| Title: | Ways of Pleating Stylistic Devices in Cătălin Mihuleac’s Classified ADS |
| Author: | Iulia Veronica Beldiman |
| Publication: | Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Philologica, 11 (3), p. 83-99 |
| p-ISSN: | 1582-5523 |
| Publisher: | Universitatea „1 Decembrie 1918” |
| Place: | Alba Iulia |
| Year: | 2010 |
| Abstract: | Cătălin Mihuleac is widely known in Romania as a journalist, author of different articles and lampoons published in various periodicals from Iaşi and from all over the country. Cătălin Mihuleac is perfectly capable of making a story plausible, from a literary point of view, out of any commonplace fact. His humour is refined but the “wrapping” of this humour suggests serious frustrations, harmful states of mind, despair, repulsion towards what his characters come up against in their lives, and this “wrapping” is exactly what leads to Cătălin Mihuleac’s unique form of black humour. The originality of this fiction writer resides in the confusion he manages to create, the shock element that he introduces in every story, and the passing of elements from the figurative sense to the literal one, from the ideational plane to the material one, from the objectual to the organic, most often than not in more and more absurd developments. A surprising and, at the same time, effective plot change takes place in every story, occurring unexpectedly or, on the contrary, most naturally, taking the reader out of the limits of conventional reality. The invention of an extraordinary or unusual perspective is everything. Examples are numerous in Cătălin Mihuleac’s fiction: the city air conditioning opens its heart to the countryside fresh air; an impresario signs a contract, not with the musician who is on stage, but with the audience; someone practises illicit trade with fake ages; what seemed to be a flock of birds are in fact some migratory brains; some senators’ wives are exhausted because they make love to the whole electorate that is represented in the Parliament; an old woman kills a sports commentator and, in the end, the old woman proves to be, in fact, the Romanian language; a billionaire buys an inflatable day so that the day can have enough hours for him; at a special convent, the monks can “dispossess” a man of his talent, the talent being considered a source of unhappiness for humans. Cătălin Mihuleac’s imagination is mainly ironical and his cynicism becomes black humour in his fiction. The author manages to turn his writings into real stylistic jewels by pleating numerous stylistic devices like: metaphor, synecdoche, simile, inversions, repetitions, irony. One should also notice in Mihuleac’s fiction the recurrent use of free indirect style, which will be thoroughly analysed in the paper. Classified Ads is a sketch in which black humour and irony combine wonderfully in a unique way, characteristic to Cătălin Mihuleac. Mihuleac’s satire is not bitter and vexing, like that of Swift, thus his black humour is mild and waggish. If the main purpose of most satires is to invite the reader to laugh at a particular human vice or folly, in order to challenge us to consider an important moral alternative, Cătălin Mihuleac manages to change this trend. His black humour is mild, witty, surprising and delightful. |
| Key words: | linguistic stylistics; black humour; sarcasm; irony; free indirect speech |
| Language: | English |
| Links: |  html |
Citations to this publication: 1
| 1 | Florin Sterian | Bibliografia românească de lingvistică (BRL, 53, 2010). Lucrări de lingvistică apărute în țara noastră în cursul anului 2010 | LR, LX (3), 307-453 | 2011 | pdf html |
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