Literatura non-fiction w Litwie w ostatnich dziesięcioleciach

Author(s): Teresa Dalecka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2024

The main aim of the article is to briefly describe non-fiction literature in Lithuania which is heterogeneous. Popular reading titles are dominated by translations, including a few from Polish. In addition, non-fiction books by Lithuanian authors are published, as well as a small number of works by authors writing in Polish. Each of these phenomena was presented using a descriptive method, with greater attention paid to texts written in Polish. Each of these phenomena was presented using a descriptive method, with greater attention paid to texts written in Polish. Lithuanian non-fiction prose, created in both Lithuanian and Polish, revolves primarily around the theme of loss and transience. It is the result of the authors’ need to preserve on the pages of books the memories of a homeland in danger or lost, family, identity and language. In Polish non-fiction literature, represented mainly by Ryszard Kapuściński, Lithuanian readers are interested in the complex phenomenon of the 20th century – the mechanism of the existence and collapse of totalitarian systems, as well as the related psychological consequences suffered by the collective and individual people, and their transformation in a specific historical social space. Kapuściński’s observations on how history’s cataclysms change the lives of ordinary people and how the boundaries between attackers and victims blur. The small number of non-fiction prose items allows us to conclude that this literary genre is just making its way in Lithuania. However, its popularity among readers gives it a chance for rapid development in the near future.

„Żeby umarło przede mną. Opowieści matek niepełnosprawnych dzieci” w społecznym reportażu Jacka Hołuba

Author(s): Grażyna Maroszczuk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2024

The article is an attempt to answer the question of how contemporary reportage participates in the recent re-evaluation of the perception of disability in the context of Polish social reality. The fragments of autobiographical stories of mothers of children with disabilities collected in Jacek Holub’s book are a starting point for considerations on the challenges of reportage as an “indicative genre” and “confusing”, which becomes an indicator of changes taking place in social awareness, assuming 1) broad, also in terms of emotions, understanding of social facts, 2) treating literariness as a necessary medium for presenting reality, apart from documentarian. The text is an attempt to look at the problems of care for people with profound disabilities indicated in Holub’s reportage from the perspective of culturally critical disability studies, where disability is understood as a “form of difference” that obliges society to introduce appropriate adaptations and pathographies in the recently intensified social reflection on health and disease. Holub’s reportage, against the background of the public debate on disability takes on a deeper meaning – not only does it deal with mothers of “disabled children”, influencing the collective awareness related to the perception of their rights and role, but also it is itself a voice of activist involvement.

Prawda obrazu czy obraz prawdy? Wizualne komponenty polskiej literatury reportażowej w dobie płynnego faktografizmu

Author(s): Katarzyna Frukacz-Lewandowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2024

The aim of this article is to characterise the visual turn visible in recent years in Polish reportage literature. The reflection on the problem in question is profiled by two theses. Firstly, there is a growing importance of graphic components which adjoin the documentary text or co-create the material space of books classified as reportage. Secondly, the visual aspects of publications from this genre are increasingly exceeding the narrowly conceived documentarism as a result of the rejection of the rule of semantic transparency. The analysis driven by the distinguished theses and supported by references to the semiotics of the image covers two groups of issues. The first group consists of visual effects resulting from specific editorial procedures, including those resulting from the typographic layout of the text. The second is made up of photographs used in non-fiction books as a sense-making tool. As an exemplification of the processes studied, the author refers to selected publications by Mariusz Szczygieł, Filip Springer, Wojciech Tochman, Jarosław Mikołajewski, and Marcin Kołodziejczyk. The context for the considerations is the crisis of orthodox factography noticeable in the post-modern era, resulting in the liquidation of the notion of fact and the popularisation of quasi-non-fictional forms alternative to reportage.

Islandia z perspektywy narracji migracyjnej Mirosława Gabrysia

Author(s): Dariusz Rott / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2024

The paper presents the book by Mirosław Gabryś (born 1973), titled Islandzkie zabawki. Zapiski z wyspy wulkanów [Icelandic toys. Notes from the volcano island] in which the author describes his 5-year-long stay on the island (2005–2010). His report is the first original attempt in the Polish literature to show the strategy of a Polish migrant – a representative of the largest and youngest national minority in Iceland – to adapt to the new social and natural environment. It is a subjective, multi-layered and hybrid narrative. For its author, emigration is an adventure, an important adaptive strategy, especially in the light of an economic crisis of the host country – Iceland, despite the fact that he has never felt at home here and has not stayed for longer. Event though he relatively rarely moves beyond an obvious paradigm of dualistic thinking: an immigrant – a citizen, we – others, connection to the place – non-placement, in the perspective of experiences, individual feelings and meanings he assigns to them, the author of the book is an example of a temporary emigrant who does not always fit the stereotype of a Pole in Iceland and even criticizes his compatriots.

Czytanie realfantastyki. Najnowsza polska proza na zajęciach dla cudzoziemców

Author(s): Monika Válková Maciejewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2024

This article focuses on the latest Polish prose and discusses the question of whether references in literary texts to Polish realities (references in fiction to people from the world of politics, religion, culture; to spatial or urban concretisations) in the field of widely understood fantasy can be grasped by foreign readers. The author argues that decoding meanings is not only inspiring and linguistically interesting (vocabulary-wise, in developing the competence to create texts-descriptions), but also becomes a contribution to mediation and openness to different forms of delivery and the Other. The study cites excerpts from the works of Ignacy Karpowicz (Niehalo), Marcin Kołodziejczyk (Prymityw) and Zygmunt Miłoszewski (Jak zawsze).

Экзистенция и научно-технический разум в литературно-философском континууме ХХ века

Author(s): Inna Titarenko-Kachura / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2024

The article is devoted to the consideration of one of the central philosophical problems of our time: questions of the genesis of technology, its essence in the modern world, prospects for future development, etc. They are resolved in the texts of twentieth-century writers in the spirit of ontological searches by M. Heidegger, whose philosophical system is characterized by criticism of technological progress and longing for nature alienated from man. Existential factors that perform a structure-creative function are an important substantive principle of literary texts and are considered as one of the productive forms of rethinking classical material by modern world culture.

Явлението „псевдонимност“ в българската литература за деца

Author(s): Tanya Kazandzhieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2024

The subject of pseudonyms is a special phenomenon, which unfortunately remains to this day aside from research interests, especially in Bulgarian literature for children and adolescents. The article briefly examines the appearance of this phenomenon in literature in general, indicates the reasons for choosing a pseudonym, as well as the types of pseudonyms chosen by not only Bulgarian but also foreign artists.

Obličje i naličje esejističkog diskursa Jasmine Musabegović

Author(s): Ena Begović-Sokolija / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 25/2024

The paper analyses the essayistic discourse of Jasmina Musabegović with a focus on her second and last book of such procédé, Naličje historije (The Reverse Side of History) (1999), without neglecting her early essayistic work compiled in her first book of essays, The Secret and the Meaning of a Literary Work (1977). Since the literary criticism and essayistic work of this author, on the one hand, and her literary and artistic work, on the other, are closely related and interwoven with seemingly contradictory but identical ideologemes, for a more complete insight, her micro-essays that make up fabric of her novels are occasionally taken into consideration in the analysis. The conclusion reached shows that the author’s later literary critique essays, i.e. those that the author wrote during and after the recent war, where the intimate intertwines with the universal and meets a multitude of opposing pairs as well as occasional paroxysms conditioned by a change in life experience, represent a specific, fluid essayistic discourse that can be characterized by the newly coined phrase “women’s essay”.

Skraćenice u SMS porukama na bosanskom jeziku

Author(s): Halid Bulić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 25/2024

The paper presents the abbreviations used in SMS messages in the Bosnian language. Abbreviations recorded in the analyzed corpus are diverse in origin, shortening mechanisms, and morphological and syntactic features. Recognized abbreviations are first classified according to the type of shortened units – into abbreviations formed from words (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numbers, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, particles) and abbreviations formed from groups of words, sentences, or utterances. Within the classes defined in that way, abbreviations are divided about the mechanism of shortening and described. Abbreviations in SMS messages are in some cases formed by the norms of the standard language but usually deviate from the standard forms. The same words and constructions can be abbreviated in several different ways, and abbreviations most often vary in terms of the use of upper and lower case letters as well as the writing or omission of a period at the end. Abbreviations are most often created by final elision, i.e. by omitting the end of the word and reducing the word to the beginning. They are also created by reducing the word to the first letter and some other meaningful letters inside the word or at the end of the word. In the corpus, not a single word of the Bosnian language was found in which numbers and letters are used as logograms or are incorporated into larger expressions that are read as rebuses. A particularly interesting phenomenon in shortening is the unmotivated multiplication of graphemes at the end of some abbreviations. A significant number of abbreviations created by dropping vowels and some consonants or reducing them to only some consonants are confirmed in the corpus.

Womanhood and Democratic Household in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

Author(s): Nataša V. Ninčetović / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2024

This paper deals with the issues of womanhood and democratic household in Little Women, a novel by Louisa May Alcott. The theoretical framework for the research is Barbara Welter’s classic essay on the concept of “true” womanhood in Victorian America. By analyzing the four cardinal traits of proper womanhood as reflected in the novel, the conclusion emerges that Meg, Beth, Jo, and Amy’s growing into womanhood simultaneously confirms the limitation of women’s potential in Victorian America and testifies to the struggle for actualization. The development of the four girls is under the indisputable influence of both the gender discourses that prevail in society and the progressive views of their mother. However, since each girl interprets these visions differently and adapts them to their various personalities, their paths to womanhood are unique. Finally, the paper aims to demonstrate that the March sisters attempt to strike a balance between actualization and adaption to the needs of the family, two equally important, but opposing aspirations. In conclusion, the actualization of the March girls, initially jeopardized by the limitations of patriarchal culture, is further complicated by their desire to remain true to their family’s (mother’s) teaching, which is especially emphasized during Amy and Jo’s attempts to realize their artistic ambitions.

Reshaping Mystical Geometry of ”Vision and Prayer” by Dylan Thomas as Its Possible Re-Interpretation

Author(s): Srebrenka Mačković / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2024

Although Dylan Thomas and his poem ”Vision and Prayer” (1944) are usually not attributed to a specific kind of visual/concrete or ”shaped poetry,” his highly enigmatic and daring poetical articulation displays some interesting typographical features that can qualify him to be included in the label. It is a unique experiment of a kind mainly because of its two distinct geometric shapes, i.e. diamond and hourglass, within the two equal Parts, with six stanzas in each one of them. These shapes create a kind of “mystical geometry,” since they differ both in their pictorial presentation and the content matter. The paper tried to follow various attempts in English literature that might have served as a source of inspiration for Thomas in the works of George Herbert, Sir Thomas Browne, and W.B. Yeats. It also presents previous critical interpretations that revolved mainly around the themes of birth, death, and re-birth Resurrection of Jesus Christ, since religious imagery and poetic language seem to invite such an approach (Tindall, Burdette, Kidder, Bauer). However, a combination of Derridean deconstruction/restructuring and computer-assisted pictorial manipulation of the text produced yet an interesting experiment in analysis, having brought together all the stanzas into a ‘grand diamond’ shape. The newly reshaped version of the ‘poem’ opened up possibilities for interpretation while pointing out the central geometric shapes that emerged in the process.

Literary Geography and the Native American Urban Imaginary in Tommy Orange's There There

Author(s): Adisa Ahmetspahić / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2024

Ever since Tommy Orange’s novel There There was published in 2018, Native American urban experience has been pointed out as the novel’s crux. The characters in the novel are Native American but most of them feel estranged from the community since they do not live on reservations, whereby the general implication is that reservations have become ossified as identity markers for many Native Americans. This paper aims to analyze how the novel’s characters use urban areas to create spaces of belonging, thus debunking the myth of the “reservation Indian”. Aided by Edward Soja’s theories on Thirdspace and Robert Tally’s theory of topophrenia, the paper discusses regional powwows, non-profit organizations, American Indian cultural centers, and digital storytelling/narrativization as specific examples of the subject’s awareness of space, their engagement and inscription into space through the practices mentioned above.

Ewelina Szendzielorz: Twórczość mszalna Moritza Brosiga (1815–1887), Wydawnictwo SINDRUK-DIMK, Opole 2023, 498 s., ISBN 978-83-967882-7-6.

Author(s): Piotr Wiśniewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 63/2024

Jolanta M. Marszalska, Waldemar Graczyk, The Lost Collection of Incunabula of the Seminary Library in Plock, Biblioteka Narodowa, Warszawa 2023, ISBN 978-83-8259-508-6

Author(s): Czesław Grajewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 63/2024

(Kako) nadživjeti nacionalizme

Author(s): Muhidin Džanko / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 25/2024

Review of: Senadin Musabegović, Odsutno tijelo moći, Buybook, Sarajevo - Zagreb, 2023

Etnokulturni stereotipi: od narcizma malih razlika do potresa u jezičkom centru

Author(s): Azra Hodžić-Čavkić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 25/2024

Review of: Amela Šehović (ur.), Etnokulturni stereotipi u slavenskim, germanskim, romanskim i orijentalnim jezicima: sličnosti i razlike u percepciji Drugoga, Slavistički komitet, Sarajevo, 2023

The marriage of modes: Singable opera translation

Author(s): Karen Wilson-deRoze / Language(s): English Issue: 15/2024

Despite the increase in scholarly articles and publications that focus on singable translations of vocal music texts, few tackle the relationships and interplay between the two main semiotic systems of words and music, nor how they may or may not be preserved in translation. The translator’s understanding of how meaning arises across semiotic resources, especially between music and words, is equally as important a criterion for decision making when translating a vocal music text as sense, naturalness, singability, rhythm and rhyme and deserves as much attention as any staging demands or the diverse requirements of cultural transfer. By means of demonstration, using examples from a translation of Mozart’s “Le nozze di Figaro” by Jeremy Sams, this study explores an approach to singable opera translation that focuses on the stylistic decisions of the composer when marrying verbal and non-verbal semiotic modes and how the translator preserves or alters their relationship, which in turn may affect their interpretation, especially by singers.

Translating the songs of the “Sirens” in James Joyce’s Ulysses

Author(s): Arianna Autieri,Lauri A. Niskanen / Language(s): English Issue: 15/2024

Song lyrics function in James Joyce’s “Ulysses” like any other literary and cultural allusion. However, in the musical episode of “Ulysses”, “Sirens”, lyrics may function as music as well. In the episode, where songs are performed by characters and, de facto, by the narrative itself, musical allusions are evoked in the readers’ mind, enriching their experience of the episode. The following question may arise then: how can the Sirens’ songs be translated for a target reader who is not familiar with the music or words of the songs mentioned? Addressing foundational word and music studies research and recent research on the translation of musical texts, this article investigates how lyrics alluded to in “Sirens” perform a musical role in the episode. Through the study of the Italian and Finnish (re)translations of the episode, it examines the creative options for translators of song lyrics in musico-literary texts.

Between translation and semiotics and into artistic transduction [Gorlée, Dinda L. (2023). From mimetic translation to artistic transduction: A semiotic perspective on Virginia Woolf, Hector Berlioz, and Bertolt Brecht. London/ New York: Anthem Press

Author(s): Anna Rędzioch-Korkuz / Language(s): English Issue: 15/2024

Comedy as journalism in Zimbabwe

Author(s): Blessing Makwambeni,Trust Matsilele / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2024

Post-2000, Zimbabwe has witnessed a gradual shrinking of communicative space. In its efforts to control the narrative about the causes of the country’s multi-dimensional crisis, the ruling ZANU-PF government has used a gamut of legal and extra-judicial strategies to stifle press and other related freedoms. In this highly restrictive context, comedy has emerged as a viable source of information about events unfolding in the country as well as an alternative public sphere where counter-hegemonic discourses are ventilated by citizens who were previously excluded from the mainstream public sphere. Building on Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) studies on art and music as variants of journalism, our paper argues that comedy should be viewed as a variant of journalism in post-2000 Zimbabwe. We employ the normative roles of journalism, and Nancy Fraser’s (1990) concept of the alternative public sphere as our framework for examining how comedy, and more specifically Comic Pastor’s Monthly Comic Awards, has filled the void created by mainstream journalism by performing the journalistic function of communicating salient issues during the protracted Zimbabwean crisis. Our findings converge with, and broaden, Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) thesis that alternative sources of expression such as comedy should be viewed as journalism in crisis contexts. These findings also reinforce the need to expand traditional conceptions of journalism that narrowly limit the practice to traditional mass media.