Keywords: Swiss public diplomacy; public diplomacy
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The first part of the book presents three main themes which, as a whole, are intended to bea framework for more specific descriptions in its second part. In the first chapter, entitled Realgardens against the myths, the author shows selected examples of landscape designs and discusses theirutilitarian functions, their role in the religious cult, the mythical, symbolic and metaphorical contextswhich have directly affected either programme assumptions of the gardens or a treatment of certainfeatures of the landscape. The cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome are discussedin these respects. The author addresses the intellectual foundation of English and sentimentalgardens to clarify their strong ties with the ancient understanding of the landscape, describing onthis background meaningful features of Arcadia park near Nieborów. The chapter concludes witha discussion of selected solutions in Little Sparta — a garden founded by Sue and Ian Hamilton Finlaynear Edinburgh, Scotland. The second chapter, entitled Gardens of Imagination, discusses literarydescriptions, abstracted from specific landscape implementations. Several examples of literaturefrom different historical periods are invoked, with an emphasis on the role of sensuality. The authoranalyzes the fragments of the Egyptian Book of Gates, the epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, Divine Comedyof Dante Alighieri, Charles Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. The third chapter, entitled The gardensof thought, raises general epistemological issues, first: in terms of the philosophical proposals forovercoming the fear of death, and second: in terms of theory of art viewed from the perspective of thetwentieth-century crisis of the great narrations.The common theme of all the chapters is the Garden of Eden, whose main intentional “function”is to overcome the fear of death. This issue is discussed in the context of eschatological, agnostic,and nihilistic intuitions, organized according to their relationship with specific gardens (Chapter 1),with the literary themes (Chapter 2), and finally with the abstract contemplation on the conditionof mankind and its representation in contemporary art (Chapter 3). Such a structure, inspired byHegel’s description of the history of the Absolute, makes it easier to present the problems of gardensfrom various perspectives — specific relations with nature, aesthetic experience and thought of purelyintellectual character. This approach, on the one hand, serves the clarity of argument by avoidingexcessive complexity of description, and on the other, shows the complexity of the concept of “garden”,resulting from the build-up of different meanings over the millennia.
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Keywords: world-building;allotopia;world-centered narrative;postclassical narratology;fictional world;theory of fiction
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Keywords: Russia;Central Powers;revolution;peace;propaganda;World War I
The purpose of this article is to trace the ambiguous images of Russia which had been presented after October Revolution in propaganda of Central Powers. Because of the Bol-sheviks’ peace slogans this country suddenly became the most desired ally of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. The autor aims to answer the following questions: – Which narratives connected to Russia did dominate in German society in 1917–1918? – To which extent were they similar and in which different from the leading narratives in such countries as Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria? – What was the background of the mentioned narratives and images? The author distinguished two major motifs connected to the image of Russia as a kind of providential force: 1) of Russia-the-Saviour (as an exemplification of the myth of “Grandpa Ivan“), 2) of Russia-a-fighter-for-peace (as a continuation of the myth of Russian Revolution).
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The conceptual potential of the category of palimpsest to study theatrical practices, signalled in reference to the relation between the text of the performance and the dramatic text, is used in the article to present theatrical activities undertaken by site‑specific theatres in a particular urban space. On the example of the performances delivered in the mine by the Silesian Theatre Scena Propozycji at the “Pro Futuro” Association in Zabrze, the relations between the urban space and the mine, which occupies an important place in this space as a permanent element of the Silesian landscape, the basic component of the imaginary scheme related to the Silesian space and culture, are shown. The founders of the theatre, applying various strategies, not only revitalised the place, offering the now closed mine a second life, but above all, using the palimpsest and the palimpsest nature of the mine, tried to make it a “foundation for the identity” of the Silesians again. The aura of the place itself, sensationally perceived, as well as the artistic activities of the group, which elevated this place into the aesthetic dimension, became an impulse for the audience to restitute traces of life, a carrier of long‑forgotten meanings and local stories. They encouraged the viewers to reflect critically on the identity of Silesia, as imagined and as experienced.
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Keywords: Polish philological education; cultural and literary didactics; linguistic didactics; teacher education;academic education;
In the academic community, an anniversary publication is an academic volume which constitutes a special expression of appreciation to the researcher to whom it is dedicated. Forty years of academic work of Professor Bernardeta Niesporek-Szamburska became an inspiration for her friends, co-workers and students to prepare an anniversary publication The texts collected in this volume a varied both in terms of themes and with respect to genres – they include articles grounded in different areas of research (literary studies, linguistics, didactics of language teaching and literature teaching), essays, personal expressions directed towards the Jubilarian. The authors of the articles employ different methodologies and research tools, and the subjects of their interpretations are different texts (created by children, and also about children and for children).The articles were collected in three chapters: Literary and cultural landscape... (14 articles, including ones on linguistic poetry, phraseology and paremiology in Wanda Chotomska’s poetry, stereotypes of ethnic otherness in interwar literature for children and young adults, poems for children by Joanna Mueller, the motif of the donkey in The Four Musicians of Bremen and other cultural texts, the activity of a student motivated by required reading, the image of a mother in the story Po kamienistej drodze by Gustaw Morcinek), Linguistic Landscape... (16 articles, including ones on the linguistic culture of Polish people, the means of popularizing linguistic correctness among the young users of language, functional shaping of language, developing the skills of speaking, stimulating linguistic creativity of children, orthography, research on the linguistic image of the world of children and young adults), Landscape different to all others...(7 articles devoted to, among others, academic education and the development of didactic competencies of teachers, models of perceiving disability by authors of Polish Language textbooks, digital technology in modern schools) in order to, on the one hand, demonstrate the richness and variety of research connected with Polish language and teacher education and, on the other, to indicate the broad field of interests of Professor Bernardeta Niesporek-Szamburska, her academic quests, landscapes passed along her research journeys.The book is addressed to Polish language scholars, students of Polish philology, teachers of Polish language and literature and pedagogues.
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Literary blogs are increasingly replacing library resources (compact forms, professional magazines, reviews, etc.), however, they do not always operate in a new language, the language of social media (i.e., colloquial, full of abbreviations, borrowings, and based on slang). This text analyses the selected literary blogs in terms of language and content, and also pictures the specificity of contemporary blogs concerning the latest literature, run by eminent literary critics and scientists, such as Jarosław Czechowicz (Krytycznym okiem), Paulina Małochleb (Książki na ostro) or Olga Kowalska (Wielki Buk). The selected reviews and discussions prove a highlevel literary language in social media and also show its gradual development depending on the subject and the type of expression. Blogging is undoubtedly a part of high culture and often contains substantive reviews in the highest-level literary language. It is a return to the traditional language of reviews and scientific lectures, which gradually supersede the language of abbreviations in the blogosphere. The new medium is therefore used as a didactic form, and the novelty in it is the (not-new) university language. Such changes reveal the possibility of combining tradition with innovation at the most fundamental level, which in the case of literary blogs is the language itself.
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Keywords: cathedral; memory; memory transfer
Literature is one of those areas of human activity which functions within the culture of memory. It is indeed one of the means of creating memory – many narratives are concerned with the way in which individuals and communities remember and forget, as well as the way in which they forge their own identity. Modern literature has made the exploration of memory patterns one of is most important themes. The paper constitutes an attempt to analyse the literary images of the cathedral in connection with the patterns of individual and communal memory in Maja Jurkowska’s novel Katedra in the context of Polish and German memory discourse.
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Keywords: teacher; pension; social change; school; student; uncertainty in the teaching profession
The paper focuses on the areas of uncertainty in teacher’s work from the perspective of retired teachers. Based on qualitative research, an attempt was made to answer the following research problem: What, in the perception of retired teachers, are the areas of uncertainty in the teaching profession and what determines them? The study group consisted of 4 retired secondary school teachers.
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