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This War of Mine, a critically acclaimed game by 11 bit studios, is the first game to be on the list of supplementary school readings in Poland. The game released in 2014 is an anti-war narrative built around the story of a group of civilians trying to survive the war in Pogoren, city based on wartorn Sarajevo. The game is unique in its mechanics as well as in its serious treatment of death and suffering, but can also be played for pleasure and in that matter is not moralistic, but entertaining. It is an ideal game to offer young people, both as a means of developing their sensitivity and as an encouragement to seek pleasure in experiencing narratives. However, it also fits with other school readings on the cruelty of war, and thus there is a risk it will be used as other texts have been — as a story to make teenagers think about war as a formative experience which makes one a true Pole.
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The article reviews Barbara Szczekała’s publication The Mind-Game Films: Plating with Narration and the Viewer. It contains an analysis of subsequent parts of the monograph; special emphasis was placed on the perception of the films and special emphasis was places on the perception of the films and concepts of theoreticians dealing with this topic (for example, Thomas Elsaesser).
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Hail to the Supermen: Ideology and Pop Culture (Chwała supermanom. Ideologia a popkultura) by Przemysław Witkowski has been considered by Przemysław Czapliński as ‘the monograph’ of pop culture created in the last thirty years. In his essay, Witkowski has made several attempts to reveal how the neoliberal and nationalistic ideologies are related to the popular or mass movies, TV series and shows, music, books, and other pop cultural phenomena. This article is a review of Hail to the Supermen… The author reconstructs the main assumptions and points out some of the most noticeable simplifications and general problems with the book.
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This article discusses the main theses formulated in Poszerzanie pola literackiego. Studia o literackości w internecie written by Elżbieta Winiecka. The author of this monograph has noteworthily analysed relations between literature and the digital world. Important research context here is the notion of literariness and the concept of literary field. The scholar also combines theoretical reflection on the boundaries of literature and the consequences of technological development with critical interpretations of specific texts or projects. The great value of this book is the fact that the author places the reflection regarding digital e-literature in the context of Polish literature and culture. Furthermore, Winiecka emphasises the links between art and contemporary social and political problems. Thus, the researcher takes part in the debate on socially engaged art and the functioning of literary texts in the social space.
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The article is a review of Peter J. Bowler’s A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H.G. Wells to Isaac Asimov. The book presents the history of chosen inventions — and their pessimistic and/or optimistic presentations in various 1900–1965 media — which were to contribute to the progress of British and American culture of the time. Working with a panoply of sources, i.a., selected works of science fiction and popular science, Bowler strives to discuss how particular inventions were enthusiastically and/or fearfully embraced and shaped the future of British and American society.
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In Letramento literário e cordel: o ensino de literatura por um novo olhar [Literary literacy and cordel literature: literature teaching from a new perspective], Gilles Villeneuve Souza Nascimento presents the literary literacy through the cordel genre as a potential solution to the reading and literature teaching crisis in Brazil.Initially, the author dialogues with the theoretical findings of Regina Zilberman, Ângela Kleiman, Rildo Cosson, Ana Cristina Marinho, and Hélder Pinheiro (among others) regarding the reader formation, literacy, literary literacy, and the use of the cordel in literature teaching. The most interesting part, however, is the practical one, which contains a description of the school workshop which proved the appropriateness of the proposal.Although its conclusions are based on results of an experiment on merely 16 students from one school, from a region where cordel literature is particularly popular, Letramento literário e cordel… is a valuable publication which presents very interesting possibilities of making use of a literature often considered — due to its simplicity — as “second-class art.” Moreover, despite the local character of the research, the majority of the author’s observations have a universal application.
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Od dżumy do Eboli. Sposób przedstawienia wybranych chorób zaraźliwych w przykładowych tekstach literatury popularnej [From the plague to Ebola: The presentation of selected contagious diseases in popular literature texts] by Edyta Izabela Rudolf is a pioneering achievement in the Polish research field, opening scientific discourse on the image of an epidemic in popular literature. Published on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, the monograph also provides tools for the study of the newly created pandemic literature.Taking into account the complexity of the research material, which lies on the borderline between the humanities, the social, and biological sciences, the author has quite rightly decided to include her study in the field of medical humanities. The chronological distribution of the extensive research material allowed for taking into consideration the broad historical and social context which influenced the shape of works created in subsequent eras.Minor inaccuracies include the inappropriate use of terminology (such as the term topos) and the questionable assignment of the novel The Andromeda Strain to Chapter Three (it could easily have found its place in Chapter Four).Despite these shortcomings, Edyta Rudolf’s work is a valuable monograph which provides tools for studying the image of contagious diseases in popular literature.
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This article focuses on the book Het andere postkoloniale oog, edited by Michiel van Kempen and published in 2020 by the publishing house Verloren. This book had the goal to present never before mentioned aspects of the colonial history of the Netherlands and its influence on cultural practices of the colonised cultures within the last four centuries. Because of the numerous contributions amassed there, the article discusses in depth only a few. These contributions distinguished themselves either through an original academic approach to the topic or the positioning with regard to postcolonial theories usage. The first part of this book involves the need for the re-evaluation of the Dutch colonial history in many parts of the world, to name Suriname as an example. This re-evaluation is highly relevant, as is comes in a time when recent social movements push the mostly unknown parts of the Dutch colonial history into the spotlight. In the second part, this is followed by an attempt to answer the question whether postcolonial theories are essential for the writing bound to the colonial history of the Dutch. As is shown by some contributions, postcolonial theories can stimulate new discussions, especially in cases which do not fit the existing theoretical schemes. And yet, it seems that they are not crucial in discussions about the influence between colonised cultures, though their use might prove fruitful. The article closes with an evaluation of the analysed texts.
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Publications on Dutch literature about the Belgian Congo that have appeared to date are fragmentary and scattered across scholarly as well as cultural journals, collected volumes, and conference proceedings. There are practically no comprehensive studies on the history of Flemish colonial literature. Koloniseren om te beschaven. Het Nederlandstalige Congoproza van 1596 tot 1960, a recently released book by Luc Renders, aspires to redress this gap in research. Renders’ book can be considered the first as wide-ranging and detailed literary-historical exploration of pre-1960 colonial literature, which is presented against an extensive historical background. Crucially, Renders not only compiles the existing research on colonial writings in Dutch, but also contributes to it in an important way.
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The mass media are a prominent actor in the current debate on literature. In many ways, they contribute to defining its terms and settings, including what is said, whose voice is deemed valid/legitimate, and how it is all done/expressed. The mass media no longer merely mediate; rather, they produce views on and assessments of writers and their work. In his book De literatuur draait door. De schrijver in het mediatijdperk (2019), Sander Bax discusses selected cases of the media presence of well-known Dutch authors and their books to offer an insightful and accurate exploration of the ways in which the mass media influence the debate on literature and literature itself.
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