Keywords: royal power;Middle Ages;Scandinavia;
References to the deeds and lives of the past monarchs and their commemorations are ubiquitous in the earliest extant Scandinavian literary sources. Their authors found relating to the narratives of royal power and the identification with the bygone kings and queens essential for the legendary and historical stories of national and personal origins, and for the ways of formulating and expressing the political and cultural significance of their own work. In the wealth of the material offered by Old Norse and Icelandic literature, we may find numerous examples of the texts either abounding in such connotations or drawing directly upon royal histories. Although the originals of the lists of kings (konungatal) did not survive beyond the early medieval era, they provided later medieval authors with fundamental inspiration especially for the kings’ sagas (konungasǫgur). Similarly, the vividness with which the past rulers were remembered is attested by the poems like Ynglingatal and Haleygjatal originating in the tenth century. Both of them legitimize the power and aspirations of subsequent monarchs by referring to the heritage and legacy left by the previous generations of kings. Their charisma and achievements contributed to their mythical and historical status as rulers, which, in turn, determined the development of what may be called the ideology of royal power. Understood as a set of features considered decisive for prosperous and memorable kingship, such ideology was advocated and praised by the skaldic poets and saga authors who emphasised the importance of royal bravery and generosity, the mercilessness that kings should display towards their enemies and the graciousness they should show to their followers. Likewise, the unfailing luck in war and the ability to surpass others in various skills were deemed important not only to impress one’s royal retinue and subjects, but, predominantly, also to legitimize royal claims. (fragment of the introduction)
More...Keywords: Herta Müller; transculturalism; artistic translation; linguistic worldview; minorities; dictatorship
This work is dedicated to literary translation in a language triangle, consisting of one Germanic language (German) and two typologically and culturally related West Slavonic languages (Polish and Czech). The analysis of the translations into Czech and Polish of the novels Herztier and Atemschaukel written by Herta Müller is a contribution to the description of translatability from the perspective of a language triangle in which each language is involved in different factors of understanding the texts created in it.
More...Keywords: drama and theatre; drama; theatre; Post-Yugoslav region; Croatia and Serbia; Croatia; Serbia; transculturalism; transfer; cultural mobility
The Post-Yugoslav playwriting and theatre production constitutes a space which facilitates observation of the transposition of artistic, socio-political and philosophical ideas. Those phenomenon stems from cultural mobility, the integration of multiple components coming from different cultural backgrounds and involves the creation of new qualities. The fundamental research principles in this case are the perception of culture as a process of exchange and the implementation of the open connection networks model. The discussed artistic projects of playwrights and theatre directors active in the countries of the former Yugoslavia confirm that this phenomenon is still in the nascent stage. Its dynamic formula is a good starting point for reflection on the flows and ideological and aesthetic links that are becoming apparent in the drama and theatre of many European countries.
More...Keywords: music; baroque; Protestant; Lutheran; Silesia; Cieszyn (Teschen)
The discovery of unknown musical manuscripts in the archives of the Church of Jesus in Cieszyn (Teschen) in 2008 was an impulse to conduct comprehensive scientific research. In the light of these studies, the eighteenth-century Cieszyn appears to be one of the main centers of Protestant musical culture in Silesia, radiating throughout Upper Silesia and its neighboring regions.From 1710, despite many difficulties, Cieszyn cantors managed to create a thriving vocal and instrumental ensemble and provide a musical setting for celebrations and services at a high artistic level. The so-called "Cieszyn cantatas", the surviving works from the then repertoire, are living testimony to this fascinating chapter in the history of music.
More...Keywords: oral story memoire; folk tradition; memory; Jehovah’s Witnesses; repression; Soviet Union
[an excerpt from a review] “The monograph showing the narrative aspects of Jehovah's Witnesses' memory significantly complements memory studies by showing how culture and religion influence images of traumatic events from the past. Analysing the narrations of the respondents, the author draws attention to the mechanisms of evaluation (e.g. of torturers) and taming the trauma of the past, and these mechanisms result – as the reading of the book shows – from the religion and the values transmitted in it.The monograph is therefore an interesting, valuable and necessary study. It is an erudite work, the author refers not only to the works of culture scholars, but also sociologists, including the sociologists of religion, which I think is justified and necessary. It is based on a large, representative, and what should be appreciated, independently collected material, which includes narratives of members of the examined community living previously in the borderlands, as well as those living on the territories of several former republics of the USSR”.
More...Keywords: archive; typescript; Europe; 20th century; civilization; culture
The typescript of Stanisław Baczyński's unfinished dissertation has been found in the writer's archive stored in the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw. The work, diagnosing the state of European civilization and culture after the First World War, was created in the second half of the 1920s. In the text, the author not only referred polemically to contemporary ideologies (fascism, communism, nationalism, but also Christianity) and the historiosophical concepts prophesying the end of culture (Spengler, Berdyaev), but he also formulated his own optimistic project of a "new", "revalued" European culture. The typescript found is not a complete text. The edition, combining the principles of traditional and genetic editing, captures the character of the work in the process of writing, unclosed and non-definitive. Detailed rules of editorial conduct, as well as the history and characteristics of the typescript, are presented in the Introduction. The Appendix to the edition contains fragments of the work, found in the monthly magazine "Europa", that are missing from the typescript. In order to bring the reader closer to the character of Baczyński's work on the printout prepared earlier, also scans of selected typescript cards have been included in the Appendix.
More...Keywords: sea; island; sailing; art; language; forgiveness
As Stephen Greenblatt claims The Tempest summarizes all major preoccupations of other plays: legitimate power is abolished, civilization is threatened by wilderness, discourse is besieged by the darkness of inarticulate sounds, and theatrical performance looms large as a metaphor of human life. It is the final play of a great master and hence one is tempted to venture a hypothe-sis that, perhaps Shakespeare’s Prospero, like Ulisses in the XI canto of Odysei, speaks to us from the other side, from a dark and mysterious island of the dead, and his theatre is the only way in which we could approach death in the epoch of broken rituals and general disenchantment. Thus, Prospero’s famous line at the end of the play “Our revels now are ended” declares not only the end of the time of performance but refers to a much wider, Kermodian, sense of ending.
More...Keywords: Lithuania; Adam Chmara; the nobility of Stanisław August's time; family archives;the Sapieha family;
The biography paints the portrait of Adam Chmara across different walks of life, as a nobleman anda citizen who aspired to count himself among the powerful and mighty Polish statesmen duringthe reign of Stanisław II Augustus. Politically, he can be counted among the staunch reformers ofthe Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; privately, he was a caring husband and father, and a benevolentmaster who on the one hand valued profit, but who valued his subordinates as well; a kind,generous and polite man. Theoretically, then, he presents a picture of a man virtually devoid offlaws; nonetheless, a lot of the hypotheses and suppositions that appear here are not the fault ofthe author but rather the subject of this biography. One thing which, in theory, should surprisethe reader with regard to the figure of Chmara is his talent for adaptation to new, unforeseencircumstances, which seems to be his dominant feature; but is it just his individual characteristic?Jarosław Czubaty wrote in detail about the principle of two consciences among the citizens of theCommonwealth, but is it not merely a reflection of nearly the entire generation of intellectual elitesof the Enlightenment persuasion, which emerged during the reign of Stanisław II Augustus? Oneof their most fundamental principles was the professed love for the motherland and its subjects,as well as the acknowledgment of the necessity of the betterment of people’s social and materialcircumstances, accompanied by the complete lack of any kind of determination or sacrifice madein order to achieve these goals. This, of course, is merely a hypothesis; however, the fear of takingresponsibility for the fate of the country — whose origin is difficult to determine — is a rathercurious phenomenon. It could be argued, of course, that it originated in the desire to protect thenobles’ estates, their families, or other reasons, but that alone cannot account for everything. Onthe one hand, then, the phenomenon could be attributed to particular reactions to the unfoldingevents, but on the other hand, it could be also attributed to this Enlightenment mindset whichconstituted the guide for people’s behavior; in a world governed by reason, pragmatism and logicrule over everything else, and it is only once we acknowledge that fact that we can discuss thejustification — the principle of two consciences.
More...Tom zawierający kilkadziesiąt opracowań z zakresu nauki o polityce napisanych przez współpracowników i przyjaciół Jubilata z różnych ośrodków akademickich w kraju, stanowiących wyraz uznania dla jego dorobku naukowego i dydaktycznego.
More...Keywords: Robert Agnew’s General Strain Th eory; adolescence; aggression; anxiety; juvenile delinquency; social maladjustment; resocialisation pedagogy
The subject of the theoretical considerations and empirical analysis of this dissertation are the environmental and subjective factors contributing to adolescents’ anti-social behaviour (behaviour breaking social rules and the law). The revealed tendency to aggressive behaviour has a key role in diagnosing the correlations between the sense of strain, demonstrated level of anxiety and aggression and delinquent behaviour. The theoretical basis for this research were the assumptions of Robert Agnew’s General Strain Theory (1992). The main aim of this work was to explore the existing correlation between variables in the scope of the strain (its types), limiting factors (social control, differential associations) and subjective variables (aggressiveness and anxiety) and illegal and anti-social behaviours demonstrated by the analysed adolescents from rehabilitation centres and high school students’ anti-social behaviour.
More...Keywords: Robert Mrózek; communcation
Zbiorowy tom poświęcony Profesorowi Robertowi Mrózkowi charakteryzuje się rozmaitością tematyczną i metodologiczną. Dzieli się na trzy części: I. W przestrzeni onimicznej, II. W przestrzeni apelatywnej, III. W przestrzeni komunikacyjnej. Różnorodność podejmowanej przez autorów poszczególnych tekstów problematyki (46 artykułów) jest jednym z wielu walorów księgi. Tom ten z całą pewnością stanowi nie tylko ciekawą i pożyteczną lekturę dla językoznawców oraz dydaktyków, którzy interesują się onomastyką, dialektologią oraz zróżnicowanymi zjawiskami komunikacyjnymi, lecz także dla wnikliwego czytelnika zainteresowanego zmianami języka zachodzącymi na różnych jego płaszczyznach.
More...Keywords: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was the first eminent Russian thinker who began to view a suicidalact as one of the prominent ethic problems. He projected the results of doubtfulnessin God as well as the immortality of the soul by assuming that God does not exist, andman – gaining god’s rights – is elevated as the master of the entire world. Dostoyevsky’sworks unveil further visions of reality. They are all combined by a common finale – completedevaluation, which consistently and unavoidably leads to an annihilation of theworld in the social context, and to a malefaction and suicide – in individual one.Dostoyevsky created picture of suicides who accommodate themselves in the centerof the s u ic ide -ge nerat i ng spac e, which is read as an aggregate of the dynamicallyshaped circumstances and conditions that inevitably push an individual being towardself-annihilation – this entails a gradual unveiling of this person’s inner world. Thefinal act comes to be a fatal denouement of the whirl of interrelated acts, phenomena,events, attitudes, reactions, thoughts, etc. The suicide-generating space, weavingan immanent and a transcendent world together, is formed by the life choices of thesuicides all doomed to die. The suicide is therefore not the one who ends his or her lifehere and now, but, rather, an individual who is embedded in a dynamically emergingsuicide-generating space, and is thus experiencing mutual relationships with all itscomponents.A suicide in Dostoyevsky creates an independent entity that is rooted at the pointof intersection of three layers – that is, axiological, ontological, and psychological one.This person turns to be a semantic-ideal universum framed within his or her body. Thisuniversum is a reflection of a multifaceted, deepened reflection upon the real as wellas metaphysical world. Thus depicted, the protagonist focuses on and simultaneouslycondenses the intellective as well as extra-rational knowledge about the real world. Theprotagonist functions as a prism which sees into Dostoyevsky’s philosophy, mysteriesof human nature and soul revealed by him, as well as his reflections on the social andpolitical matters.The book comprises five parts – these are: Introduction, Russia in the mid-nineteenthcentury and the issue of the suicide; Types of suicides, Suicides in Dostoyevsky, and Suicides andtheir social contexts.The part entitled Russia in the mid-nineteenth century and the issue of the suicide is anattempt at looking into Russia in Dostoyevsky times, and its description through theprism of the semantic triangle, whose cusps are formed by Dostoyevsky himself alongwith the two notions: suicide and atheism. This part deals with the essence, form andspecial character of atheism, and aside from that, its sources and ramifications. Moreover,this part depicts other reasons for the intensified suicidal acts, as well as suicide inthe context of the religious history of Russia in the opinions of Russian eminent thinkers(Solovyov, Berdyaev), and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in the main.The part Types of suicides makes an attempt at classifying the personae of suicides whoappear in the works penned by the author of The Brothers Karamazov. The classification isbased on the concepts of types of suicides defined in terms of suicidology and psychology,as well as others, unaccepted in the studies on suicide, successfully serving as toolsof literary description. The book points to and provides characteristics of five categoriesof suicides – namely, calculating egotistic, logical, fatal, escapist, and spiritual one. Tothe categorization proposed in the book the author adds a typical suicidal model thatappears in Dostoyevsky.An extensive chapter Suicides in Dostoyevsky, which gives the title to the book, constitutesits main body. It comprises twelve separate sketches devoted to the leading suicidespenned by the writer (their order of appearance matches the chronology of the workswhere they appear). The purpose of the proposed analyses is to provide detailed insightsinto a gradual intensification of the suicide-generating space, an also attribute its componentswith semantic content. Furthermore, the analyses point to broadly understoodcontexts.Suicide is treated here as a medium which enlivens the truth about moral, spiritual,and social condition of Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Insofar asportrayals of prominent suicides convey messages that are ethically ennobling andarchetypical, the other suicides, who insinuate the ordinary and universal nature of thisphenomenon, perform the role of a looking-glass of the society. Therein hide all the mostessential problems of the nineteenth-century Russian reality. This problem is discussedin the part entitled Suicides and their social contexts that crowns the book.
More...Keywords: pragmatic competence; Generation Z; cross-cultural communication; speech act of requesting; complimenting and apologising
This book intends to shed some light on the problem of second language communication from both cross-cultural and cross-generational angles and to diagnose communication patterns, opinions, and beliefs on the nature of L2 learning visible among the Generation Z group. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of pragmatic competence (pragmatic production and pragmatic comprehension). In order to assess the ILP development, it has been decided not only to evaluate the respondents’ language level but also their problems in communication. Diagnosing sociopragmatic competence as well as pragmalinguistic strategies implemented while performing three speech acts, that is, requesting, reacting to a compliment, and apologizing, allows one to indicate problematic areas and suggest some teaching implications, that in turn, will enable to introduce necessary changes and forms of work on the further development of English.
More...Keywords: state; history of ideas; political ideas; "good life"
A human being gets organized in a nation, as Aristotle says, for “a good life”. However, according to him, one has to differentiate between “a good citizen” and “good man”. The history of philosophy has created various polis conceptions as a result of the fact that a human being, in its cognition, cannot situate itself in a position of the one who knows an “objective” good, “truth”. Each cognition is just a “vision” and interpretation of the world. Thus, one has to assume that a reflection on culture equals a reconstruction of these “visions”. This is a history of ideas. Such a reconstruction is also an interpretation. The situation gets complicated in the post-world. Traditional languages lose their significance in a global world of mass culture. And that means that the status of the history of ideas, this interpretation of interpretations, gets too unclear these days.
More...Keywords: painting; literature; life
Książka zawiera cykl artykułów, których autorzy podejmują próbę wskazania sensu w procesie twórczym, kontaktach z otoczeniem, wyborach drogi życiowej. Pytania o sens bywają dziś bagatelizowane, relatywizowane albo zastępowane stwierdzeniem bezsensowności wszystkiego. W tak niesprzyjających okolicznościach autorzy, wśród których znaleźli się nie tylko teoretycy i komentatorzy cudzej twórczości, ale również artyści-praktycy, zdobyli się na odwagę poważnej refleksji o paradygmatach wartości, świadomości celu, porażkach, przezwyciężaniu trudności.
More...Keywords: garden city; Second Republic of Poland; Karol and Stefania Raczyński; Żarki; parcelling out; Polish history
The book presents the history of founding of a summer resort, at present known as Żarki Letnisko, located in the Jura Krakowsko-Częstochowska region. The settlement is a very rare example of a successful subdivision of manorial land in the interwar Poland with a view to create a “garden city”, comparable to that of Podkowa Leśna near Warsaw. The process of developing the “garden city” of Żarki is presented against a broad backdrop of ideological, social, and economic transformations taking place in the Second Polish Republic. The book also portrays the founder of the “garden city” of Żarki – Karol Raczyński from Złoty Potok, as well as his wife Stefania and his most famous ancestors coming from aristocratic families of Krasińscy, Braniccy and Raczyńscy. Furthermore, the general concept of “garden city” is discussed, along with its evolution and reception on the Polish lands.
More...Keywords: Polish Literature; men; masculinities; gender; biopolitics
The work constitutes part of a lively current in contemporary humanities research — masculinity studies. In the theoretical chapter, the author introduces and maps the latest international research in this area. In the analytical chapters that follow, he demonstrates the possibility of using these methodologies in the area of domestic literary studies. Applying the new concepts discussed in the introduction to the analysis of literary texts enables the author to demonstrate the unconscious and often difficult-to-express tension that the unstable limitation of gender categories — not necessarily related to our “here and now,” but, as it turns out, quite common and transhistorical — introduces in the discussed texts. The analyses of selected works expose the tensions that are at first glance invisible, unnamed, but fundamental, thus opening up the field of further inquiry for subsequent researchers. All the discussed plots demonstrate how changes in political, social, cultural and economic conditions have modified the definition of what is “masculine” or “non-masculine,” and how the characters have confronted these changes, sometimes attempting adaptation, at other times contestation. Between the lines of these texts one can find uncertainty, anxiety and a desire to establish an (imagined) ontological foundation for the male gender, which, however, is lacking in the secularizing, fluid reality. Moreover, almost every one of these changes resonates in the male bodies.
More...Keywords: African city; urbanisation in Juba, South Sudan
The subject of the study entitled How to survive in an African city? A human inthe face of borderlineness and urbanisation in Juba, South Sudan is the spontaneouscity spreading process of Juba, the capital of South Sudan. But, the viewpointtaken while describing the phenomenon in question is the one of daily activitiesof an average human being, who in this particular case is a recent urban migrant.All the factographic data come from the series of ethnographic research conductedin Juba, South Sudan in the years 2007—2008.Adapting to the new environment is a fundamental matter for every migrant.It is not an easy task. For this very city is characterized by extremely harsh livingconditions. There is not enough water supply and no sewage system, not mentioningthe electricity. The drastic price increase results from the underdeveloped publictransport infrastructure and, what is more, the migrants of various ethnic andcultural origins, usually intertwined with traditionalism and conservatism, add tothe picture. This kind of melting pot makes the majority of city-dwellers feel alienated.What is even worse, the already tensed atmosphere is overlapped by manifoldtraumatic war experiences. From our perspective, Juba is a dysfunctional city.Colloquially, it could be called a safe haven or even a strongbox, that is the placewhere for now one has the greatest chance to survive in the post-war South Sudan.Therefore, it reminds more of a refugee camp than a city. In spite of difficultiespiling up in front of them, newcomers try to familiarize the hostile surroundingsby finding a job and, as far as possible, turning their flats into places tolive, conceptualizing the landscape, organizing their time, facing the lonelinessand alienation, to blend into surroundings. In short, they struggle to survive, andconcurrently, try to definitively cut away the past of the urban migrant or repatriatedrefugee. For the inhabitants, family is the value of utmost importance in copingwith everyday problems. It is one of family’s basic tasks. For that reason it isstructured in a particular way, mostly as a nuclear family, but frequently also temporarilyextended to the closest relatives. The structure of family is formed toa high degree by manufacturing capacities of its members, hence in the city’s realityone cannot forget to generate income. It is in family where genetically differentcultural traditions (African, Islamic and Christian) blend and unite into one,which makes them indistinguishable from one another. One of the institutionsthat clearly illustrate this situation is marriage, where the dialogue between varioustraditions, between the “old” and the “new” reality, is perfectly visible. Theinflux of alien elements is not in a least seen as hostile. Quite the contrary, wecan observe the tendency to express cosmopolitism through that which is local.The social hierarchy in the city is characterized by mutual dependence ofdiverse social groups. Never before has the life in the city depended so much ona cooperation and the engagement in generating income of each member of a family.The phenomenon manifests itself on every level of social identification. Inthe entire Africa, the voluntary association of a different kind have become ananswer to the structural crisis. On the continent, social groups such as womenand children acquire the significance. Their role increase in importance, especiallyeconomically. Concurrently, this growing importance is not followed by the improvementin the poor social status of those groups, since there are still excludedand discriminated against. Generally, the citizen of Juba copes with her/his financialproblems similarly to inhabitants of other African cities. Apart from havinga full-time job to earn indispensable money, in order to balance the family budget,she/he has to also be engaged — more often than not, in the same time — in manyinformal extra jobs (small businesses, producing and selling food, trans-bordertrade). Frequently, all members of a family participate in such a activities. Thus,diversification of the income sources is a universal strategy. Every member of a city-living family (male or female, including the youngest) is engaged in both formaland informal ways of earning money. No one is economically useless.Citizens of Juba help themselves by seeking economic connections with neighboringAfrican cities. Those appear to be especially financially gratifying. An inhabitantof African city to thrive has to be extremely active spatially — and be notonly to cross the border of her/his own neighborhood but also to leave her/his hometown.Obviously, huge significance of the practice of that kind stems from thecloseness of the country border. Ex-refugees are the leaders of trans-border contacts.Those people are actual intermediaries between Sudan and neighbor countries.By their mobility their transmit the new cultures, elements of democracyand free-market economy. It is a very useful knowledge in terms of nowadaysJuba reality.The ethnicity of Juba is naturally pertained to certain dimensions of reality(e.g. politics, culture), for which it seems important and overemphasized. In otherdimensions it seems marginalized or even hidden. The city creates new identifications,but also sustains, reproduces and strengthens the old ones. Ethnicity is dynamicand appears more and more relative — it is based on the situation of an individual,her/his needs in the urban environment. But essentially, the city isa place with no ethnicity at all, it peculiarity stems form this fact.What is formed in the city are the new, broader identifications. Firstly, theirbond is the war-time wandering. Fundamental cultural transformations are triggeredby the emigration. Those changes are visible regardless of the social origin ofan observer. The Sudan conflict had the features of a religious war. Among others,it has lead to kidnapping religion by politics, and exercising the “friend — foe” categories.The results of this are palpable in the post-war Juba — the city of culturesand conflicts. Religion seems there a pivot of national identity, which is dra-matically visible in the city’s Muslin community. Creed is used by both Christiansand Muslims to erase the ethnicity. It rests as a kind of umbrella opened over theheads of people representing different ethnicities, giving a chance to adjust easilyto the city’s community. The religion of the greatest importance is Christianity. Ittreated as a natural source of the city culture, its plays as well as secular rituals.One cannot also forget about the significance of various Christian churches forcommon man facing everyday difficulties. Facilitating the initial stage of her/hiscity life, when the individual is in the most urgent need of help. In this sense, theChristian churches of Juba are a kind of bridge between the village and the city.Thus, despite the difficulties, the city’s development is visible, which stemsmore from the bottom-up initiative of the common individuals than this of the localauthorities. Juba is a world tediously built by the hands of its inhabitants. Itsshape and size reflect their ambitions and abilities. The phenomenon of borderlineness— the closeness of the country’s border — appears to be helpful in this process.It influences the effectiveness of the citizens’ activities, it is an answer to thespontaneous city spreading processes — it brings danger, but most of all, infinitepossibilities.
More...W powieści Wilcze noce dominuje semantyka nocy, zmierzchu, mgły, wiatru, korzeni, trzasków, szumów, błota, lepkości, śluzu, czerni, wody, próchna, gnicia — a wszystko to podkreśla płynność i niestałość kreowanych światów, przechodzących wielokrotne metamorfozy. Nie chodzi bowiem o zamkniętą przestrzeń iluzji, lecz o unaocznienie wpływu okolicy i ludzkich doświadczeń, pochodzących z różnych wymiarów czasowych, a stanowiących elementy, które składają się na doświadczenie mentalne człowieka. Ono określa tożsamość jednostkową. Autor jest bowiem przekonany, że w każdym jednostkowym losie skupia się doświadczenie kilku, co najmniej, generacji, zachowane w pamięci językowej i pamięci ciała.
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