“The Sacred” and “Spirituality” in Polish Literary Research

Author(s): Wojciech Kudyba / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

The article was devoted to the methodology of research on the re-lationship between literature-religion. Its aim is a critical reflection on the use of the category of ‘the sacred’ in the research. In Poland, in 70. of the last century, ‘the sacred’ has become the vital category for reflections on the religious aspects of literature (eliminating such terms as ‘catholic literature’ and ‘religious literature’). The historiographical method is used in the article. The author presents the steps of the presence of the category ‘the sacred’ in the humanities, especially in the Polish literature studies. The main results of the analysis: sacrological research had pre-pared us to meet study of literature and cultural studies. Many factors point to the fact that sacral research was one of the first attempts to build a bond between literary and cultural studies. The term ‘the sacred’ did not have classification or typological aim (such function was sometimes assigned to ‘religious literature’ term). Its wide range allowed activities that led to identification of the religious profile of the literary work. Its primary context was not any ideology or religious doctrine, but cultural anthropology, so it demanded culture studies competence more than being involved in world outlook. The wide range of the notion – completely natural and desirable in the anthropology of culture – did not have to be something obvious in the research of separate literary works, at times evoking the image of the world strictly connected with particular religion, or even particular worship. The answer to this was Stefan Sawicki’s offer to replace ‘the sacred’ category when analysing such works with other terms. Organizational measures undertaken by the founder of Lublin school of sacral research were soon verified by the reality of academic discussion – subject, as each discussion, to the rules of terminology fashion. ‘The sacred’ became fashionable term for some time – used and overused, perhaps. It became the keyword to open all possible references to religious sphere in literary works. It was applied not only where the layer of religious meaning remained generalized in the text, but also in those which were distinctly involved in the symbolic world of a specific religion. There were of course attempts to introduce new notion where the context demanded it. Taken in the article analyzes the concept of the sacred in literary studies have been limited mainly to the area of Polish literary criticism. The text encourages further research. It has practical significance. It explains the methods, can serve students and other readers (such as teachers or students) to acquire the skills to interpret literary texts. The author is not only critically discusses the use of the sacred in the research literature, but also proposes a new research tools in the form of the category of “spirituality”.

“THE THIN DELIGHTS OF MOONSHINE AND ROMANCE”. Romance, Tourism, and Realism in Hawthorne’s „The Marble Faun”

Author(s): Carlo Martinez / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

Hawthorne’s involvement with the logic of the tourism of his day is a key aspect of his development as a fiction writer. Starting from a discussion of the early sketch “My Visit to Niagara” the article argues that the discourse of tourism, with its protocols and practices, is for Hawthorne a fertile breeding ground and conceptual framework for the elaboration of a new rationale and a new aesthetic for the fiction writing he calls “romance.” It then explores how tourism resonates in the romance which takes it as its central thematic concern: „The Marble Faun”. Hawthorne’s last completed long work of fiction represents a moment of artistic and personal crisis for the author, who finds his notion of romance writing caught in a sort of double bind created by the touristic nature of his stay in Italy. As the plot of the novel suggests, in his efforts to extricate himself from the situation, Hawthorne, envisioned and experimented with a new kind of writing that led him to revise and alter radically the romance form he had previously elaborated in favor of a much more realistic style of fiction.

“The Things We Are”: Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things and the Science of Man

Author(s): Katrin Berndt / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

The aim of this article is to examine the influence of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy on Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (1992) with a particular focus on its references to thenatural and life sciences. The essay argues that the novel allegorizes two central themesof the eighteenth-century Science of Man: it stresses the social nature of human beings,and it aims for a comprehensive portrayal of human nature whose different aspects aredepicted in explicit connection with one another. The article shows that Gray employs the emancipatory framework of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy in order to communicate an idealistic belief in the possibility of gradual improvement of society.

“The Third Conference of the Japan Society for Phraseology”, Osaka, 3rd March 2012

Author(s): Joanna Szerszunowicz / Language(s): English Issue: 12/2012

Place: Osaka Date: 3rd March 2012

“The Whole Green Theatre of that Swift and Inexplicable Tragedy”: Gardens in G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown Stories

Author(s): Barbara Kowalik / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

This paper provides a survey of garden settings in Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s detective stories about Father Brown, followed by more detailed readings of the first four of the stories, which introduce the clerical sleuth and his principal antagonists and establish the rules of Chesterton’s semiotics of the green theatre of crime.

“The Woman Question” as expressed in the work of Slovenian Writer Pavlina Pajk, and the influence of Western ideas on her work

Author(s): Tanja Badalič / Language(s): English Issue: 11/2016

Foreign literary influences, German and Western European in particular, played a pivotal role in the 19th-century Slovenian literary field. During this time, the first female Slovenian authors emerged. Among them was Pavlina Pajk (1854–1901) who continued the tradition of the sentimental novel. Her texts incorporate several topics and motifs associated with the novels of other Western female authors, in particular those of George Sand. Moreover, Pajk was the first Slovenian woman writer who, presumably influenced by Western ideas, started writing about “the woman question”. This article thus presents Pajk’s ideas concerning “the woman question” in her writings.

“Then Thickest Dark did Trance the Sky”: A Representation of Psychological Decay in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Mariana”

Author(s): Dorota Osińska / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

The Victorians openly expressed their deep fascination with the study of mind which was reflected in the rise of the nineteenth century “Psychological School of Poetry”. One of the authors who was captivated by the question of mental disorders was Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Despite the extensive research on his poetry, “Mariana” tends to be overlooked and reduced to a mere depiction of unbearable loneliness. However, this study focuses on the way how Tennyson, by using different modes of poetical representation such as visual, auditory, and temporal, indirectly portrays a degradation of the protagonist’s psyche, thus showing that the mental state can be expressed by the external images of a surrounding landscape, not character’s subjective perception. By the close reading of the poem as well as comparing the description of psychological disintegration with another well-known heroine of the Victorian era Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, one may conclude that the conveyed imagery of decay and blight mirrors the gradual psychological downfall of the female character. Contrary to Harold Bloom’s reading of the poem, I will argue that Mariana’s tragedy lies precisely in her retreat from the external world and dwelling in the vicious circle of her predicament which reinforces the character’s masochistic coping mechanisms. Above all, the power of the poem lies not in the immediate shock and disgust, but in evoking a sense of moroseness that slowly kills the protagonist.

“THERE WAS A BLACK GAP WHERE THE DE HAD BEEN:” DISPOSSESSING DISCOURSE IN AIDAN HIGGINS’ BALCONY OF EUROPE

Author(s): Petronia Popa Petrar / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2018

“There Was a Black Gap Where the DE Had Been”: Dispossessing Discourse in Aidan Higgins’ ”Balcony of Europe”. My paper attempts to explore a novel by Irish writer Aidan Higgins from the perspective of the so-called “ethical turn” in the study of narrative by arguing that both its form and its content explicitly thematise the ethical risks of the first-person discourse when it comes to representing the other. Using Dorothy J. Hale’s notion of the voluntary “self-binding” fiction requires from the “responsible readers,” I examine the strategies through which Higgins pits the narrator’s failure to represent otherness against the imminent disintegration of the European landscape, history and identity under the pressures of a discourse of possession and rigid localisation. To these pressures, the text responds by suggesting the language of fiction has the potential to criticise and counteract possession as a model for identity through the effort it imposes on the readers to simultaneously exert and limit their individual freedom.

“THEY ALL KNOW WHAT I AM”: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN AND ALCOHOL

Author(s): Wojciech Klepuszewski / Language(s): English Issue: XX/2018

Drink literature is something which has been drawing critical attention for a few decades. This is most transparent in the number of studies concerning various attempts to literarise alcohol, in whatever form or genre. What is immediately striking, though, is that most literary works fitting this thematic context are written by male writers, to mention Malcolm Lowry or Charles Jackson, and they usually feature male protagonists. Women seem to be inconspicuous here, both as authors and as literary characters, the latter usually limited to marginal figures who are victims of male drunkenness. This article targets the ‘neglected’ gender in the fictional representations of alcohol by briefly surveying the motif in the literature written on the British Isles and then focusing on two women writers, Jean Rhys and A.L. Kennedy.

“Things are changing under the skin of England” : Representation of immigrant encounters in Hanif Kureishi’s ‘Borderline’

Author(s): Yağmur Demir / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

This paper analyses Hanif Kureishi’s lesser known play Borderline (1981). In this work, written under the influence of 1980 Southall Riots, Kureishi addresses the problems of immigrants living in England and depicts how the idea of Englishness is challenged by the immigrants who are engaged in racist politics, suffer from identity crisis, and strive to gain a sense of belonging. Both first-generation and second-generation immigrants who are unable to feel the sense of belonging in the host land (England) are depicted as occupying in-between spaces. A portrait of an immigrant Pakistani family, each member of which goes through different stages of adjusting themselves to the society they have joined is presented along with other immigrant characters in the play. To fight with the injustice and racial abuse, a group of second-generation immigrants establish an organisation called Asian Youth Movement. Although it is implied that England and English people are not ready yet to embrace other cultures, immigrants, especially second-generation immigrants, endeavour to make England “habitable.” In the play, Pakistani immigrants are portrayed as subject to certain changes during the integration process, which in the long-term will have permanent effects on English national identity, culture and society. This paper aims to display how immigrants (despite being considered a threat) try to overcome the difficulties they face in the host land, and in the meantime inevitably make a change in the English culture.

“THIS IS NOT A NOVEL” BY JENNIFER JOHNSTON - DISSIMULATION OF THE CREATIVE ACT

Author(s): Dorina Loghin / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2005

Identifying herself as an Irish writer because her "preoccupations are [those] of an Irish person," six of Johnston's novels contain elements of the Big House, featuring aristocratic Anglo-Irish families in decline; all her novels feature Irish settings. However, Johnston is resistant to labels because "we are all diminished" by them ( Keynote Address, Culture 11), and she resists categorization as a Big House writer, a common critical response to her work, which she terms a "sort of backwater" ( Perrick, Interview 3). Johnston's novels generally feature characters from privileged backgrounds; in fact, Shadows on Our Skin ( 1977) is her only novel to date to feature a working-class protagonist. Johnston loads her prose with literary allusions: Irish, British, Russian, and German authors are included, and she quotes from nursery rhymes and popular songs. Johnston's novels are characteristically delivered from multiple points of view; usually the story is told in part by the protagonist in the first person, by an outsider to the character’s story, who watches the character’s progress in life detachedly, or by the author herself, with pretended-detachment, this time. Johnston's refusal to sentimentalize Ireland or the characters she creates forces her readers to deal with Ireland's complicated issues. Further, by creating female protagonists who themselves author texts, Johnston is revising a national literary tradition that has fictionalized women for political ends and has excluded women from active participation in public life, including literary work. She implicates the reader in the experiences she depicts through her stylistic and thematic choices: by disrupting conventional expectations brought by the reader to her texts, that reader is forced to reconsider his or her position--not only to the text but to the substance of the story as well. This is Not a Novel is one more example in this respect.

“This place is now your home” – A Comparative View on Partition Migrants in a New City. Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography and Inga Iwasiów’s Bambino

Author(s): Agnieszka Sadecka / Language(s): English Issue: 22/2014

The goal of the article is the comparison between the condition of Polish and Pakistani migrants, forcedly resettled on new territories in 1940s, depicted in fictional narratives of two women writers. Both Central Europe and the Indian Subcontinent witnessed violent conflicts leading to changes of borders and large-scale migrations. Following the ravages of the Second World War, in 1945 Poland lost a considerable part of its pre-war territory, and acquired the formerly German regions to its West, labelled by the communist authorities as the “Regained Lands”. Poles who lost their homes in the Eastern territories were allocated the former German houses in the West. Just two years later, in 1947, the former British India was divided into India and Pakistan, and religious tensions became even more acute. As a result, millions of people previously living intermixed would now be forced to migrate – Hindus to India, and Muslims to Pakistan. In order to illustrate the fate of individuals taking part in these historical transformations, the article discusses two narratives of displacement and forced settlement on a new territory. These two stories originate from Inga Iwasiów’s novel “Bambino”, and Kamila Shamsie’s novel “Kartography”. Both authors present their protagonists with exceptional empathy, whether they are young people rebuilding their lives in the postwar Szczecin, or teenage lovers from Karachi, dealing with their parents’ traumas and their own quest for identity. In both these contexts, the key question is how to reconstruct one’s own identity in a new place, with the burden of tragic experiences still fresh in one’s memory?

“Thou mightst have done this without thy beard and gown”: William Shakespeare and the Language of Disguise

Author(s): James Dale / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2016

William Shakespeare’s use of theatrical disguise can be assessed through the discourses his disguised characters employ, having signifi cant ramifi cations at a socio-political, linguistic and metatheatrical level. In illustrating this view, I will explore the role(s) of Edgar in King Lear, drawing on the views of Stephen Greenblatt, Mikhail Bahktin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. I will then examine my conclusions and align them to Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale and Feste in Twelfth Night, while determining whether any recurring socio-political, linguistic and metatheatrical patterns emerge. Finally, I will determine whether it is possible to formulate a strategy of a language of disguise as Shakespeare saw it.

“THROUGH THE HEART OF THE TOWN A DEADLY SEWER EBBED AND FLOWED”: THE IMAGERY OF THE RIVER THAMES IN GREAT EXPECTATIONS, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, LITTLE DORRIT AND HARD TIMES

Author(s): Alina Cojocaru / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

“Till This Moment I Never Knew Myself”: Adapting Pride and Prejudice

Author(s): Anđelka Raguž / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

Adaptations are always a matter of hard choices: the scriptwriter and the director have their interpretations of what an adaptation should be, very much like every reader has his/her own vision of the characters and the plot, and very rarely do the two visions coincide. This paper was inspired by the on-going debate amongst Jane Austen fans on Internet forums as to which adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is more faithful to the 1813 novel. The main two contenders appear to be the 1995 BBC mini-series starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and Joe Wright’s 2005 film with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen in the lead roles. This paper will attempt to identify the cardinal points of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to illustrate that both the 1995 and 2005 adaptations are faithful to the original. Furthermore, it shall look at the strengths and weaknesses of the mini-series and the feature film as genres, before analysing the respective strengths and weaknesses of the adaptations themselves. The paper will suggest that Wright’s film fully captures “the spirit” of Austen’s novel through its masterful use of point of view and symbolism in less than half the time the 1995 mini-series does.

“Tko je lud u ovoj državi?” Verbaliziranje emocija u političkom diskursu

Author(s): Nikolina Palašić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 09/2015

In the center of our interest is the use of emotion-marked linguistic resources in the public discourse, and more specifically in the Croatian political public sphere. As politics is traditionally considered a place from which emotions should be expelled and where rationality is that characteristic which comes first in state administration, the question is where do political statements draw their emotional value and what is its role, i.e. if it occurs by accident or it is based on the speaker’s intention. In this paper, we will try to answer those questions, taking into account previous reflections on emotions.

“To have fun and be challenged” - First Year Students’ English Learning Expectations

Author(s): Enikő Biró / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

In our modern world marketisation has become obvious in every field and language teaching is not an exception either. Therefore, studying students’ expectations regarding learning English is worth a try. Te paper presents a qualitative approach to language learners’ expectations while offering a link with the language learners’ beliefs and motivations as well. In second language learning process student expectations may be based on previous language learning experiences and future goals and needs. Expectations not met may affect student motivation, performance, and their language learning experience. Therefore, in order to meet the needs and parameters of second language learning, variables need to be included which may be instrumental in shaping expectations and a range of outcomes of disconfirmation. By analyzing the answers of the 64 participants 19 clearly defined, distinct expectations were differentiated. These expectations are based on formal learning behaviour, on interpretations of prior repetitive experiences, as well as on interactions and on emotional needs and individual differences.

“To read or not to read?” Some advice on how to teach reading with understanding

Author(s): Renata Jawniak / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2011

Reading with understanding is one of the most important communicative skillsa successful learner of a language needs to practise. Practising the skill of readingwith understanding is as important as mastering listening and speaking skills.However, teachers may fi nd the attempts to develop it diffi cult because studentsprefer to watch fi lms, listen to the radio and talk to native speakers rather thanread books and newspapers. It is easier and, without doubt, more interesting towatch a fi lm, listen to a radio programme or talk to somebody, all of which arefaster than reading a text.

“To Seize the Copyright in Myself.” Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel as an Exercise in Autopathography

Author(s): Robert Kusek / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2014

Though Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, two Man Booker Prize-winning historical novels by Hilary Mantel, ostensibly deal with the life of Thomas Cromwell, a chief minister to King Henry VIII, their major motif, I should argue, is that of disability, of illness, of bodily failure. As Mantel herself stated in an essay titled Royal Bodies, “historians are still trying to peer inside the Tudors, […] are they healthy, are they sick, can they breed?” She further added: “The story of Henry and his wives is peculiar to its time and place, but also timeless and universally understood; it is highly political and also highly personal. It is about body parts, about what slots in where, and when: are they body parts fit for purpose, or are they diseased?” (Mantel 2013). Bodily dysfunction appears to me to be one of primary thematic preoccupations of Mantel’s writing. Handicapped Muriel from Every Day is Mother’s Day, disfigured “Irish giant” O’Brien from The Giant, O’Brien, ailing Henry VIII from her Tudor triptych – these are just a few of a panoply of disabled/ill/afflicted characters that populate the pages of Mantel’s work. The aim of the present paper is to examine Mantel’s 2003 memoir entitled Giving Up the Ghost which tells the story of the writer’s struggle with endometriosis as well as doctors’ indifference and medical neglect. I will attempt to discuss Mantel’s autobiographical account not only as a narrative about the writer’s illness, but as a work which investigates interrelatedness of writing and suffering, and which tries to both make sense and take charge of one’s life story which has been otherwise claimed by the demands and limitations of an ailing body. In short, I wish to see Mantel’s memoir as an exercise in autopathography

“TREBESHINA & KADARE – FAKTI DHE FIKSIONI NË DAFINAT E THARA, KËNGA SHQIPTARE DHE DIMRI I VETMISË SË MADHE”

Author(s): Edmond Çali / Language(s): Albanian Issue: 36/2017

In this paper we observe the importance of the factual linkage and fiction in the structure of two works of K. Trebeshina, in the autobiographical novel Dafinat e thara, Romani i jetës sime (Tirana, 1988) and the novel in five volumes Kënga shqiptare (Tirana, 2001). We examine the subject by comparing the two works between them and the two works with the autobiographical records of K. Trebeshina. The novel of I. Kadare Dimri i vetmisë së madhe is examined by comparing it with the information of the archives that the author consulted during the process of writing and which was later published (Enver Hoxha, VEPRA 19, June 1960 - December 1960, Tirana, 1975). From the analysis of two works of Trebeshina, we find that creative repetition guarantees the presence of the connection history-literature. By comparing the historical material (facts) with the subject of the novel by I. Kadare we have another evidence that this work is a very important text of contemporary Albanian letters and a great historical novel.