„Biorę życie i zamieniam w idealny kamień” — rzecz o warszawskim Bazyliszku

The paper aims to examine images of the Basilisk in Polish children’s and young adult literature. It also compares the monster’s image known from traditional urban legends with its depictions in their postmodern versions. In the original variants of the legends, this creature takes various forms — supposed to be a monster that hatches from the egg laid by a rooster, it is often described as an animal the size of a hen, with a turkey neck and head and a frog’s eyes; partially a cock, partially a reptile, etc. The hybrid image of the Basilisk allows the elements of its characteristics to be used in later versions of the story and its re-workings. The analysis herein focuses on Legendy Warszawskie. Antologia [Warsaw Legends: An Anthology] (2016) which presents six versions of the Basilisk’s legend. These texts are juxtaposed with the project “Legends of Poland” by Allegro (e-book and a short movie Operacja Bazyliszek [Operation Basilisk]), as well as with the novel Felix, Net i Nika oraz Pułapka Nieśmiertelności [Felix, Net and Nika and the Trap of Immortality] (2007) by Rafał Kosik, and Księga Potworów [The Book of Monsters] (2016) by Michał Rusinek. The author concludes that the Basilisk may be seen as a transfictional figure that transcends the boundaries of the original storyworld, which shows that — as many other legendary monsters — it should be seen not as a past phenomenon, but rather as something that still “lives” in culture and constantly evolves.

The Hopping Dead. Zombies in the Chinese Culture

The article examines the image of zombies in Chinese culture, the traditional perception of their appearance and internal characteristics. A wide scope of written sources served as the basis of the study: inscriptions on oracle bones, ancient fortune-telling calendars, historical treatises, chronicles and commentaries on chronicles, essays on geography and medicine, fiction of old and modern China, as well as entries and comments from the Chinese blogosphere. The authors examine how the idea of evil spirits (with a body or bodiless ones) first appeared in the religious worldview of the ancient Chinese, and trace its origin to the doctrine of existence of multiple souls in one person. The article also details the formation of the pictorial image of Chinese zombies: animated corpses covered with hair or dressed as government officials, with their arms extended forward, hopping on straight legs unable to bend their knees. As for the functional characteristics of zombies, the authors discuss not only their well-known features (e.g., cannibalism), but also their deep inner connection with water and drought. In conclusion, the authors explore the evolution of zombies in modern urban legends and demonstrate the continuity of traditional demonology that develops into modern narrative. Apart from that, the article contains a number of analogies and comparisons of the Chinese image of zombies with other nations’ mythological tradition.

Children’s Engagement with Urban Legends: Temporality and Collective Story-sharing Through Horror Narratives

<p>This thesis explores how children engage with horror narratives in the digital era and how this engagement has changed over the last decade. The term ‘Horror narratives’ encompasses a wide range of genre-based storytelling from urban legends, to creepypastas, to images, YouTube videos, and internet forums. It is a broad form of story-sharing that transcends physical and digital mediums. I examine the relationship between the horror narratives, the individual child, and wider group engagement in real-life and on a digital platforms, and how this has changed over the last fifteen years. Over the past twenty years children’s access to personal devices and digital media has expanded rapidly. I ask whether oral tradition has been overtaken by digital horror narratives. What does story-sharing look like in a digital medium? Part of this paper is looking at how children’s horror narrative repertoires develop and what stories are retained and disseminated among their peers. In my childhood era the predominant form of dissemination was oral story-sharing, but during my fieldwork with young scouts I learned that children engage in a variety of media for dissemination as they now have easier access to internet communities on their personal devices. I have compared popular oral urban legends from my childhood (Click Click Slide, Drip Drip, and “Johnny, I want my liver back”) to contemporary horror narratives children engage with both in real-life and in the digital medium. My thesis also explores the relationship between young adults in their early twenties and memories of these horror narratives from their childhood, and how these memories have been impacted by nostalgia and retroactive knowledge. The major question of this thesis is how has horror storytelling changed from my childhood fifteen years ago to present time, and what have new technologies contributed to this evolution in horror narration?</p>

Children’s Engagement with Urban Legends: Temporality and Collective Story-sharing Through Horror Narratives

<p>This thesis explores how children engage with horror narratives in the digital era and how this engagement has changed over the last decade. The term ‘Horror narratives’ encompasses a wide range of genre-based storytelling from urban legends, to creepypastas, to images, YouTube videos, and internet forums. It is a broad form of story-sharing that transcends physical and digital mediums. I examine the relationship between the horror narratives, the individual child, and wider group engagement in real-life and on a digital platforms, and how this has changed over the last fifteen years. Over the past twenty years children’s access to personal devices and digital media has expanded rapidly. I ask whether oral tradition has been overtaken by digital horror narratives. What does story-sharing look like in a digital medium? Part of this paper is looking at how children’s horror narrative repertoires develop and what stories are retained and disseminated among their peers. In my childhood era the predominant form of dissemination was oral story-sharing, but during my fieldwork with young scouts I learned that children engage in a variety of media for dissemination as they now have easier access to internet communities on their personal devices. I have compared popular oral urban legends from my childhood (Click Click Slide, Drip Drip, and “Johnny, I want my liver back”) to contemporary horror narratives children engage with both in real-life and in the digital medium. My thesis also explores the relationship between young adults in their early twenties and memories of these horror narratives from their childhood, and how these memories have been impacted by nostalgia and retroactive knowledge. The major question of this thesis is how has horror storytelling changed from my childhood fifteen years ago to present time, and what have new technologies contributed to this evolution in horror narration?</p>

After the War and Repressions: Mediating of Traumatic Experiences in Estonian Life Stories

This article looks at how contemporary life stories reflect the historical-political events that took place in the 1940s, and their impact on the development of family relationships. The focus is on the expression of traumatic experiences caused by these events. Observable events, such as the Second World War, living under a foreign power, political repressions, escape to the West, etc., and their impact on Estonian society have been analysed by Estonian sociologists using the concept of cultural trauma. Literary researchers have studied this subject from the perspective of literary trauma theory. This article provides an analysis of Estonian life stories, which is based on the tools of folkloristic narrative research and the trauma conception. Although the narrators do not use the word ‘trauma’, it can be assumed that they express their traumatic experiences in some special way. It appears, for instance, that these first-person narratives provide a laconic description of the situation, relatively free of the emotion that possessed the narrator in the situation being described. The narrative style is determined by the distance between the narrator and the event that traumatizes them. This distance can be created by the narrator through using urban legends and rumours to characterize the general attitudes of the period being described. When the events of the twentieth century were discussed in the stories told in the 1990s, the dynamics of family relationships between two or three generations came to the fore in the stories told in the present time. The changing focus of the stories, shifting from events to the subject of intimacy, directs researchers to observe the transmission and transformation of trauma in a new context.

Geocultural Branding of a Modern City: The Cosmic Perm

Представлено авторское видение одного из возможных вариантов реализации геокультурного брендинга Перми, актуализирующего тему «космического» наследия советской эпохи, прочно закрепившегося в визуально-эстетической среде города. Ее феноменальное ядро составляют официальная и неофициальная топонимика, городские легенды, места памяти, монументальная скульптура, малые архитектурные формы, тематические мозаики, барельефы и сграффито на фасадах зданий. Использована концепция геокультурного брендинга территорий и городов (Д. Н. Замятин) и теория креативного города (Ч. Лэндри). Проанализировано отражение темы освоения космоса в городском пространстве Перми. Изучены особенности закрепления этой темы в наименованиях улиц, облике объектов общественного и культурного назначения. Выделены имиджевые ресурсы, являющиеся концептуальными основаниями геокультурного бренда «Пермь космическая». Разработана геокультурная схема геобренда, отражающая статус различных имиджевых ресурсов в его структуре. For several years, the authors have been developing possible options for a geocultural branding strategy for Perm. The aim of the study is to develop one of the possible concepts for the implementation of the geocultural branding of Perm, the core of which is the “cosmic” past and present of the city. The theme of the cultural heritage of the Soviet era, associated with the exploration of outer space, is an immanent part of the city’s visual and aesthetic environment. Its phenomenal core is made up of official and unofficial toponymy (“cosmic” names of city streets, boulevards), urban legends and traditions, places of memory, monumental sculpture, small architectural forms, thematic mosaics, bas-reliefs and sgraffitos on the facades of city buildings. The analysis uses the concept of geocultural branding of territories and cities by the Russian scientist Dmitry Zamyatin, as well as the theory of a creative city by the British researcher Charles Landry. The city’s image passport, which constitutes the general conceptual basis of the Cosmic Perm geocultural brand, includes: cosmic names of city streets (Shosse Kosmonavtov [Cosmonauts’ Highway], Ulitsa Kosmonavta Leonova [Cosmonaut Leonov Street], Ulitsa Kosmonavta Belyaeva [Cosmonaut Belyaev Street], Ulitsa Akademika Koroleva [Academician Korolev Street], Bul'var Gagarina [Gagarin Boulevard]), monuments and steles (monument to Yu A. Gagarin), the historically first planetarium in the Urals region, exhibition samples of rocket space technology of the city’s large enterprises, unique museum expositions (Museum of Perm Artillery, Museum of the History of Cosmonautics of the Perm Aviation College named after A.D. Shvetsov), products of street artists. For the first time, the article presents the geocultural scheme Cosmic Perm, which reflects these resources. On the eve of its anniversary (2023), Perm has unique opportunities to launch mechanisms for the implementation of a holistic strategy of geocultural development. It is noted thatPerm has enough image resources to enter the top five comfortable and creative cities in Russia. It is possible to launch a real effective strategy for the geocultural branding of a city, provided that cultural and creative activities by city residents and its resource provision are activated, which is quite within the ability of local business communities and power groups. One must not forget about the potential risks of the practical implementation of the Cosmic Perm geocultural brand. The authors emphasize that local authorities should not prioritize only the goals of promoting the development of domestic educational and event tourism in Perm Krai.

How to Manage the Unmanageable: Inconsistent Ottoman Strategies to Prevent Prostitution

Based on narratives, including ‘urban legends’, and Ottoman archival sources, this article deals with prostitution in the Ottoman Empire in view of its legal and judicial treatment according to both Sharia and sultanic law. Ottoman policies towards prostitution included measures and punishments ranging from milder (imprisonment, expulsion, taxation, legalization of brothels) to harsher (death sentence and corporal punishment). Since the Ottoman Empire included territories of a great variety of peoples and local customs the measures applied changed over time and varied across places. The author puts forward the hypothesis that the harshness of punishment depended perhaps also on the impact of conservative religious circles such as the Kadizâdelis and Mujaddidiyah.

Narratives Crossing Borders: The Dynamics of Cultural Interaction

Which is the identity of a traveler who is constantly on the move between cultures and languages? What happens with stories when they are transmitted from one place to another, when they are retold, remade, translated and re-translated? What happens with the scholars themselves, when they try to grapple with the kaleidoscopic diversity of human expression in a constantly changing world? These and related questions are, if not given a definite answer, explored in the chapters of this anthology. Its overall topic, narratives that pass over national, language and ethnical borders include studies about transcultural novels, poetry, drama and the narratives of journalism. There is a broad geographic diversity, not only in the anthology as a whole, but also in each of the single contributions. This in turn demand a multitude of theoretical and methodological approaches, which cover a spectrum of concepts from such different sources as post-colonial studies, linguistics, religion, aesthetics, art and media studies, often going beyond the well-known Western frameworks. The works of authors like Miriam Toews, Yoko Tawada, Javier Moreno, Leila Abouela, Marguerite Duras, Kyoko Mori, Francesca Duranti, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, Rībi Hideo, and François Cheng are studied from a variety of perspectives. Other chapters deal with code-switching in West-african novels, border-crossing in the Japanese noh drama, translational anthologies of Italian literature, urban legends on the US-Mexico border, migration in German children's books, and war trauma in poetry. Most of the chapters are case studies, and may thus be of interest, not only for specialists, but also for the general reader.