plural, these missives contain a general impression of Bunin but also reveal Penev’s opinion about Bunin’s decision. The chronologically restored correspondence, as well as the published illustrations, contributes to the reconstruction of the Sofia period of Bunin’s emigrant life, which has remained more or less marginalized till now.
This article studies the women’s perspective on war and its effects on the female characters in three significant works written by women, namely “The Ship of Widows” (1994) by I. Grekova, “A Woman in Berlin” (2011) by an Anonymous author, and “U vojny ne zhenskoe litso” (2013) (“The Unwomanly Face of War”) by S. Alexievich. The purpose of this research is to display, for the first time collectively, how women’s perspective on war is narrated not by men but by women themselves who have experienced WWII or its aftermath effects in their lives. Despite a significant literature/bibliography on WWII, the latter primarily reflects the male view, making the three selected books exceptional. Furthermore, unlike the previously available articles on the aforementioned texts, our article originally conducts a collective and comparative study of them. Women’s studies have separately dealt with these three literary works, highlighting the women’s experiences and ordeals of war. Instead, we focus on the setting of the stories. The communal buildings in the first two works and the war front in the third one gain a significant historical and personal dimension that can be framed and explained by Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope, where according to Lefebvre “time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history”(1994 p.84). In terms of explaining the nature of the spatiality in these literary oeuvre, H. Lefebvre’s concepts of “dominated space” and “appropriated space” are employed.
This article looks at the genre of biofiction, or “imaginary life” as it is more commonly known in French, reflecting on its origins and considering its cultural meanings through examples drawn from French literary production in the early 21st century. It tries to highlight how biofiction redefines the boundaries of biography and fiction, creating a genre that emphasizes individuality, memory, and cultural reflection. Focusing on the genre's rise as a preferred mode of storytelling in recent decades, the article traces its roots to a broader cultural and aesthetic shift emphasizing subjective narratives and the interplay of memory, identity, and imagination. Drawing from notable works by authors such as Pascal Quignard and Pierre Michon, biofiction is examined as a transformative space where the boundaries between biography, autobiography, and fiction dissolve. Through its reconfiguration of narrative structures, biofiction challenges the dichotomy between fiction and referential truth, creating hybrid texts that engage readers in reflective and empathetic encounters. The article discusses key characteristics of biofiction, including its reliance on fragmented storytelling, the manipulation of historical and fictional discourse, and its potential as a medium for emotional and intellectual engagement. Ultimately, biofiction is positioned as a vital literary form that responds to modernity's fragmented identity and reclaims the narrative power of individual lives, underscoring the enduring interplay between literature, memory, and the self. It appears as a key element in the literary landscape of postmodernity.
Chair’s (also referred to as Chairman’s and Chairperson’s) letters to stakeholders form part of a typical business communication strategy that is embraced by British Petroleum (further – BP), which is considered to be one of the leading international actors on the fossil fuel and energy markets. Normally, Chair’s letters introduce BP’s annual reports and provide a very succinct yet informative outline of BP’s activities. Due to its compressed discursive space, Chair’s letters present an interesting aspect of corporate communication to be investigated from the vantage point of discourse studies. The present paper describes a quantitative study whose aim is to establish the frequency of discourse markers in a corpus of the Chair’s letters in annual reports published by BP within the time frame 2015 – 2024. The study uses the concordance program AntConc (Anthony, 2022) in order to identify and quantify discourse markers in the corpus. The results of the corpus analysis reveal that the frequently occurring discourse markers are: (i) and, (ii) as, (iii) but, and (iv) however. The findings are further illustrated in conjunction with the pragmatic roles of the aforementioned DMs. The article concludes with a contention that the findings of the study provide a deeper insight into the discursive space of the Chair’s letters and show the way the Chair communicates with the stakeholders and other actors by using discourse markers.
This paper analyzes the issue of unifying women's suffering as shown through the letters of two friends, Idil who lives in England, and Sirma who lives in Turkey. Through the letters they send to each other, both women mirror the current time and places in which the determiners of the patriarchal worldview are written, whereby each woman is destined to be in a subordinate position in relation to a man. In the short story titled "Ağlayan Kadınlar" Kolajı İçin Taslak (1997) the author Erendiz Atasü tries to free her heroines from the burden of serving the patriarchal ideology. However, the supremacy of the male over the female gender limits a woman, no matter how successful she might be in the public eye, where one can once again witness gender inequality. The presence of a woman in the space assigned to the male gender means an end to various forms of male domination. By contrasting the feminist/gender perspectives of the two main protagonists, this paper will attempt to demonstrate that the string of letters is arranged in such a way as to present a picture of the world as presented through the eyes of a woman, and a woman's experience.
For a long time, the diary was the only literary space accessible to women. For them, it was not just a kind of text that collected their daily records. It was a means of creating their self-image, expressing their literary talent, and reflecting on the cultural codes that marginalize them to the periphery of society. These functions and the close connection between diary writing and the female universe were also relevant in 19th-century Russia. This article aims to analyse the genre and thematic constants and transformations in Russian women’s diary prose of the time. The study examines and compares the life journals of Anna Petrovna Kern (1800–1879) and Elena Andreevna Stakenschneider (1836–1897), written respectively in the first and second half of the 19th century. Anna Petrovna and Elena Andreevna are best known for their connection with some of the most significant authors of Russian literature. The name of A. P. Kern is always associated with A. S. Pushkin, while E. A. Stakenshneider was a friend of F. M. Dostoevsky. However, the two women were also the authors of interesting diaries. This article highlights the similarities and differences in the narrative strategies and in the treatment of various themes (family, literature, self-portraiture, role of the women) in these ego-documents. At the same time, the analysis shows the role of the diary in the diarists’ lives. They used their journals to conduct their existential self-exploration and to record their protesting voice against the “unjust” (patriarchal) reality surrounding them.
Mary Robinson began writing her Memoirs to vindicate herself from the backlash that tarnished her reputation. The reason for her notoriety was her status as a former mistress of the Prince of Wales (future George IV), her various alleged liaisons, radical sympathies, and camaraderie with political figures such as Charles James Fox. All these factors contributed to the scathing criticism directed at her, transforming her into an object of derision in caricatures and period satirical writings. The Memoirs aimed to present a truthful account of her life and counter the persona that society has constructed for her as a fallen woman. However, what is peculiar about Robinson’s life writing is her decision to narrate her story through the lens of sentimental fiction, portraying herself as a sentimental heroine, thus blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction. This article focuses on the Memoirs’ appeal to readers as seeking to engage their sentiments, not only to garner sympathy but also to encourage a moral understanding that would legitimise Robinson’s virtuous character through familiar literary and cultural tropes. It positions Robinson’s autobiographical writing within the context of moral sentimentalist theories, such as David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, to demonstrate how Robinson’s self-representation as an autobiographical subject in the Memoirs is narrativised in a way that produces a textual self which is to be construed via the reading habits of her audience.
The article examines four autobiographical works written in the second half of the 20th century. The texts chart their authors’ experience of non-heteronormative identity construction alongside a history of political oppression during the communist regime in Romania. In addition to self-identifying as homosexuals and reflecting upon the interconnection of their sexuality, cultural background and discourse position, Ion Negoițescu, Mihai Rădulescu and Petre Sirin, who knew each other well, were part of a larger network of like-minded friends and interacted intensely with key figures of the Romanian interwar intelligentsia. The analysis looks at their texts through the lenses of performativity, positionality and relationality and shows that, despite their genre heterogeneity, Negoițescu’s unfinished autobiography, his correspondence with Radu Stanca, Rădulescu’s posthumous collection of autobiographical writings and Sirin’s auto/biographical account of his relationship to Rădulescu can all be read as relational life narratives. On a formal level, the posthumous publication of the texts dislocates the life writers from their autonomous position through shared authorship with the editors. On a content level, every life writing piece analysed here combines performative narrative self-construction with representations of personal relationships. A close reading of the texts reveals how engaging with stigmatized homosexual experience and at the same time adjusting to conservative stances of the Romanian high culture disrupts the linear narrative of autonomous self-development and provides accounts of queer subjectivity that challenge both rigid genre and gender boundaries.
The study examines an episode from the life of Anne-Louise-Germaine, Baroness de Staël-Holstein, related to her escape to Russia and her impressions of the Russian Empire and its people. The renowned writer sought refuge from the repressions imposed on her by Napoleon Bonaparte and attempted to defend her personal freedom. Her overall attitude toward Russia is largely positive, though in her diary she also notes certain negative aspects of public life in the empire. She provides an overview of some national characteristics of the peoples living within the empire and meets with prominent historical figures, including Emperor Alexander, his wife, and his close circle. She describes the cities, nature, and local customs, but filters these impressions through the lens of the war of 1812. The study also includes general information about Madame de Staël’s biography, as well as her literary and political activities.
The article examines two atypical autobiographical texts by Emanuil Vaskidovich and Anastas Granitsky in the context of both the authors' lives and the literature of the time. The two authors belong to different generations. The reason why the two works should be considered in parallel is the similar grievances of the two authors and their indignation against certain personalities. Both Vaskidovich and Granitsky were prominent writers of their time, and their short books offer interesting accounts of educational work in Svishtov (Vaskidovich) and social life in Constantinople (Granitsky). At the same time, both employ different strategies in presenting their misadventures, situating them in different contexts – local (Vaskidovich) and general (Granitsky). Both short books are well known to scholars. Still, they have hardly been studied in depth, as have other similar texts (not very numerous) that, to some extent, change the perception of the period and the processes in the mid-nineteenth-century literature.
The diary has long served as a meaningful tool for psychological transformation. This article examines diary writing as a dynamic space for emotional expression, reflective thinking, and narrative construction. Through a narrative review of peer-reviewed literature, primarily focused on publications from 2010 to 2025, and supplemented by foundational earlier studies, this paper explores the psychological functions of diary and journal writing across domains such as education, mental health, and personal development. Special attention is given to how writing facilitates self-awareness, emotional regulation, and identity construction. A structured search strategy was employed across five databases – Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO, PubMed, and ERIC – yielding a curated set of 15 empirical studies relevant to the intersection of journaling and personal transformation. These studies were analyzed thematically and grouped into five domains: (1) self-reflection and cognitive integration; (2) emotional regulation and psychological containment; (3) meaning-making in times of disruption; (4) identity formation and personal development; and (5) educational and professional applications. Findings indicate that diary writing is not merely a retrospective activity but a transformative narrative practice, through which individuals externalize experience, process emotion, and shape evolving self-concepts. The integrative function of writing is thus positioned as both a psychological intervention and a personal method for engaging with change.
Theseus is mentioned in considerations regarding writings and myths in which his name appears. In such considerations the life of Theseus, seem to be referred to, when actions attributed to him are described in some sort of a chronological order. This situation may raise questions about the possibility to construct a biography of Theseus and questions about the acceptability of such a construct. Considerations regarding the myths of Theseus and those regarding the deeds of Theseus should be kept separated. This explicit separation of two kinds of considerations does usually not occur and thus questions may be asked: which is the acceptable meaning of considerations containing statements using ‘Theseus’? Should they be used only to refer to traditional tales about Theseus i.e. myths of Theseus? Can they also be used to refer to a chronological chain of events which constitute somehow the life of Theseus? How is a literary text to be considered where the name ‘Theseus’ occurs? Should it be considered only as a mythological drama based on some myths of Theseus? Can it be considered also as a source for describing a sequence of the life of Theseus? This article seeks to tackle following problems: general mythological and literary research on one side and specific narrative, logical and ontological perspectives are to be put in contrast in order to offer consistent considerations on two separate issues. Firstly, there are considerations on myths about Theseus and mythological writings as sources for the reconstruction of myths of the classical world. Secondly, there are considerations on stories of Theseus as sources for his biography in a non-existent mythical world. These later considerations can justify consistent assertions on Theseus himself. The use within a certain theoretical frame of considerations of this type can be bound together in a biography of the real but non-existent life of Theseus.
This article examines the letters and documents from Georgi Markov’s archive. The Czech element in it is seen as a symbol of disobedience and revolt since it is related to the events of the Prague Spring and the author’s attitude towards this key moment in Post-World War II European history; an attitude shown more tacitly or explicitly in Bulgaria and on the Western radio stations. “I Was Him” is the play marking a point of no return after which Markov had to leave Bulgaria in 1969. The facts and what has been hushed from the already published writer’s archive, as well as his correspondence with Milosh Voita and Jan Koska, are being discussed in the context of their respective times. From the personal correspondence of Georgi Markov, we can see his desire for a fulfilling life with the ones close to him, his love for Bulgaria and the absence of pathetic or heroic gestures. Freedom in this Bulgarian writer is part of his authentic desire to live according to a personal philosophy where writing occupies a crucial place; very important for the writer are a few of his friends, especially his parents in Bulgaria for whom he has a sense of guilt – after his father’s death Markov is overcome by the feeling of intolerance for the Bulgarian political and social status quo. The Czech motif for freedom in Markov’s letters and documents is like “a life with the others” where the individual and his or her place matter.
This article studies the illusory nature of artistic fictionality and the ways in which this unreality affects reality. Examples are given of how the “method of deception” carries out the author’s intention from the time of Sophocles to the present day. The deliberate deception of the reader is a manifestation of the game, which is an aspect of the essence of the literary text, but it also provokes thinking, which reflects on a person’s behavior in reality. The short story “Kosachi/Mowers” by Elin Pelin presents the role of the imaginary, the illusory as an escape from the “bad” truths, but also shows how it can become a motive for a decisive action. The second aspect of the research is related to the methodology of teaching literature at school and how the artistic illusion supports the personality formation with role models. “Antigone” (Sophocles), “Po zhitsata/ On the Wire” (Y. Yovkov), “Hamlet” (Shakespeare), “Noev kovcheg/ Noah’s Ark” (Y. Radichkov), etc. studied at primary and high school present various manifestations of artistic illusion and its impact on the student’s consciousness at the very important stage of their lives when their values are formed. The question about the role of artificial intelligence in teaching literature is raised but its answer is not clear-cut yet. The interpretation of the literary text is a subjective act expressing the understanding of the author’s messages, and it cannot be replaced and displaced by the standardized and clichéd “utterances” of the AI embedded in its databases. The illusory nature of machine intelligence cripples the discourse in which the communicative process takes place, because it displaces the main thing in it – human uniqueness and originality.
Academic writing is a key component of learning in institutions of higher education, and plays a vital role in assessment. However, many students have illusory perceptions about the nature of academic writing. The purpose and process of writing, and the processes involved in knowledge-construction, meaning-making, and argumentation in academic writing in English are not always transparent, and students often fail to make effective use of feedback. In addition, many teachers also have perceptual illusions about writing and, as a result of a lack of adequate training in providing instruction and appropriate feedback on writing, fail to dispel their students’ perceptual illusions and effectively develop their academic writing skills. In an attempt to outline the nature of such illusions, this paper provides a review and analysis of key research on teaching and providing feedback on academic writing. It considers writing at university as product, process, discourse, and genre, and finds that questions of what constitutes effective feedback, and how feedback can improve student writing, are inextricably linked with approaches to the teaching of writing. The findings suggest that approaches to teaching writing and approaches to feedback on writing can both be seen as part of a developmental and interactive process of scaffolding student writing skills in which process and socio-constructive models of teaching and learning are most effective. Raising the awareness of both teachers and students about the nature of writing, and the purpose of feedback, could play a crucial role in dispelling students’ illusory perceptions, and improving their academic writing skills.
