„Сърцето на мрака“ – идеи и решения на първата българска постановка

Author(s): Margreta Grigorova,Petya Tsoneva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2019

Heart of Darkness is a multilayered but coherent work whose universally acclaimed appeal draws on its thematic preoccupation with the problems of initiation and cognition. The rich variety of interpretations and creative reworks of the novella vary from discussions of its importance as a sample of anticolonial fiction to the acknowledgement of its role as a precursor to contemporary fantastic literature. The first Bulgarian dramatisationof Heart of Darkness, screen-written and directed by Valeria Valcheva, is an insightful and successful attempt to do justice to both its contents and the suggestive power of its poetics translated into the language of drama.The performance combines the stylistic features of farce, cabaret, ritual and classical theatre, inserting fragments of Edgar Allan Poe, Vachel Lindsay, Tom Waits, Thomas Eliot and even Pushkin’s poems. Valcheva is particularlyconcerned with reading Conrad’s work as a “European” collective narrative where the African Other is rendered through the poetic features of mask-wearing and the symbolic “curtain” of the jungle. The performance is likewise accompanied by music that includes the “talking drums” of Congo, and its stage design was apparently borrowed from Orson Welles’s cinematic adaptations. One of the outstanding contributions of the Bulgarian performance to the earlier attempts at dramatising Conrad’s work is the use of a marionette to represent Kurtz’s self-glorified condition. The play likewise foregrounds the biographical aspect of Conrad’s work related to Conrad and Marguerite Poradowska’s correspondence.

Интервю: „ЕЛА И ВИЖ САМ!“ С Валерия Вълчева, режисьорката на първият български спектакъл по „Сърцето на мрака“, разговаря Маргрета Григорова

Author(s): Margreta Grigorova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2019

A Brief View over American Most Prominent Abolitionist Newspapers and Writings during the Mid XIX Century (1820-1850’s)

Author(s): Borislav Momchilov / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

The main purpose of this article is to show the different aspects of abolitionist literature in United States during the mid-nineteen century. The wide historiographical view of this subject brings to the reader chance to receive accurate knowledge over this object. Over the last few decades the rhetoric over the abolitionism debate is circulating in many aspects, in a slightly range of historical researchers. Important target of this lemma is to show the main and impacting literature and newspaper writings in USA during relevant period.

Echoes of the Infernal Machine: 1940s French and English Literature of Resistance and Collaboration as a Revolution in the Mythic Imagination

Author(s): Tadd Graham Fernée / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

This article comparatively examines French and English literature based on two novels published in 1947, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano and Jean-Louis Curtis’ The Forests of Night. Both novels employ the mythic device to construct narratives on the twilight of the British Empire and the German occupied French Vichy regime, respectively, depicting experiences of resistance and collaboration on the eve of and during the Second World War. Both invent a system of symbolic imagery modelled on the Surrealist template in Jean Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine, that turns the classical mythic device still prevalent in the early 20th century (i.e. in Joyce or Eliot) upside down. The revolution in Mythic Imagination follows the Structuralist Revolution initiated by Durkheim, Saussure and Bachelard, evacuating fixed ontological architecture to portray relational interdependency without essence. These novels pursue overlapping ethical investigations, on “non-interventionism” in Lowry and “fraternity” in Curtis. The novels raise questions about the relation between colonialism and fascism and the impact of non-Western mythic universes (i.e. Hinduism) upon the Mythic Imagination. They have implications for our understanding of gender relations, as well as the value of political activism and progress.

Milton’s Two-Handed Engine as a Conceptual Metaphor

Author(s): Robert Tindol / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

One of the longstanding mysteries of English poetry is the identification of the “two-handed engine” from John Milton’s 1638 poem “Lycidas,” with which Saint Peter threatens to “strike once, and strike no more” the clergy who have been remiss in their duties. A new way of looking at the image is to read the entire passage with George Lakoff and Mark Turner’s theory of conceptual metaphors in mind. The strength of this approach is to show that identification of the two-handed engine should be considered within the context of the entire poem. As many commentators have argued, Lycidas’s posthumous fate as the “genius of the shore” does not rest solely in the actions of Saint Peter, but instead involves a reconciliation that amalgamates elements of both Christianity and the classical world as well as nature. The conceptual metaphor thus provides a single combinatory image.

Od redakcji

Author(s): Weronika Kostecka,Maciej Skowera / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2019

Od redakcji

Author(s): Weronika Kostecka,Maciej Skowera / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2019

Od redakcji

Author(s): Weronika Kostecka,Maciej Skowera / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

Literaturoznawca w roli rodzica, rodzic w roli literaturoznawcy. Omówienia klasyki (i nie tylko)

Author(s): Hanna Dymel‑Trzebiatowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2020

The review article discusses the book Po pierwsze. O literaturze dla dzieci (i nie tylko) [Firstly: About Children’s Literature (and not only)] co-authored by literary scholars from the University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland): Iwona Gralewicz-Wolny and Beata Mytych-Forajter (2019). The book is a continuation of the publication of the same researchers entitled Uwolnić Pippi! Twórczość dla dzieci wobec przemian kultury [Free Pippi! Children’s Literature and Cultural Changes] (2013). In both, the emphasis is clearly put on the Nordic, i.e. Scandinavian and Finnish literature, as evidenced both by the selection of the analysed material and, for example, by the cover illustrations. Therefore, it is discussed first in the review – and from a comparative perspective, since the authors explore the same books as in 2013, mainly the works by Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson. The remaining chapters of the volume are divided into classics, which clearly dominate, and newer books. The article concludes with a comment on the title of the reviewed book and its overall evaluation.

The Evantropian Project: Revitalising Critical Approaches to Young Adult Literature

Author(s): Robert Gadowski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Anna Bugajska’s recent book Engineering Youth: The Evantropian Project in Young Adult Dystopias (2019) is an important and thought-provoking inquiry into the field of young adult literary criticism. While for the average reader, young adult narratives may be associated with juvenile tales created with an intent to provide escapist entertainment, a true connoisseur of youth literature is well aware of an immense didactic potential of this genre. Bugajska certainly belongs to the latter category as she diligently engages with young adult dystopias to highlight the immense critical power of these texts. In the following review article, the author of the paper is going to offer a brief commentary on the critical perspective that Bugajska employs to explore the notion of evantropia. The first section of this review discusses Bugajska’s volume as a part of utopian intellectual tradition, the second section postulates that ideas presented in Engineering Youth enrich literary criticism in the field of speculative fiction and children’s and young adult literature, the third section briefly discusses the layout of the volume and the content of each chapter, the fourth section presents an overview of selected core ideas that Bugajska presents in her work and in the last section the author of the paper offers his final thoughts on Engineering Youth.

Zo(o)graphies: Darwinian ‘Evolutions’ of a Fictional Bestiary

Author(s): Laurent Milesi / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

The essay puts to the test Darwinian evolutionist theories, especially the key concepts of adaptation, natural selection and survival of the fittest, in the reading of several plots and fictions (some of them Ark-related animal fictions) concerned with evolution, trauma, adaptability, mimicry/mimesis and survival: Julian Barnes’s Flaubert Parrot and A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, Timothy Findley’s Not Wanted on the Voyage, Robert Kroetsch’s The Studhorse Man and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Weaving its critical argument with reference to several of Derrida’s reflections – on the impossibility of a pure origin, the proximity between commencement and commandment, the logic of obsequence, or relation between being and following (je suis), applied deconstructively to the traditional hierarchy between the human and the animal, mastery and monstrosity, and logos and bêtise, etc. – ‘Zo(o)graphies’ is structured in a series of interlinked tableaux, bestiaries as well as insets (Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Jacques Derrida’s Glas). Following from the opening evocation of Peter Greenaway’s Vermeer-themed film A Zed & Two Noughts, which introduces the joint semantics of zographein: to paint from life, and zoon: animal, discreetly at work throughout, this study will eventually attempt to recast the problematic of the evolution of literature and literary forms as involution and regression.

ПРОБЛЕМАТИКА МАЈЧИНСТВА У РОМАНУ „ВОЉЕНА“ ТОНИ МОРИСОН

Author(s): Jelena M. Abula / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 74/2021

This paper will examine the concept of motherhood in the light of black feminism in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Morrison, one of the most prominent writers of the 20th century, is trying to present the development of the African- American community and the institution of motherhood in a society characterized by meaningless divisions between race, class and gender. Slavery problematizes the concept of motherhood which represents a connection of conflicting views shaped by different attitudes towards race, gender and class. Therefore, Morrison uses the suppressed voices of African-American mothers to address the problematic concept of motherhood in slavery. The paper explores the complexity of slavery and its influence on motherhood, the powerful ideology through which the Afro-American tradition is transferred, and it also outlines motherhood as a dominant motif that connects the female characters in Beloved.

Editor’s Introduction

Author(s): / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

Loss of Home and Loathing Nostalgia in the English Writing of Central and Eastern European Exiles

Author(s): Christoph Houswitschka / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

Writers who are forced into exile by a hostile government tend to suffer from the grievances of loss and deprivation. They either divorce themselves completely from their former home country or they look back in nostalgia. After 1989, leaving central and eastern European homes was not only a free decision, but could also be an act of liberation. Leaving had not been an easy option before the Iron Curtain had come down. Changing one’s language and writing in English represented this act of liberation. Creating a new memory (e.g. Eva Hoffman) and a literary persona in the language of globalization and cosmopolitanism meant to look back and to discover the new at the same time. This article investigates this tension by reading writers who have published books about both their former home countries and their new English-speaking environments. Loathing nostalgia in the creative process of writing has helped authors, such as Bulgarian Kapka Kassabova and Miroslav Penkov and Czech writer Jan Novak, to imagine new spaces of cosmopolitan belonging without being in denial about the places of their childhood thus redefining the concept of eastern Europe altogether.

Staging Race and Gender in the Era of Contemporary Crises: Dramas of African American Women Playwrights

Author(s): Ifeta Čirić-Fazlija / Language(s): English Issue: 39/2022

Starting from the premise that contemporary crisis is a pervasive continuation of the modern “series of interrelated crises” (Fernández-Caparrós and Brígido-Corachán vii), this article examines the manner in which the US theater has responded to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Simultaneously considering crises as “agents of change and transformation” (xvii) and bearing in mind the #MeToo, and Black Lives Matter movements, the article questions the likelihood of contemporary American theater overcoming its own crisis of representation. Relating modern and current crises, the essay first outlines twentieth century dramatic literature and theaters against the backdrop of the World Wars, the 1918 health crisis, economic depression, and post-war (racialized) society, focusing on plays by American women of color. The study then centers on dramatic and theatrical developments brought about by the annus horribilis of 2020, surveying new genres, authors and performances, and discerning no significant improvement in systemic discrimination on Broadway stages. The essay also offers complementary reading of Trouble in Mind (1955), a meta-drama mirroring systemic racial and gender discrimination in American theaters, and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011) which unravels similar issues, albeit in the film industry.

Powrót do domu. Odbudowa zniszczonej planety w „2312” Kima Stanleya Robinsona

Author(s): Katarzyna Lubawa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1 (21)/2023

This article explores the significance of Earth in the futurological vision presented by Kim Stanley Robinson in his novel titled 2312, maintained in the genre of climate fiction. Intense technological development together with the progressive degradation of the natural environment served as the foundation for a pessimistic perspective, which resulted in the motif of leaving our planet in order to build life anew in other parts of the universe in the literary discourse. Robinson contrasts this direction in thinking about the future with an optimistic narrative, centred around restoration and a return to roots. The text provides an analysis of such an approach, and shows the speculative nature of the picture of humanity outlined in Robinson’s novel. In addition, the aim of the article is to point out the links between the work and a trend which is developing in the space of science fiction – solarpunk.

Człowiek w obliczu bankructwa kapitalizmu. Zakończenie trylogii „MaddAddam” Margaret Atwood jako posthumanistyczna utopia

Author(s): Kacper Tochowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1 (21)/2023

In his article, Kacper Tochowicz analyses and interprets the ending of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy. He focuses on the idea of utopia in postapocalyptic literature as a method of negating the systemic assumptions of late capitalism. Taking this context into account, Tochowicz reads the trilogy in the perspective of posthumanist discourse’s search for human and non-human subjectivity. In terms of methodology, Tochowicz’s analysis is based, on the one hand, on the critique of capitalism and, on the other, on the philosophy of posthumanism. Hence, the most important sources of this approach are Fredric Jameson’s reflections of on the place of utopia in the contemporary world and the philosophical theories of Rosi Braidotti and Bruno Latour. Tochowicz’s main goals are, first, to show how Atwood’s novels can be considered as posthumanist utopias, and, to inquire about the role non-human beings in MaddAddam in relation to Homo sapiens. The interpretation’s aim is to describe the mechanisms governing a world in which man no longer occupies a central position.

Trauma Engraved in Stone. Material Community and the Singularity of a Traumatic Affect in Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It”

Author(s): Michał Kisiel / Language(s): English Issue: 46/2023

The purpose of this article is to trace the behaviour of a traumatic affect based on the reading of Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It,” a poetic ekphrasis of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Tracing the manners in which war trauma is worked through and acted out by the speaker, this paper discusses how trauma eludes both compensating processes. At the same time, the nonhuman or inhuman features of trauma are analysed alongside the nonhuman agency of the memorial. The intersection of both nonhuman modes of being makes it possible to align the trauma discourses with materialist criticism. In addition, the traumatic experience is discussed through its tactile connotations following Komunyakaa’s poem and Maya Lin’s commentaries to her monument. Touch turns out to be a potent category capable of capturing the dynamics of a traumatic affect and a promising trope on which new ethical modes of being together in trauma might be founded. Hence, the aim of this article is fourfold; it attempts to: (1) analyse how Komunyakaa’s poem, informed by the selected developments in materialist criticism and trauma studies, might illustrate and expand the affect of trauma; (2) deepen our understanding of the intersections of the material and the traumatic; (3) investigate how the speculative reorganisation of human and nonhuman boundaries, inspired by “Facing It,” might help in assessing trauma, which necessarily resides at the edges of subjectivity; and (4) propose how the figure of trauma based on vulnerable and transformative limits might revise our understanding of community and formulate an ethical obligation for the traumatic times we live in.

THE ”SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE” OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO INTERACT WITH DISABLED CHILDREN IN KATHRYN ERSKINE’S MOCKINGBIRD, R.J. PALACIO’S WONDER, MARK HADDON'S THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

Author(s): Alina Lucia GRAPINI / Language(s): English Issue: 36/2024

Our innate characteristics influence our interactions with the world. It is well acknowledged that individuals possess varying degrees of shyness and outgoingness, which stem from their unique personalities and influence their perceptions and interactions with others. For such cognitive and social issues to be properly comprehended we have chosen some parental models and also a social model identified through police officers' and interdisciplinary approached via Daniel Goleman's book "Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships"(2006)

The Stepford Wives, Trajectories of Dystopia into Gender, Genre, Class and Race – From Novel to Film

Author(s): Ioana Pankova / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

The Stepford Wives, a novel by Ira Levin published in 1972, describes a micro-dystopian society, which imposes a strict ‘traditional’ order, by transforming women into compliant wives programmed to serve their husbands. The book has been adapted to screen several times. The present paper will focus on a comparison between the original literary work and the first adaptation of 1975 by British director Bryan Forbes, seen through the notions of genre, gender, class and race.