Title: From Music to Words: The Avatars of Jazz in 20th-Century Literature

Abstract: This seminar explores the dialogue between jazz and literature in the last century, examining various literary movements and the works of a range of authors from world literature. It also seeks to outline the main characteristics of ‘jazzified’ literature, in order to observe how jazz – transformed into a metaphor and associated with ideas of primitivism, freedom, violence and sexuality, as well as with the concepts of time, space and identity – is capable of reshaping the fictional worlds of the authors discussed, the movements to which they belong, and an entire century of literature that succumbed to its charms.

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Cristina Petrescu holds a degree in Languages and Literature (Portuguese Language and Literature, Comparative Literature, and English Language and Literature), a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature, and a PhD in Philology from Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, with a thesis on jazz and literature. She worked for many years as a Portuguese language teacher at the Brazilian Cultural Centre in Cluj-Napoca and, since February 2023, has been a lecturer at the Faculty of Letters of Babeș-Bolyai University, where she teaches courses in Portuguese literature. She has published, as a preface writer and translator, the bilingual books Carlos Fradique Mendes: Poezii/Poesias (2021) and Antologia poeziei galiciano-portugheze. Secolele XII-XIV. Antologia da Poesia Galego-Portuguesa. Seculele XII-XIV (2025, co-translator), and is also the author of the volume Avataruri ale jazzului în literatura universală (Avatars of Jazz in World Literature). Her main areas of interest are Portuguese and Brazilian literature, with a focus on studies of major Portuguese heteronyms, the works of Eça de Queirós and Camilo Castelo Branco, and the relationship between jazz and literature. Her passion for jazz is also reflected in her musical activities, including various concerts with the band Junetrip and the release of the studio album Aimna.