![Poetry and Ethics. A book on Świrszczyńska's Poems](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2005_304.jpg)
Poetry and Ethics. A book on Świrszczyńska's Poems
Poezja i etyka. Książka o wierszach Świrszczyńskiej
Keywords: Literary studies; Poetry; Anna Świrszczyńska
More...Keywords: Literary studies; Poetry; Anna Świrszczyńska
More...Keywords: Anthropology of Culture; Our Lady of Częstochowa
Review of Anna Niedźwiedź’s book Obraz i postać. Znaczenia wizerunku Matki Boskiej Częstochowskiej [‘The Image and the Figure. The meanings of the effigy of Our Lady of Częstochowa’] (Wydawnictwo UJ [Jagiellonian University Press], Kraków 2005). The presently reviewed work is a doctoral thesis, published as volume 14 in the Jagiellonian University Press’s Anthropos series, devoted to publications in anthropology of culture. The book’s author sets an objective for herself to reconstruct events having accrued around Poland’s most praised (and most frequently reproduced) piece of painting, i.e. the image of Our Lady of Częstochowa, as mentioned in the book’s title. The reviewer highlights and discusses the threads being most significant for the paper’s anthropological and cultural context.
More...Keywords: Grynberg; Holocaust; Literature
Review of Dorota Krawczyńska’s book Własna historia Holokaustu. O pisarstwie Henryka Grynberga [‘His own history of the Holocaust. On writings by Henryk Grynberg’], IBL PAN [Institute for Literary Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences publishers], Warsaw, 2005. The reviewer emphasises that because of its dependence upon the tragic biography of this writer, who has been saved from the Shoah, H. Grynberg’s output causes interpretative and research difficulties which have been successfully handled by the book’s author. The monograph attempts at an extensive analysis of this output, viewing it against a broad spectre of literary-historic and philosophical problems.
More...Keywords: Michael Goddard; Gilles Deleuze; Witold Gombrowicz; Polish literature 20c.
Review: Michael Goddard Gombrowicz, Polish modernism, and the subversion of form, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette 2010 In this review, Michael Goddard's Deleuzian reading of Witold Gombrowicz is contextualised within the poststructuralist strand of recent Gombrowicz criticism. Bhambry discusses the structure and execution of Goddard's monograph, and evaluates its contribution to Gombrowicz scholarship as well as Deleuzian literary studies. Goddard's work is presented as the first and therefore much needed multi-lingual and multi-disciplinary 'productive encounter' between Gombrowicz and Deleuze.
More...Keywords: Stanisław Brzozowski; Polish literature 20 c.; Memoirs
Review: S. Brzozowski Histoire d’une intelligence. Journal 1910-1911, with afterword : L’inquiétude de pensée by M. Wyka, translated, edited and introduction by W. Kolecki, Le Bruit du Temps, Paris 2010. This article discusses the recent French translation of Pamiętnik (the Memoirs) by Stanisław Brzozowski.This edition renders the Brzozowski memoirs familiar to the reader whose knowledge of literary intimism is excellent, who has been bred on the works of Rousseau and Amiel, and is willing to study the private notes of Du Bos, Léautaud, or Gide. Hence, Brzozowski’s Memoirs have been shown against a dual background: the nineteenth-century, psychologically-oriented tradition and twentieth-century revaluation of the literary quality of diaries and memoirs. The existential and therapeutic function of Brzozowski’s Memoirs is balanced by the notes on its literary quality aspect; hence, the text in question ceases to be a mere confession, becoming a creation, aware of its own limitations and consequences.
More...Keywords: Adam Mickiewicz; Roman R. Koropeckyj; Polish literature 19 c.; Romanticism; Biography
Review: Roman Robert Koropeckyj, Adam Mickiewicz. The Life of a Romantic, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2008. This discussion of the most recent biography of Adam Mickiewicz, by Roman R. Koropeckyj, presents the book in the context of the American Slavicist’s entire output. Koropeckyj deals with Polish romanticist literature, and Mickiewicz in particular – being an expert not only on the poet as such but also on all his existing biographies. This makes The Life of a Romantic an important contribution to the discussion on how the Polish Bard’s life is represented in what has been written about it, and in the way the biographies are written.
More...Keywords: Andrzej Zawadzki; Gianni Vattimo; weak thought; Literary theory
Review: Andrzej Zawadzki Literatura a myśl słaba [‘Literature and the ‘weak thought’’], Universitas, Kraków 2009. This review attempts at grasping the specificity of the ‘weak thought’ concept in the context of dialectics. Zawadzki refers the Gianni Vattimo work to the speculations of the German idealism, which has set the leading thread for considerations on mutual dependencies between the two formations. The notions of Verwindung, ‘trace’ or ‘nihilism’, being of key importance to Zawadzki, appear to be not so much of ‘inventions’ of the 20th-century philosophy as categories derived from an age-old philosophical tradition. Their attempted application in interpretation of literary texts is, therefore, the weak thought being harnessed in the service of literary science as much as the latter being opened to dialectic thinking.
More...Keywords: Zbigniew Herbert; Polish literature 20 c.; poetic drama.
Review: Jacek Kopciński, Nasłuchiwanie. Sztuki na głosy Zbigniewa Herberta [‘Listening. Zbigniew Herbert’s voice plays’], Towarzystwo ‘Więź’, Warszawa 2008. The poet Zbigniew Herbert’s dramatic output is usually represented as marginal to his oeuvre. Jacek Kopciński, however, resists this trope and offers a penetrating reconstruction of Herbert’s model of poetic drama, contextualising it within theatrical traditions.
More...Keywords: Marian Płachecki; Polish Positivism; Polish Literature 19c; Pan-Slavism.
Review: Marian Płachecki, Wojny domowe. Szkice z antropologii słowa publicznego w dobie zaborów (1800–1880) [‘Civil Wars. Essays on anthropology of public speech in the era of Partition, 1800–1880’], Wydawnictwo Instytutu Filozofii i Socjologii PAN [Institute of Philosophy & Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences], Warszawa 2009. In his comprehensive article, Professor Henryk Markiewicz, the outstanding expert in Polish Positivism, speaks critically and polemically of the book under review. Whereas he respects the book’s volume and scholarly instrumentarium, as well as interpretative originality with respect to certain works and proposed model of pursuing a new discipline – i.e. the anthropology of public speech, he remains at odds with most of the remaining theses proposed by Mr. Płachecki. He rejects the proposed severe criticism of by-far descriptions of Positivism in the history of Polish literature, as well as a damning description of the writings and attitudes of many a Positivist author – particularly, Aleksander Świętochowski. He is also of opinion that the attemptedly-unbiased Positivist criticism of the nobility and the clergy and the partitioning states’ oppressive attitudes toward these estates are in fact beyond compare. Mr. Markiewicz also disagrees with the statement that Positivists completely abandoned any action to uphold Polish national awareness in the education system and social-oriented journalism, for their legalist strategy is not to be confused with a loyalism toward the authorities. Also the group’s accusations of Pan-Slavism as an ideology favouring the Russian domination are found groundless, beside a few rather ambiguous exceptions.
More...Keywords: Gender Studies; Feminism; Queer Theory; Postmodernism
A review of Gender and Sexuality in Ethical Context: Ten Essays on Polish Prose, edited by Knut Andreas Grimstad and Ursula Phillips (Bergen: Dept. of Russian Studies, University of Bergen, 2005). The reviewer observes that the editors and authors of the book fulfilled their tasks outlined in the introduction, even though in some essays their planned descriptions of ethical programs of writers are not always clear. While discussing each essay, the reviewer looks at how Polish prose is analyzed with regard to the categories of gender and sexuality, the formulations of “maleness” and “femaleness,” the presentations of various sexual practices, and the strategies employed in the formation of sexual identity. The reviewer finds that the authors of this well-edited anthology examine Polish literature not from a narrow ideological perspective but through a broad lens of its thematic and formal problems, and against the background of European literary tradition.
More...Keywords: Polish literary criticism 20-21 c.; Language; Contemporary Polish Literature;
The author compares contemporary reflections on literary criticism with the critical discourse of the 1970s. Despite changes in the humanities as a broadly conceived field, and despite complications related to the circulation and identity of criticism, certain areas of the discussion still thrive. Where this is the case, contributors to the debate find themselves in disagreement. There is an opposition between the “ideologicality” represented by Kinga Dunin and Przemysław Czapliński, versus the “autonomy” proposed by Krzysztof Uniłowski and Joanna Orska. In other words, the dispute is between an attitude of involvement and disengagement.
More...Keywords: Justyna Kowalska-Leder; Review; Holocaust
Review: Justyna Kowalska-Leder Doświadczenie Zagłady z perspektywy dziecka w polskiej literaturze dokumentu osobistego [The Experience of the Holocaust from the Child’s Viewpoint in Polish Literature], Wydawnictwo UWr, Wrocław 2009
More...Keywords: Mateusz Werner; Review; Witold Gombrowicz; Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz
Review: Mateusz Werner Wobec nihilizmu. Gombrowicz. Witkacy, [In the Face of Nihilism. Gombrowicz, Witkacy] Wydawnictwo sic! Warszawa 2009
More...Review: K. Wolański Sędzia Schreber. Bóg, nerwy i psychoanaliza, Warszawa 2012, seria „Nowa Humanistyka”.
More...Keywords: Reconstruction of national states after the First World War
More...Keywords: Tomasz Nargielewicz; scholarly editing; textology; dominicans
The works of Tomasz Nargielewicz OP are being edited by experts from the Department of Medieval Literature at the Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences. Responding to a debate within the Department, Cybulski proposes a different view of the origins and status of the codex “Pawlik. 3” and of the integrity of the works it contains. Seen in its cultural context and from the perspective of intentionality and aesthetics, the codex must be recognised as an autonomous object. Neither Arfa duchowna nor Różne historyje, Cybulski argues, ought to be separated or otherwise divided in a new scholarly edition.
More...Keywords: food; aesthetics; food studies; art; culture
Review: Dorota Koczanowicz, Pozycja smaku: Jedzenie w granicach sztuki [The Position of Taste: Food at the Borders of Art], Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, Warsaw 2018.
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