Écornage – processus de domestication et violence symbolique

Author(s): Florent Kohler / Language(s): French Issue: 32/2023

Many forms of violence are inflicted to animals in the farm industry. However, there is another kind of violence, which has a symbolic dimension: it is meant to remind farm as well as circus animals that they are such. This violence has been studied in another coercive system: slavery. We will invoke that system to assume that the domestication process is individually reiterated generation after generation.

Interroger l’anthropocentrisme des termes équestres

Author(s): Hélène Roche / Language(s): French Issue: 32/2023

Anthropomorphism is a trap of interpretation of which we are nowadays well aware when we talk about animals. Anthropocentrism is more recent and less identified. We discuss here a few terms used in the field of horsemanship or hippology to highlight the implicit meanings they convey and how they always place us advantageously in relation to horses. Beyond semantics, the change of a word could sometimes have consequences in our ways of treating animals.

Des « zones de promesse » entre des baleines et des humains

Author(s): Fabienne Delfour / Language(s): French Issue: 32/2023

Strangely, humpback whales’ songs seem familiar to us. These voices from the abyss rise like an omen, a hope, but leave us in a cognitive aporia. By summoning philosophers of nature, anthropologists, sociologists and constructivist ethologists, we renew the interpretation of encounters between two musicians and humpback whales, by insisting on the role of emotions, these ways of being in the world, shared by humans and animals.

Glaner l’oubli (Pas d’oubli, 6)

Author(s): Jean Gabriel Cosculluela / Language(s): French Issue: 32/2023

Too often we forget. Oblivion does not really disappear. It seems to us that there are lacks, voids, that there is nothing or nothing at all. This is not the case. Oblivion is above all a voluntary simplicity: not to forget, and probably to dwell in oblivion. To glean as much as possible is “a few little things” would say Roger Laporte.

Z Anną Bernhardt, Prezesem Stowarzyszenia Instytutu Literackiego „Kultura”, rozmawia Alicja Jagielska-Burduk

Author(s): Alicja Jagielska-Burduk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2024

Interview with Anna Bernhardt, by Alicja Jagielska-Burduk.

Wątek główny, równoległy czy epizodyczny? Storyline A, B czy C? Kwestia wątków w narracji serialowej

Author(s): Artur Borowiecki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2024

The paper is concerned with the terminology of plotlines in serial narratives. Regarding the formal factors that have undergone considerable transformations, media scholars mention a particular type of composition that is based on a multi-plotline arrangement and is characterised by the dominance of continuing plotlines. The evolving storytelling paradigm entails the need to redefine some of the descriptive terms, as well as introduce new designations. The term “plot” is explained in the context of literary studies, film studies and the industry nomenclature associated with the production of serials. The author also proposes adopting a new scholarly term, i.e. the “catalytic plotline”.

Main plot, parallel or episodic plotline? Storyline A, B or C? The question of plots in serial narratives

Author(s): Artur Borowiecki / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

The paper is concerned with the terminology of plotlines in serial narratives. Regarding the formal factors that have undergone considerable transformations, media scholars mention a particular type of composition that is based on a multi-plotline arrangement and is characterised by the dominance of continuing plotlines. The evolving storytelling paradigm entails the need to redefine some of the descriptive terms, as well as introduce new designations. The term “plot” is explained in the context of literary studies, film studies and the industry nomenclature associated with the production of serials. The author also proposes adopting a new scholarly term, i.e. the “catalytic plotline”.

Od Shire do polskich półek. Fenomen literacki i kulturowe oddziaływanie Hobbita J.R.R. Tolkiena

Author(s): Małgorzata Harbanowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2024

This article analyses the publishing reception of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in Poland from 1960 to 2023. Focusing on quantitative aspects of editions and distinctive editions, it presents a summary of 65 Polish editions, discussing in detail those that stand out from the rest. The paper employs a literary and bibliographic method of analysis and criticism. It notes the influence of The Hobbit on popular culture and that it still remains a relevant and popular work, as evidenced by successive reissues of the novel on the Polish market.

Darkness: Joseph Conrad and Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author(s): Martin Meisel / Language(s): English Issue: XV/2020

The article focusses on a multi-aspect comparative analysis of J. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and H. B. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Taking into account the obvious differences between the works, the author analyses the hell of slavery and exploitation of Africa by the colonial states that built systems that created criminals such as Kurtz and Legree. The author presents the genealogy of Conrad’s image of tortured Africa, the prefiguration of which is found in Polish romantic messianism. The article also presents a similar reception of both works. First, they gained recognition, then in the postwar period, they were criticized for the forms of racism hidden in them, and finally, in recent decades, they have been rehabilitated by new readings. The perspective presented here shows how women’s popular prose covertly influenced Conrad’s intertextual tendency, both his poetics and the worldview of his prose.

A Tribute to Joseph Conrad and Aleksandr Grin in Anastasia Tsvetaeva’s Poem “Twins”

Author(s): Brygida Pudełko / Language(s): English Issue: XV/2020

Anastasia Tsvetayeva was a Russian writer, poet and memoirist. She started to write earlier than her younger sister Marina Tsvetayeva. Although Anastasia Tsvetaeva published several stories in the 1910s, she was not a representative of any leading literary association or group. She worked as a teacher of English, and a librarian in the Moscow Museum of Fine Arts. She also translated literary and philosophical works from French, English and German. Living in Moscow, Tsvetaeva was not fundamentally involved in politics, giving time and energy to creative work. However, the religious nature of her works made her unreliable in the eyes of the official authorities. She was arrested twice. During the second arrest in 1937, all her writings were confiscated and destroyed by NKVD. On the far-fetched charge Tsvetaeva was sent to Siberia. While in the camp, at the age of forty-one, Tsvetaeva started writing poems, first in English, and then in Russian. Her only book of poetry Moi edinstvenny sbornik (My Only Collection) was published posthumously in 1995. Tsvetaeva wrote about twelve poems in English. Seven of them – “Maturity,” “Twins,” “My Fate,” “A Dream,” “To Raya,” “A portrait attempt” and “To Thomas Caryle” – are included in her collection of poems. Tsvetaeva’s four-page poem “Twins,” which was also translated by the author into Russian, praises Joseph Conrad’s novella Typhoon (1902) and Aleksandr Grin’s adventure novel Scarlet Sails (Алые паруса 1923). Except the fact that both writers had Polish ancestors, they were fascinated by the beauty and mightiness of the ocean. Life at sea, perceived as the embodiment of freedom, is something both Conrad and Grin longed for. The sea also occupies a central place in Typhoon and Scarlet Sails. The characters in both stories also struggle with adversities of fate and water – one of the most powerful elements of nature.

National History and Nostalgia in Joseph Conrad’s Notes on Life and Letters

Author(s): Sylwia Janina Wojciechowska / Language(s): English Issue: XV/2020

The article investigates the interface between the national history of Poland and nostalgia as featured in Joseph Conrad’s collection Notes on Life and Letters. It is suggested that Conrad’s perception of history stands at odds with contemporary postmodern criticism. Initially Conrad’s stance on Poland’s national history is investigated in his political essays, “Autocracy and War” (1905), “A Note on the Polish Problem” (1916), and “The Crime of Partition” (1919), which, in my view, feature the ”definitive history” as discussed by Jenkins and Evans. Further, the lines of intersection between history, nostalgia, and politics are delineated. It is claimed that in Conrad’s works history is still assigned the classical role of a teacher, i.e., the Ciceronian historia magistra vitae, which, as I argue, corresponds with his view on literature as part of the historical record. Next, two autobiographical essays in the collection “Poland Revisited” (1915) and “First News” (1918) are examined in order to claim a heightened mode of nostalgia, on the one hand, with a simultaneous withdrawal of the attention from state affairs, which involves a re-positioning of the focus to Conrad’s personal experiences, on the other hand. Boym’s concepts of restorative and reflective nostalgia are juxtaposed and their deployment in the collection explored. I suggest that nostalgia underpins the internal integrity and interrelatedness of the essays included in Part II: “Life” of Notes on Life and Letters as regards their thematic scope and generic affiliation, the genre preconditioning the extent and intensity of the modal application of nostalgia. Finally, I contend that the mode of nostalgia largely explains the factual inconsistencies in Conrad’s autobiographical essays.

Joseph Conrad in the eyes of Kazimierz Wierzyński: Fearless of the Boundless and Familiar with the Infinite

Author(s): Jolanta Dudek / Language(s): English Issue: XVI/2021

Kazimierz Wierzyński (1894-1969) is now considered to be one of the greatest modern Polish poets. He was born in Drohobycz (which is now in western Ukraine) and studied literature and philosophy in Cracow and Vienna. During the interwar years he lived in Warsaw, after which for several years (1939-1941) he lived as a wartime refugee before spending more than twenty years in the United States. An émigré for the rest of his life, he finally settled in London, where he died in 1969. Wierzyński’s poetry – like the works of Joseph Conrad – exhibits a particular sensibility to nature (perceived as a living organism) and the outside world, which is full of extraordinary places, objects, people and phenomena that invite us to reflect on the deeper meaning of our existence as human beings. Both writers share a stoic response to adversity and a fidelity to conscience and to the heritage of European culture. In his 1924 sketch entitled “Conrad’s Great Silence,” Wierzyński saw Conrad above all as a writer who yearns for the infinite, whose “maritime reflection is reproduced in his work.” Twelve years later, in a narrative poem entitled Lord Jim (forming part of his 1936 collection entitled Kurhany), Wierzyński brought the eponymous character of Conrad’s novel into the pantheon of the Polish collective imagination. The fate of Lord Jim, who is tormented by nostalgia for his native England (to which he cannot return) would seem to foreshadow that of the émigré poet whom Wierzyński himself was soon to become. In the titular poem of Wierzyński’s wartime collection Róża wiatrów (The Wind Rose – 1942), Conrad appears as a “role model” for all Polish wartime refugees and émigrés, who, like castaways, search for their own guiding light “in the Conradian sky” – a light that could help them find a safe haven where they could live and work in their own artistic realm without the need to care about literary fashions. This poem has been translated into English (under the title The Compass Rose) by Mary Phelps (Kazimierz Wierzyński, Selected Poems, New York: Voyages Press, 1959). In the opinion of the author of the present article, this translation fails to correctly convey certain key images and allusions which enrich the meaning of the poem and which connect it with the poet’s own personal situation as an émigré writer.

Leon Schiller’s Theatrical Adaptation of Victory in Lwów

Author(s): Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech / Language(s): English Issue: XVI/2021

Although Joseph Conrad’s dramatic work is rather limited, he is a writer whose fiction is frequently imbued with theatricality and dramatic irony. He wrote three plays altogether: the one-act One Day More (1905), the two-act Laughing Anne (1922) and a full-length play, The Secret Agent (1922). However, there are also novels of great dramatic potential, for example, Victory or Under Western Eyes, which proved most popular for adaptation. The present paper aims to show how Victory’s dramatic potential was creatively transformed into a theatrical performance by Leon Schiller (1887-1954). Schiller was one the most prominent and influential Polish theatre directors as well as theatre pedagogue and activist, composer, singer, translator, and scriptwriter. He studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, next he went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. When he returned to Poland, he became a theatre critic showing himself an expert on the European theatre. He was employed as artistic director of Teatry Miejskie in Lwów [the Lviv City Theatres] and introduced and developed the idea of monumental theatre that he borrowed from Edward Craig. Victory was chosen by Schiller as the spectacle to inaugurate his new theatrical season in Lviv in 1930.

Andrzej Bobkowski as a Conrad’s Believer

Author(s): Anna M. Szczepan-Wojnarska / Language(s): English Issue: XVI/2021

The article reflects on Joseph Conrad’s influence on Andrzej Bobkowski – a Polish writer and an airplane model maker (1913-1961), whose devotion to Conrad remains an example of readership that challenges one’s life. The key issue discussed is the concept of patriotism and a pattern apparent in Conrad’s life and works elaborated by Bobkowski.

A Denegative and Intertextual Reassessment of “The Tale”

Author(s): Grażyna Maria Teresa Branny / Language(s): English Issue: XVI/2021

This paper demonstrates that, as in the case of other short fictions of Joseph Conrad (“Freya of the Seven Isles,” A Smile of Fortune,” and “The Planter of Malata”), also in the case of “The Tale” (1917)—the author’s most enigmatic piece—an intertextual and a denegative approach generates new perspectives. “The Tale”s intertextuality is considered here in the context of pre- and post-Conrad American writing, ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, through William Faulkner’s, to Toni Morrison’s. A denegative (asserting presence by absence, and vice versa) reconsideration of “The Tale”’s diagetic concentric narration demonstrates that it owes its epistemological haze precisely to the device of denegation, which likewise creates a strict convergence between the story’s governing themes of love and war, thereby revealing the undercurrent of idealism, ego, and suspiciousness in the commanding officer’s character, which seems to be the main factor in both his murderous operational decision and the lovers’ estrangement.

Ominous Creatures: Foreshadowing and Intertextuality in Joseph Conrad’s Shorter Fiction

Author(s): Royse Murphy / Language(s): English Issue: XVI/2021

In a number of short stories and novellas during one period of his writing Joseph Conrad specifically used apparently unrelated but dramatic animal imagery, detached from but foreshadowing the development of the subsequent events in each narrative. There may be a number of reasons for this type of foreshadowing and for its effect in his shorter fiction which are explored. Intertextuality has been noted between the stories of Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells. Here additional examples are found between the works of these authors, men who were good friends but later had conflicting views about writing and life, and between their own and other authors’ works.

Conrad and Lying

Author(s): Joanna Skolik / Language(s): English Issue: XVI/2021

Conrad’s attitude to lying appears to be unequivocally critical. Closer inspection reveals, however, that his approach is more complex. Writing about his life he intended to present it as coherent and ordered, with nothing left to chance and everything imbued with meaning. Thus white lies, compromises with the truth, half-truths, wishful thinking, and so on, are treated by Conrad as simply human. In his books Conrad presents different varieties of lying, and although he does not claim that lying is always wrong he proves that people are always responsible for the consequences of their lie and must bear such consequences. Some lies are noble, harmless or redemptive, bringing good, while some are destructive and corrupting. The most dangerous is self-delusion. The consequences that man has to face in case of such a lie are unexpected and irreversible.

Wdrażanie różnojęzycznych studentów filologii regionów do czytania literatury francuskojęzycznej. Refleksja glottodydaktyczna nad wstępną koncepcją kursu

Author(s): Izabela Orchowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2024

The current paper is a reflection on introducing plurilingual students of Regional Language Studies to the reading of francophone literature. The paper first discusses the didactic background for the reflection and emphasizes the plurilingualism of students. Next, the author presents how the autonomization approach to learning and teaching could be applied in an optional course of French focused on developing plurilingual learners’ reading comprehension of francophone literary texts, even before they reach the advanced proficiency level in French. The initial course concept will be illustrated with didactic analysis of the francophone novel – “L’ignorance” by Milan Kundera.

Здравка Евтимова. Въпроси за сп. „Съвременна лингвистика“

Author(s): Zdravka Evtimova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2023

The Value of Memoir Competitions in Pedeutology in the Context of Defining New Research Areas on Teachers and the Teaching Profession

Author(s): Joanna M. Łukasik / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2023

The article focuses on the specificity of memoir competitions in pedeutology. The most important assumptions and ideas of competitions in pedeutology, as well as the use of the biographical method in describing the functioning of teachers in Poland over the last hundred years are described. Six memoir competitions, together with the described and developed scientific categories, were analysed in order to reveal common points of research which makes it possible to portray the teaching profession through the prism of the selected categories, as well as to show the most frequently undertaken studies on the teaching profession. Additionally, some research categories which are undertaken sporadically are presented, as well as categories which are absent but desirable due to the dynamics of changes, are indicated.