Language and Symbols in Contemporary Fiction - Marginean, Alexandra

Descriere - Language and Symbols in Contemporary Fiction

The method of analysis is, as usual in what I write, a melange. I have resorted to identity studies, cultural studies, visual studies, iconology, space and city studies, interculturalism, as well as gender or minority studies. Also, psychology or sociology cannot be missing from an interest that is, primarily, in human identity and culture. This blended approach is the one I consider the most suitable, because I have always been of the opinion that the logic of the tools is, and/or should be, dictated by the elements that are present in the object of the study. It is those that point to certain kits, not the other way around. I have never established for my extensive researches one kit or another as a definite instrument set in stone when I have looked at a cultural product, as I feel that I would be implicitly bent towards partiality of interpretation, to a limited viewing angle. I believe it is important to allow the cultural object to speak, to have its own voice as it were, and only then see what avenues of analysis it opens and favors – I use here the verb "favors”, as the search for the ingredients of a work of art is also a question of ration, not only presence, i.e. we identify what is preponderant, where the scales tip more, towards what recurrent aspects. For the sake of the faithfulness and open mindedness owed to the object of my glance, I find it difficult to limit myself to only one theoretical approach, especially in a world in which boundaries have been, are, and will be questioned to an incredibly high degree. And I refer here chiefly to cultural boundaries, but not only to these.