The Monster outside and the one within: the departure from the Tolkienesque concept of monstrosity in the books of G.R.R. Martin

Author(s): Miła Irek / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

There is no doubt about the impact of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien on the fantasy genre, and since G.R.R. Martin is often referred to as the new – or American – Tolkien, comparative studies are practically inevitable. Both authors created great epics set firmly within their own secondary worlds. Tolkien famously proclaimed that he was creating a mythology for England, while Martin affirms his strong inspirations in historical fiction and history in general. Both Arda and Westeros are set in a pseudomedieval fantasy universe, inhabited by various creatures and monsters. Yet, are those monsters the same? For Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring is essentially only one small tale in a wider, more relevant story of the world as a whole. As such, not only the characters or the protagonists, but also the monsters are all merely a small part of a larger picture; they are products of the ever changing wheel of time. In contrast, Martin’s Westeros feels like a mere backdrop for the real stories: the intimate affairs of the numerous complex characters. The monsters, therefore, are also more personal, internal, and harder to find and distinguish from the heroes.

Archetypy (nie)kobiecości w uniwersum Pieśni lodu i ognia

Author(s): Justyna Skrzypnik / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

The starting point for the analysis of the representations of femininity in Game of Thrones is the diagnosis of the declarative and real image of the social order in the depicted world. What is examined is the image of the three-person female deity – the Mother, the Maiden, and the Crone – in the pantheon of gods of Westeros and its influence on the construction of the world, grounded upon parallel sets of binary oppositions. The reinterpretation of Jung’s concept of the anima in the Mother, the Maiden, and the Crone as shown in the novels points to the impossibility of reviving the chivalry. The model that embraces Martin’s embodiments of female archetypes is the queen, in whom the aspects of the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone are combined both synchronically and diachronically. The image of the queen in the novels, exemplified by Daenerys Targaryen, is analysed in the light of two rites of passage determining the progress of transformation of the rational world into the supernatural and magical space.

The Madwoman by the Fireplace: A Comparative Survey of Gothic Horror by Edgar Allan Poe and Harriet Prescott Spofford

Author(s): Gianna Carroni / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The purpose of this study is to identify and highlight parallelisms between short stories by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) and Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835–1921). An extraordinary prolific author, praised by Emily Dickinson, Rose Terry Cooke, and Henry James, Spofford can be seen as one of the “mothers” of American detective fiction (“In a Cellar,” “Mr. Furbush,” “In the Maguerriwock” recall Poe’s tales of ratiocination), and a skilled writer of both adventure and gothic stories. A long life, a successful career, and a happy marriage make Spofford’s personal history radically different from Poe’s tormented existence, undermined by alcohol abuse, loneliness, and poverty. Nevertheless, it is not unusual to find in Spofford’s works several themes that are recurrent in Poe’s literary world: madness, demonic women, characters with a morbid sensitivity, and an egocentric and amoral personality. Both authors challenged the conventional genres of their time and anticipatedthe Freudian unravelling of deranged psyche. Yone, the protagonist of “The Amber Gods,” is a disturbing narrating voice emerging from the grave (echoing Poe’s theme of premature burial). From her room in a psychiatric asylum, the protagonist of “Her Story” tells of the vampire‑like woman that took away her husband’s love and led her to madness, the narratorthus providing the terribly rational description of a neurotic mind. In “In the Maguerriwock,” a female figure sits by the fireplace, maddened with her husband’s abuses and the horror of the dreadful awareness that “three men went down cellar, and only two came up”; the corpse of a peddler lies under the pavement of the cider‑cellar, recalling “The Tell‑Tale Heart” and“The Black Cat.” Whereas Poe dealt with madness in male characters, ascribing it to perverseness, “one of the indivisible primary faculties or sentiments which give direction to the character of Man” (1899: 170), Spofford explores what could be defined as “domestic madness.” The fireplace is the symbol of domestic peace and family happiness, traditionally linked with a female figure; however, Spofford’s heroines are “madwomen” in the eyes of society, breaking the boundaries of “normality” and “morality,” breaking the “angel of thehearth” imagery to get what they yearn for (love, power, independence). Some of them are “mad” because they are “different,” or they have been driven to madness by horror and grief. In a repressive and violent society, madness represents the woman’s reaction.

Exposición Iberoamericana de 1929: Sevilla como la capital de la Raza Hispana

Author(s): Maria Małkowska / Language(s): Spanish Publication Year: 0

The Ibero-American Exposition, celebrated in Seville in 1929, formed part of the regenerationist strategy concocted to compensate for the loss of the colonies. Spain ceasedto be a factual power and had to reinvent itself as a spiritual one. Hence, the Expositionlauded the glorious past, celebrated the rich culture and foregrounded the role of Spaniardsas the civilizing conquerors of the New World. Seville, crucial for the discovery and colonization of America, was a symbol of the past grandeur of the lost empire. By hosting and becoming part of the Exhibition the city, branded as the birthplace of the Hispanic Race, enhanced its symbolic value. The analysis of the program shows the utility of the concept of the Hispanic Race in the process of recreating the myth of Seville, as well as in rebuilding the city: the capital of the new, spiritual empire and the gate of Europe.

The Tyrant with His Back to the Wall

Author(s): Ulrich Gotter / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Why Nero, actually? Truly, he has already had an unprecedented reception as a prototypical tyrant of the ancient world. Today if one were asked to name any three villains of antiquity, Nero would most certainly be one of them. Under such conditions, it is also consistent to include him as the only “classical” example among the poet-despots of modern times, as a sort of paradigmatic opener. On second look, however, his privileged association with the grand poet-criminals of the twentieth century is more of a cliché, with only a narrow foundation in reality.

Poetry and Tyranny

Author(s): Richard James Boon Bosworth / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Where words were concerned, Benito Mussolini, fascist Duce lording over Italy from 1922 to July 1943 (and then, restored by his Nazi allies in the troubled role of “puppet dictator” from September 1943 until his death on 28 April 1945), was a fertile creator. His “complete” works have been assembled in forty-four volumes,2 and, despite their length, they exclude much more material. Probably the most lasting image of this Italian dictator is of him orating, his body, face, and hands in constant if jerky movement with the passion of his phrase making, words bellowed from a balcony or some other elevated spot to the crowd below. The audience was a necessary part of this mise-en-scene. The dictator resounds into the present as the conductor of a modern political antiphony, needing and receiving response from a star-struck crowd, chanting “Duce, Duce, Duce,” “Eia, Eia, Eia, alala,” “A Noi,” and the other simple slogans of the regime. The crowd’s place was loyally to fill any pauses in the oration. When, finally, there was silence, regime propagandists claimed (to approval from some contemporary historians) that this staged charisma had fused leader and people into a mystical union. The enactment of the Duce, as it were, had provided a modern political version of sexual orgasm or religious transubstantiation. Here was the full expression of totalitarian rule over the human spirit.

Stalin’s Writing

Author(s): Eugeniy Dobrenko / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In so far as biographers are willing to bring up Stalin’s humble beginnings as a poet it is usually for the purpose of demonstrating that even in his early years the future dictator was characterized by romanticism and passion for almost Nietzschean fantasies.

Ideology in Execution

Author(s): Albrecht Koschorke / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The first dictatorial book of the twentieth century is Adolf Hitler’s programmatic text Mein Kampf. Unlike later representatives of the same genre, this book has had an impact far outlasting the regime it helped found. It continues to have a remarkably divided reception.

Dead Father’s Living Body

Author(s): Suk-Young Kim / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994), the founding father of North Korea, lies motionlessly in his crystal coffin in Geumsusan Memorial Palace, a solemn mausoleum made of white marble centrally located in Pyongyang. The expressionless look on his embalmed face captures a sense of immovable eternity, enshrined in the living memory of his children—his biological son Kim Jong-il and countless adopted children, namely the people of North Korea.

Mao Zedong’s Poetry

Author(s): Karl-Heinz Pohl / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Since Stuart Schram and Joachim Schickel’s studies of Mao Zedong’s poetry,many share the view that Mao’s poems are the best—indeed, the most vivid and lively—evidence of his ability to combine tradition and modernity, Chinese and Western tradition. In short, they demonstrate his ability to “Sinicize Marxism.”

A Poor Despot Descends to Hell

Author(s): Heiner Lohmann / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

If we follow the lyrical alter ego who intones the above sentences penned for him by the real despot Muammar al-Gaddafi, then despots are a political species, defenseless, persecuted, and threatened in their existence.What is more, in the story “Escape to Hell” which begins with the passage just quoted, it is never once mentioned what is so “shameful” about the tyranny of an individual. Tyrants are not tyrants at all there: they are innocent,and they do not oppress others; they are the oppressed ones.

The Principle of Single-Handed Tyranny

Author(s): Burkhard Müller / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Huddled around a table, the three of us struggle to translate the short text into German. It’s not just that I don’t understand it, or that I am unable to read the Arabic script—I can’t even recognize the individual letters.“Penned by Saddam Hussein in his prison and given to his lawyer for publication.Here it comes.…” We are ready to begin.

Saparmyrat Niyazov’s Ruhnama

Author(s): Riccardo Nicolosi / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

An unusual monument can be found in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat.In a vast park that celebrates the post-Soviet independence of the country,in the middle of a broad fountain, there stands a monumental ten-meterhigh copy of a book. The cover consists of its title, Ruhnama, as well as the name and likeness of the author, Saparmyrat Türkmenbaşi, in gold relief.Ruhnama (literally, “The Book of the Spirit”) is the main work of the first president of Turkmenistan, Saparmyrat Niyazov (1940–2006), who had himself given the title “Türkmenbaşi” (head of the Turkmen) by the Turkmen People’s Council (Halk Maslahaty) in 1993. The most peculiar thing about this monumental book is the fact that it can be “flipped open” mechanically:When thus opened, a multimedia spectacle begins in which the portrait of Türkmenbaşi’s, manuscript pages of the book and propagandistic films on the “glories” of Turkmen history are projected on the inside of the monument, accompanied by the strains of Turkmen music. The scenes displayed are based on passages in the Ruhnama; the solemn reading is transmitted through loudspeakers for everyone in the park to hear.

“Nothing Is Forbidden in My Faith”

Author(s): Slavoj Žižek / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

When Radovan Karadžić, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs accused of organizing ethnic cleansing, was arrested, it was discovered that in his last years as a fugitive, he was “hiding in plain sight” as a spiritual healer, taking part in forums and lectures that gathered up to several hundred people, and writing as contributor for the Zdrav Život (Healthy life) magazine. Can we then also say that “Radovan Karadžić is Dragan Dabić”? The latter is not merely a mask of the former, but his “inner truth.” In other words, the relationship between the two is that of a genuine parallax.

Književnost kao zrcalo posebnosti i opštosti unutar bošnjačkog kulturnog identiteta

Author(s): Sead Šemsović / Language(s): Bosnian Publication Year: 0

The paper is a survey of the stages of Bosniak literary development, along with the relationship between the most significant poetic phenomena of the given time periods and the question of Bosniak identity. As it will be seen, a certain identity image is mirrored in a literary work while, at the same time, the literary work itself tries to develop new identities in its recipients. Furthermore, close attention is directed towards intertextual relations between newer literature and tradition, which is one of the models of cultural memory that helps building literary identity. Through the very same vision of identity, Bosniak literature bears witness to the fact that the history of a national literature can also function as a history of literary taste or a history of searching to understand trauma. Every literary historian makes a choice whether to record a history of change in understanding and experiencing literary aesthetics or to record a history of pain, fear and trauma, as literature offers both.

Discursive Analysis of Auto/biographical Narratives: On the Basis of Prison Camp Literature

Author(s): Joanna Bielecka-Prus / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

“Writing is as much as Picking out and Passing over”: Traces of a Diary in Ryszard Kapuściński’s Lapidarium

Author(s): Wioletta Bogucka / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Proroczy aspekt awangardy

Author(s): Bożena Tokarz / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

The art and poetry of the historical avant-garde contains prophetic elements referring to the later artistic development, which are not subject to a simple continuation but rather continuation via degradation. They result from the two prevalent tendencies at that time: from aesthetic aristocratism in the midst modern civilization’s equalizing tendencies and from seizure of non-art areas, rejection of tradition and reaching for sources; as well as from the perceived blemishes in the image of monolithic perfection. The post-avant-garde work rejected the ideology of the historical avant-garde believing in the role of the artist in the world, in unity, in aesthetic, social and technological utopias, by undertaking the following artistic activities: destruction in construction, language relativism, momentary artistic creation, emotionality against anti-emotionality, hybrid forms, anti-aestheticism, diffusion of arts, the focalization and multinterpretability of the world. The works of Srečko Kosovel and Julian Przyboś have in a different way initiated changes in the post-avant-garde poetry, using some of the mentioned strategies for expressing a different worldview.

Тишината има птичи крака

Author(s): Magdalena Kostova-Panayotova / Language(s): Bulgarian Publication Year: 0

Od „Spavača pod kamenom“ do „Kamenog spavača“ Maka Dizdara: o povijesti knjige i arheologiji teksta

Author(s): Sanjin Kodrić / Language(s): Bosnian Publication Year: 0

The paper offers an insight into some preliminary results of a more general literary-historical and textological research of Mak Dizdar’s manuscript heritage, first of all the poetry collection Stone sleeper, the most important author’s book and one of the most important books of Bosniak and Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature in general. Special attention is given to some key issues of history of the text of the Stone sleeper in the context of the author’s manuscript collection as well as to the modes of its textological historical-critical reading. Along with opening of new research perspectives, some key foundations for the preparation of a critical edition of Dizdar’s most important poetry book are laid in this way.