Series:Mistrzowie literatury amerykańskiej

16.00 €

Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: entropy; history; postmodernism; poetics; Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon is an acclaimed American writer associated with postmodernism. His fiction offers complex insights into the social, cultural and political dimensions of American life, describing a variety of important phenomena, such as the invasion of entertainment industry, the expansion of new technologies, the strengthening of regimes within apparently democratic establishments. Pynchon dissects the linguistic mechanisms of communication and of shaping human consciousness.

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17.00 €

The Beatniks

Bitnicy

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: American writers of the lost generation; American writers of the 20th century; Beatniks; Beat Generation; Allen Ginsberg

Unconventional biographies, interesting characters and individual talents of the most important American writers born at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s and belonging to the Beat Generation. The publication presents the profiles and works of the authors who became the icons of the Beat Generation, so-called the second lost generation of the young, vulnerable Americans, rebelling for freedom like in “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg. The title Beatniks are, among others: John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Johnson, Diane di Primy and Richard Brautigan.

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17.00 €

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: Hemingway; American literature; 20th century

This collection of essays reflects the directions of contemporary criticism of Hemingway’s prose and represents diverse critical strands and approaches. Aiming at critical variety over consensus, the authors demonstrate the rich legacy of the master from Key West and hope to convince the reader that Hemingway’s prose can still hold its appeal.

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15.00 €

Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: Annie Proulx; regionalism; naturalism; nature writing; cultural geography; U.S. West; literary topos

The philosophical underpinnings and existential implications of Annie Proulx’s fiction situate it in the tradition of literary naturalism. The writer portrays characters from the lower social classes, people who are unable to overcome the impasse in which they have found themselves. Far from idyllic sentiments, Proulx’s approach to the experience of place connects her to the writers associated with so-called new regionalism. She shows the degrading influence of the life amidst beautiful natural surroundings on individual human psyche. Proulx looks closely at the processes of the commodification of regional culture and interprets them as symptoms of a dangerous global tendency.

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17.00 €

Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: Cormac McCarthy; American literature; American writers of the 20th century; Blood Meridian; No Country for Old Men; The Orchard Keeper; Outer Dark; Child of God; Suttree; The Stonemason; Sunset Limited

A book from the “Masters of American Literature” series, devoted to the works of Cormac McCarthy, considered one of the four most important contemporary American novelists. His early novels are part of the literary tradition of the South, and they reflect the fact that the writer’s roots are firmly embedded in archetypal, symbolic, and mythical constructions. In his later works he refers to the Western style.

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13.00 €

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: Toni Morrison; American literature; female Nobel Prize winners; African American women; American racial heritage; African American culture

An analysis of the works of the most prominent African American female writer of the 20th century, Toni Morrison, who received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and was the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Prize (1993). In her works, Morrison draws attention to the rich African American culture and history, as well as American racial heritage, with a particular focus on women’s issues.

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16.00 €

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: David Foster Wallace; solipsism; philosophy of language; addictions, existentialism; fragmentation; mathematics; postmodern; New Journalism; media

The first Polish study on the work of one of the most significant American authors of the turn of the centuries offers an overview of Wallace's oeuvre featuring its major themes, recurrent in a variety of contexts, important philosophical influences, and characteristic qualities of his poetics.

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19.00 €

The Poets of the New York School

Poeci Szkoły Nowojorskiej

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: The New York School of Poetry; John Ashbery; Frank O’Hara; James Schuyler; Kenneth Koch; Barbara Guest; Amiri Baraka; poetic influence; Andrzej Sosnowski; Maciej Melecki; Marcin Sendecki

This publication contains essays devoted to the poetry of John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, and Barbara Guest – poets whose talents flourished in the rich environment of the 1950’s and 1960’s New York, when a complex intersection of artistic and institutional influences led to the outburst of an avant-garde renaissance.

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18.00 €

James Baldwin

James Baldwin

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: James Baldwin; African American literature; Bildungsroman; United States history

The book is devoted to the works of James Baldwin, one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. The authors examine his most important contributions – including novels, essays, short stories, poetry, and media appearances – in the wider context of American history. They demonstrate the lasting importance of his oeuvre, which was central to the Civil Rights Movement and continues to be relevant at the dawn of the twenty-first century and the Black Lives Matter era.

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16.00 €

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: Susan Sontag; camp; photograph; pornography; fascism; illness; ethics; Roland Barthes; Walter Benjamin

The volume offers a comprehensive presentation of Susan Sontag's writing. Her works have been situated within a range of contexts, and the theoretical underpinnings of the articles reflect major critical approaches to Sontag. Her writings remain relevant despite the passage of time and continue to provoke discussions. They contain complex analyses of important American cultural phenomena of the second half of the 20th century.

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17.00 €

John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: John Steinbeck; California; ecocriticism; postcolonialism; animal studies

One of the most prominent American writers of the 20th century. Author of many novels, including "Tortilla Flat" (1937), "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939), and "East of Eden" (1952). In 1940, Steinbeck received the Pulitzer Prize (for "The Grapes of Wrath") and, in 1962, the Nobel Prize (for all his writings). Readers have valued Steinbeck for his insightful critique of the American Dream and for his heartfelt depictions of common people. However, critics have accused him of excessive political engagement and sentimentalism. No works of literary criticism devoted solely to Steinbeck have been published in Poland until now. This volume, participating in the international revival of critical interest in the work of this American writer, reminds the reader of the significance of Steinbeck’s literary output.

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18.00 €

William Faulkner

William Faulkner

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: American literature; modernism; William Faulkner; American South

An expert stylist and original experimenter, promoting the stream of consciousness method, devoted his works to the American South. He inspired such writers as William Styron, Mario Vargas Llosa, Alberto Moravia, Toni Morrison. In 1949 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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18.00 €

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: Kurt Vonnegut; American literature; democracy; ecocriticism; trauma; irony

The authors discuss some of Kurt Vonnegut's most important novels. They point to those aspects of Vonnegut's work which fifteen years after his death continue to be relevant in the face of current crises: threats to democracy posed by populist demagogues, degradation of the natural environment and climate change, as well as the reemerging specter of nuclear conflict.

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18.00 €

Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: Dave Eggers; contemporary American literature; American writers of the 21st century; post-millennial prose

Dave Eggers – a publisher, an educator, an activist, and one of the most renowned and versatile contemporary American writers. Since Eggers’s literary debut, his prose has been growing increasingly attuned to the world and reflective of the problems, transformations, and challenges of the new millennium. The publication is the first book in Polish devoted entirely to Eggers’s literary oeuvre. Adopting various critical perspectives, the authors of the chapters demonstrate the whole spectrum of the writer’s literary interests and situate his fiction in the broader context of contemporary American and world literature.

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18.00 €

Joan Didion

Joan Didion

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: Joan Didion; New Journalism; California; Hollywood; non-fiction

Joan Didion – an American novelist, journalist, essayist and author of screenplays. She often wrote about her Californian roots and critically reassessed the historical legacy of her native region, showing that the determination of pioneers shaped their exploitative mentality. Her debut book was a novel titled "Run River" (1963) and she gained general recognition thanks to two non-fiction books about the era of counterculture: "Slouching toward Bethlehem" (1968) and "The White Album" (1979). In the new millennium, Didion achieved a huge success by publishing "The Year of Magical Thinking" (2005), a grief memoir written after her husband’s death.

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20.00 €

Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: Flannery O’Connor; American South; Catholicism; Gothic; reception

This collection of essays is the first book-length study in Polish of the works, and to some extent the life, of Flannery O’Connor. Reflecting current research and methodology in literary studies, theology, and philosophy, it covers the writer’s complete works (including essays and letters), biography, reception, and strategies for translating her fiction into Polish.

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