Negative empathy is a destabilizing aesthetic experience which consists in empathizing with immoral and seductive characters portrayed in a fascinating, yet disturbing fashion. Drawing from cognitive, philosophical and narrative theories, this paper identifies the protective distance provided by aesthetic representation as a prerequisite for the conversion of the tragic or unsettling emotions stirred by negative empathy into aesthetic enjoyment. As a result, I argue that the cathartic potential enabled by literary negative empathy with fictional characters or atmospheres allows for the aesthetization and consequent sublimation of the otherwise repressed major taboos described by Freud in Totem and Taboo. Through analysis of some excerpts from Ágota Kristóf’s The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie and Angela Carter’s short story “The Snow Child,” the paper shows how narratives involving parricide and incest possibly allow readers to confront repression, and how the literary presentation of these narratives contributes to readers’ emotional engagement and aesthetic enjoyment of what would otherwise be deeply disturbing subject matter.

If in the first part of the research the archaeological heritage of Gura Râului was presented, on this occasion data are given on the religious buildings from the medieval (“Cuvioasa Paraschiva”) and modern („Sts. Archangels Michael and Gabriel”) periods, respectively on the disappeared medieval monastery (Schwarzen Klosters). The presentation of the medieval, pre-modern and modern heritage of Gura Râului revealed a different potential from the one found by classification. On the one hand, the well known one, of which the “old church” is not missing, on the other hand, a known but ignored heritage. Particular attention is drawn to the two 18th-century objectives whose existence, although proven, has not aroused sufficient interest or a coherent effort to map, classify and protect them: the stone quarry and the Gura Râului – Sibiu navigable canal, part of a project dating from 1702-1703. Their identification in the field, aerial photographic documentation and cartographic recovery of the period have been the preoccupations of the last years, materialized in this article.

This paper focuses on a recurring scene in fiction about emigration, the crossing of physical and geographical borders. The practice of crossing borders is an act of separation from the home, the familiar, and can be understood as a trigger for the later consequences of emigration, since this act creates the situation in which the emigrant experiences himself as a stranger, as a different person in the destination. In the literature on Eastern Europe, there have been many texts that thematize the act of crossing borders, but this thesis will focus on how the first—and to this extent most prominent—border crossing leading to emigration can be linked to the phenomenon of the miracle and, at the same time, to the region of Banat.

This article examines the political and world-literary location and outlook developed in the contemporary Romanian literature that details labor emigration. To that end, I bring under joint scrutiny the fields of postcolonialism, postcommunist and migration studies, to argue that fiction about postcommunist economic emigration cannot be adequately addressed within the cosmpolitan, postnational paradigm that was celebrated by postcolonialism. I also discuss how this Romanian literary archive that translates an experience of economic subalternity could engage with Wallerstein-inspired world-systems theories and comparative frameworks that posit global capitalism as the matrix of world-literature. In approaching my choice set of novels (written by Radu Aldulescu, Liliana Corobca, Liliana Nechita, Dan Lungu, Ioana Baetica Morpurgo), I explore questions of form and genre, to inquire what modes of storytelling account for the subjectivities born out of capitalist precarity and whether testimonial forms of writing are better suited to expose the “situational consciousness” of the peripheral subject. My main argument is that, while the narrative features displayed through these novels indicate the difficulty to provide a critical account of world-systemic unevenness, they manage to expose the fragmentation enforced by capital on social communities.