"Ikaromenippos" – starożytny dialog o locie na Księżyc i do niebiańskiej siedziby bogów

Author(s): Dominika Budzanowska-Weglenda / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Dominika Budzanowska-Weglenda’s chapter proposes an analysis of the Ikaromenippos or Voyage in Space, which is one of dialogues of Lucian of Samosata and probably the first literary description of the human trip to the Moon. The main character takes on this journey because of his aversion to philosophy. Lucian’s Ikaromenippos is a fantastic dialogue: a philosopher, probably the cynic, and satirist Menippus of Gadara, flies here “through the stars”. He takes two wings of large birds: the wing of the vulture and the wing of the eagle, and performs an incredible feat, worthy of Icarus: he reaches the Moon (from where he looks at the people and their actions on Earth), and then flies to Heaven—to the gods, “in upper Zeus’ rooms”. The story of Menippus’journey is like a swift current of the river, full of jocular tone, with a fantastic plot. But it clearly carries a deeper message: it expresses criticism of human attitudes and actions (adulteries, murders, conspiracies, perjury, betrayals among the closest to ones, war, courtship, piracy), meanness, false and mercenary piety, especially when stigmatizing bad behavior of philosophers, without sparing the representatives of any philosophical school. According to Lucian’s narrative, philosophers are lazy, quarrelsome, bloated, angry, grotesque, tumultuous, surly, unworthy people. The author reinforces the accusations of philosophers with the deity’s words, as the goddess of the Moon, Selene, having been encountered by the traveler, complains about them as well. She believes that philosophers are impostors, leading a shameful nightlife behind the scenes: they commit adultery, steal, and commit any other evil deeds. Ikaromenippos belongs to Lucian’s satirical works featuring reflective comedy. Correspondingly, Lucian postulates the liberation from the practical cognitive pressure of the logical rules and from the philosophical logic of cognition of the universe.

"Koralina" Neila Gaimana w realizacjach teatru lalek w Polsce

Author(s): Maria Janus / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Maria Janus focuses on theatrical adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s "Coraline" in Polish puppet theatre. The analysed performances were directed by Włodzimierz Fełenczak in Teatr Miniatura in Gdańsk with a stage design by Mikołaj Malesza (opening 2009) and in the Białostocki Teatr Lalek with a stage design by Joanna Braun (opening 2011) and directed by Karolina Maciejaszek in Teatr Pinokio in Łódź with a stage design by Anna Chadaj (opening 2013). In addition, the Author discusses the performance of Rozalinda, written and directed by Krystyna Jakóbczyk in the Teatr Dzieci Zagłębia in Będzin (opening 2012), which was inspired by Gaiman’s novel. Janus presents this performance in the context of copyrights and difficulties of obtaining licenses for use of texts written by popular authors (especially from the Anglo-Saxon region). The author compares the adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s novel written by Fełenczak, Maciejaszek and the translation of the novel’s narration by Jakóbczyk (theatrical situations and visual narration vs. the narration performed live on-stage). Maria Janus also highlights theatrical references from the novel considering meta-theatrical elements that enhance the performance. Janus compares theatrical media used in performances from Gdańsk, Białystok and Łódź with special consideration to the stage design and puppetry techniques. In the second part, the author focuses on the popularity of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline among theatrical directors despite little interest in horror fiction. Puppet theatres in Poland do not produce performances based on modern epic literature, especially those nbased on fantasy. Classical fairy-tales and modern dramaturgy containing fairy-tale motives are still more popular. Furthermore, Janus reflects on the possibility of a change of the herein discussed situation. She further refers to the arguments of Bruno Bettelheim, Stanisław Grzelecki and Katarzyna Slany considering young spectator benefits from the contact with theatrical representation of youth horror literature.

(BE)SMISAO VREMENA U ODABRANIM DJELIMA WILLIAMA FAULKNERA I MEŠE SELIMOVIĆA

Author(s): Selma Raljevic / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 2/2014

The purpose of this paper is to compare the modern concept of time by “placing” William Faulkner’s (1897-1962) novels: The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Go Down, Moses (1942), and Meša Selimović’s (1910-1982) prose works: Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt, 1966), The Fortress (Tvrđava, 1970), The Island (Ostrvo, 1974) and Memories (Sjećanja, 1976). The aim of this paper is to compare the perception of time in the selected prose of these two writers within the context of the sum of combined intelligences. The topic will be explored by applying the thoughts of Einstein, Nietzsche, Bergson, Eliade, Freud and Jung. In their modern literary works, both Faulkner and Selimović transpose time into space, and time/space becomes a major player in their works. Accordingly, special attention will be given to the perception and (non)sense of time and space in their modern prose.

(Не)могућности књижевности и културе у доба кризе

Author(s): Sladana Rakic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 48/2012

(РА)СТВАРАЊЕ PERSONAE DRAMATIS У МАГБЕТУ ЕЖЕНА ЈОНЕСКА

Author(s): Katarina Z. Milic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 57/2015

Dans ce travail nous offrons les résultats de l’analyse des concepts dramatiques contemporains par rapport au théâtre dit traditionnel, et nous prêtons attention surtout au statut du personnage dramatique, vu que celui-ci est l’un des éléments inévitables dans la structure dramatique. Notre but est de présenter des tendences singulières du théâtre de l’absurde (le degré zéro du théâtre), et plus particulièrement la création des personnages dramatiques en tant que des figures disséminatives, mais aussi d’indiquer leur rôle dans le théâtre contemporain et leur rapport avec les contraintes structurales de celui-ci.

`СМИСАО ЗА ИСТОРИЈУ` И `ЖИВА ТРАДИЦИЈА` У ЕЛИОТОВОЈ ПУСТОЈ ЗЕМЉИ И ПОЕЗИЈИ ШЕЈМУСА ХИНИЈА

Author(s): Ana S. Živkovic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 54/2014

Comparing the poem Wasteland by Thomas Eliot to the Irish Nobel-prize winner Saemus Heaney’s collection of poetry Bogland, the paper underscores the similarities and differences aiming to prove that almost identical “sense of history’ is present in the poetry of both poets. Eliot views the “sense of history’ as the ability to recognize the same situations and patterns not only in the past, but in the present and future, bringing time into a whole, not chronological, but cyclic. “Living tradition’ is the tradition of stopping and continuing, basing the existence in the past and surviving in the present. The research includes the incongruities of Eliot’s theoretical considerations about tradition and practical realizations of those ideas in poetry, and we conclude that, according to the poet, tradition is not everything written since Homer until today, but only those works that possess the “sense of history’. The important myths (mermaid myth, Holy Grail myth, Narcissus myth) remind us that the 20th century man is not free from the primeval striving towards the spiritual and physical healing, as well as the eternal craving to divulge one’s own being completely. Civilization and capitalist tradition have distanced contemporary man from nature and sexual emotion, and directed him towards profit and material production. Despite Eliot’s declaring as a royalist and follower of catholic tradition, his poetry as well as Heaney’s is predominated by the influence of humanistic tradition based on the conflict of different cultural concepts, on the archetypes of light and darkness, heavens and the underworld.

„Blaski Miltonowskiego utraconego raju”. Obraz przeszłości w pisarstwie Henryka Sienkiewicza

Author(s): Adrianna Adamek-Swiechowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 50/2016

The article deals with the analysis of the artistic and the ideological assumptions of the constructing the literary image of the past in point of view of Henryk Sienkiewicz in connection with his polemic against Włodzimierz Spasowicz in the context of the discussion of the 19th-century about the values of historical novel. In the theoretical declarations the author pays major attention to the hypnotic charm of the past which he named „the brilliane of Milton’s paradise lost” and references to the great poetry of romanticism. In the writer;s programme intentions the literary works should presented the ideological versions of the myth of the Polish past during the period of national slavery. Sienkiewicz focuses on subjective experiences of his fictional heroes, connects existential and historical dimensions of human life, looking for semantic mechanisms of history. The analysis of the writer’s outlook on life concentrating on the universal questions like the sense of life, the essence of world, the human’s nature and the hierarchy of values. The article attempts to show that the absolute values existence depends on the memory of the past.

A clean, well-lighted writing

Author(s): Irina Simanschi / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2017

Interpreting Hemingway’s works is mostly focused on the intermingling of the recurring themes, on the (in)explicable achievements of the troubled (fe)male characters, and yet it is the shaping of the discourse which stands for Hemingway’s hallmark. Reverting to the carefully planned withdrawal of strategic elements of the writing contributes to the complexity of the text, which to a great extent depends on the reader so as to be given hermeneutical value. The display of the clear language is nothing but a straightforward wrapping of internal progressive actions beneath the text, which both vertically and horizontally challenges the reader and the entire narrative act.

A Network of Themes: A Qualitative Approach to Gerhard Richter's TEXT

Author(s): Narvika Bovcon,Aleš Vaupotic / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

Gerhard Richter's books Text – a collection of painter's verbal statements about his artistic method – and Atlas – 783 sheets with images, mainly photographs and visual notations – are two archives that complement the understanding of his diverse artistic practice. The paper presents a textual model that experimentally simulates a possible ordering principle for archives. Richter's statements in the book Text are cut up and used as short quotations. Those that relate to multiple aspects of the painter's oeuvre are identified as hubs in the semantic network. The hubs are organized paratactically, as an array of different themes. The paper presents a methodological hypothesis and an experimental model that aim to connect the research of real networks with the paradigms of humanistic interpretation. We have to bear in mind that the network is a result of the researcher's interpretative approach, which is added to the initial archive included in the book Text. The breaking up of Richter's poetics into atoms of quotations is an experimental proposal of a new textuality in art history and humanities, which has its own history. In comparison to digital archives with complex interfaces that often tend to obscure the content, the elements in our experiment appear as specific configurations of the semantic network and are presented in a limited number of linear texts. The method of listing of quotations gathers the fragments into a potential “whole”, i.e. a narrativized gateway to an archive according to the researcher's interpretation.

A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma: Deception, Truth and Modernism

Author(s): Roland Boer / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

This article deals with the widespread assumption that a significant collection of texts known as the Bible is inherently ‘deceptive’. That is, the Bible does not – it is assumed – say what was ‘really’ going on in the ancient world. The truth, therefore, must be found by going behind or beneath the text (the spatial metaphors should be noted). Here the real story may found, through archaeology or reading the text against itself. This approach may be described as a modernist ‘depth model’, in which the surface attempts to conceal the truth, while the truth itself must be found by going around the surface text. This remains a dominant approach in biblical criticism. However, it cannot be understood without earlier and indeed, in some quarters, current assumptions concerning the realist nature of the text. In this case, the text reflects in a reasonably trustworthy fashion the context of the text, if not the ideological assumptions and positions of the putative authors. Modernist ‘depth models’ may then be seen as attempts to respond to realist assumptions. A third moment is what could be called postmodern: in this case, the distance between surface and depth is challenged, so that the various possibilities become equal contestants for the dominant position. This entails a shift away from the assumption of a singular truth of the text, characteristic of both realist and modernist assumptions, to the understanding of multiple truth claims – not as relative but as absolutes that permit other absolutes. The argument emphasises that these approaches should be seen as dialectically related to one another, rather that mutually exclusive approaches.

A Tale within a Tale: Mise en Abyme Adaptations of the Twenty-first Century

Author(s): Željka Flegar / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

In accord with the promise made by Henry Jenkins that “old and new media will interact in ever more complex ways” (Convergence Culture 6), this research observes metamodern fairy tale adaptations of the twenty-first century in light of Christina Bacchilega’s construct of the fairy-tale web and Henry Jenkins’ theory of convergence culture and transmedia storytelling. The research will address the growing trend of embedding “wonder tale” collections within the context of a larger narrative as an artefact of significance, power, and material value. Although original tales with known authorship, these fairy tale adaptations are appended to the mythology and culture of the fantastic secondary worlds. Such texts tend to be parodic, subversive, and even carnivalesque (Bakhtin; Stephens), providing a commentary on the culture of their origin, as well as our own. By blending cultures, styles, and formats, mise en abyme wonder tales also result in the empowerment of specifically marginalised groups. Generally defined as spin-offs that are otherwise a part of a complex inter- and hypertextual web, these fairy tale collections constitute a metafictional body of knowledge and wisdom. In the digital era much focus is placed on multimodal, hypertextual, and transmedia narratives with a significant influence of fandom on the production of such literary works. The study will focus on the popular examples of such practice, J.K. Rowling’s Tales of Beedle the Bard (2007/2008) and Ransom Riggs’ Tales of the Peculiar (2016), in order to define mise en abyme fairy tale adaptations, as well as to discuss their cultural significance and function.

A Trans(l)atlantic Transfer of Cultural Values: Constructing a Canada-Related Cultural Reader Series for the Secondary English Classroom in Central Europe

Author(s): Mátyás Bánhegyi,Judit Nagy / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2014

The ‘Canada in the English Classroom’ joint research team of the University of Colongne and Károli Gáspár University of the Hungarian Reformed Church has been producing a cultural reader series to enhance the dissemination of up-to-date and engaging cultural information on Canada through general English language classes for the secondary school age group in Central Europe. The cultural reader series is seen as a means of facilitating cultural discourse and cross-cultural learning, also advocated in Canadian contexts by Berrell and Gloet (1999). Using Kramsch’s (1991) and Damen’s (2003) theories, the readers have been devised so that more abstract and/or lesser-known Canadian cultural aspects can be brought closer to the target group through English as a foreign language. To realize this objective in an effective way in the English classroom, Gochenour and Janeway’s (1993) model of culture learning has been observed, which advocates the gradual involvement of students in culture-related issues: starting from observation of culture moving towards genuine communication about culture. After introducing the cultural reader series project briefly, the paper will discuss the theoretical background behind the series and the project activities leading up to the preparation and compilation of its completed volumes. As a next step, an overview of the content of these volumes and the accompanying teacher’s notes will be presented. This will be followed by a sample unit demonstration of how the series achieves the goals that research has targeted.

Abode of the soul of humans, animals and objects in Mongolian folk belief

Author(s): Alice Sárközi / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2008

The soul of man resides in different parts of the body on each day of the month. The concerned body part should be handled with care, as if it is hurt, it causes extreme harm. The yurt, just like animals, also has a soul. The paper presents five small hand-books — from the collection of the Oriental Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, from the St. Petersburg Oriental Collection of the Russian Academy and from private possession — indicating the abode of the soul in humans, the yurt and animals.

Adapting the Adapted: The Black Rapist Myth in E.R. Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes and Its Film Adaptations

Author(s): Biljana Oklopcic / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

Whether in art or science, adaptation does not refer to something original but to a mutated and permutated version of a pre-existing original. In literature, adaptation occurs first when real-life stories are adapted into fiction; these fictions then often undergo a second technological adaptation as literary works are adapted into theatrical productions for stage or film. This paper explores one such doubled adaptation; it examines how the black rapist myth, which grew out of the social and cultural realities of the Jim Crow South, was transformed in E.R. Burroughs’ portrayal of Terkoz in the popular adventure novel, Tarzan of the Apes (1914), and then how this fiction was adapted into multiple and varied films between 1918 and 2016.

Aesop for Schoolchildren (1804)

Author(s): Matija Antun Relkovic / Language(s): English,Croatian / Issue: 1/2017

Matija Antun Relković (1732–1798) was a Croatian writer in the period of Enlightenment. This issue of Dusty Covers presents all the woodcuts and vignettes from Relković’s book which are reprinted in their respective textual contexts. The book Esopove fabule za slavonsku u skullu hodechju dicu sastavljene [Aesop’s Fables, Composed for Slavonic School-going Children] was published in Osijek, six years after Relković’s death. It covers 144 octavo pages which contain one hundred fables, the cover illustration, 22 woodcuts, and ten vignettes.

African Woman Rises from the Ashes: Alice Walker’s Mimicry of Classic Ethnography in Possessing the Secret of Joy

Author(s): Zohreh Ramin,Farshid Nowrouzi Roshnavand / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

Before the advent of deconstructive schools of thought in the second half of the twentieth century, anthropology and ethnography were hailed as scientific disciplines whose major consideration was to provide an objective analysis of other cultures. However, the launch of such critical approaches as postcolonialism, feminism, and postmodernism has nullified the two disciplines’ claim to scientificity and objectivity by laying bare their sexist, racist backdrop. In the postist zeitgeist, new ethnographies have been promoted in an attempt to disrupt the hierarchical relationship between the researcher and the studied subject of classic ethnography through including first-hand marginalized voices. Moreover, they blur the long-held generic boundaries between science and fiction via establishing the “ethnographic novel” as a medium that committedly voices the subalterns. Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) is one of these new ethnographic novels which has as its protagonist an oppressed African woman. What makes Walker’s work distinct and notable is that the feminist writer subversively employs the conventional mode of ethnographic writing to stand up to African patriarchy and its horrific ritual of female circumcision.

Alageyik Efsanesi ile Kocacaş Destanında Ortak Unsurlar

Author(s): Sule Gezer / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 89/2017

Literature from the past up to the present day from the value judgments of the society, the perception of life and their beliefs in their world hosts the content. In this regard, literature is a tool that enables the transfer of Culture. That belong to the past period, a belief, a way of life, sometimes when it is transferred to the current social environment is repeated. In this case, literary narratives, as a literary production have been associated with the old content, and carry traces of them. These texts provides the transition between the collective consciousness of a nation that is under the transfer of intellectual values caused by an organic bond. This bond that exists in modern culture as renewed in the past through a narrative similar occurs again. In addition, has a common background and the same culture at different times in different regions from each other, brothers who are members of communities of faith bearing the same motifs and similar elements of narratives can reveal. In this study, a common history and culture, Turkish culture, with the two brothers belonging to the community two of the common motif of narrative texts. will be evaluated in terms of. One dimension of this narrative that carries the legend of a folk literary narrative of Yaşar Kemal entitled The fallow deer, and the other that belongs to the Kyrgyz Turks and Kococas that are present in the oral environment is epic. Beliefs that the Turks belong to the period of hunting and gathering, which is located in the center of this narrative, this period featured in the deer/is centered around the cult of the loser. In this context, narratives and motifs that are common to both episodes have been identified. This partnership in which both of Turkish tribes in the cultural sense, born from the same source, the same culture in different geographies of the phenomena that they are.

All Eyes in Swinging London: Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” and the Maze of Violence

Author(s): Slawomir Maslon / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Antonioni’s “Blow-Up”, released in late 1966, is usually taken, on the one hand, to represent (celebratingly and scandalously) the youth culture of Swinging London and, on the other, the problems of (tenuous) relation between reality and its representation (the main protagonist thinks he discovers a murder by analysing photographs he has taken). Although most critics have attempted to link these two levels by means of some existential metaphor (most often: the main protagonist who represents the image-crazed youth of Swinging London encounters its biggest taboo, death, which is unrepresentable to boot), the paper proposes a more literal and political interpretation arguing that the abstraction of blurry grain of silver halide into which the image of the corpse finally dissolves in a series of photographic blow-ups is a way of representing something which also cannot have a proper image: the all-pervasive but no longer perceptible lowkey everyday violence which constitutes the propelling force of the supposedly emancipated “swinging” lifestyle.

ALTERITY IN HOMER: A RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF FEMALE MARGINALIZATION

Author(s): Bárbara Álvarez Rodríguez / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

This article explores female alterity in the Iliad and the Odyssey in an attempt to show how women’s marginalization is already present in these early works, which have had such a lasting influence on Western literature and thought. First, I analyze how men treat aristocratic women, who are systematically excluded from war and speech despite their idealization as heroines. Then, I focus on women who fall into the category of slaves or concubines to illustrate women’s absolute objectification and to demonstrate how the violence of this exclusion structures women’s experiences. Through an interdisciplinary framework, I study Greek antiquity through combining contemporary alterity studies with literary analysis. I argue that Western society has been structured in a patriarchal and androcentric way since its beginning. Thus, my objective is to suggest, through the lens of the philosophy of alterity, how we might reach a more ethical consideration of the Other in the study of classic literature.

Amidst the Wonders of the City: Countenances of Moscow in Barbara Włodarczyk’s “Wide Tracks”

Author(s): Monika Kowalczyk-Piaseczna / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

The article analyses the various countenances of Moscow which have been presented by Barbara Włodarczyk in the cycle of television reportages “Wide Tracks”. The text focuses on illustrating the specific features of a film report that allow its author to present the wondrous picture of the Russian capital emerging from the particular fragments of the discussed reportages. Moreover, as a result of juxtaposition of the reports from that part of the city, which overwhelms one with its richness and splendour, with the accounts from these corners of Moscow in which the continuous struggle for survival takes place, the article examines the internal contradictions which may be observed within the depicted urban space. The analysed cycle also exposes the series of political conflicts which undermine the immaculate image of Moscow as a wondrous city, presented by some of the characters of the discussed film pictures, and simultaneously, it allows one to discover some new, less known countenances of the metropolis.