Próbowanie świata i siebie – Montaigne i Gombrowicz

[Rehearsing the World and the Self – Montaigne and Gombrowicz] The article discusses intertextual, intellectual and poetological relations between Michel de Montaigne’s Essais and Witold Gombrowicz’s autobiographical project. The author shows that the Polish writer was inspired by the French classic’s open poetics and his concept of processual and interactional subject. Gombrowicz was also interested in more specific matters present in Montaigne’s work: philosophical praise of the body, criticism of scholasticism, opposition of the private to the public.

Model baśni filmowej w złotym wieku wytwórni Walta Disneya (wraz z późniejszymi modyfikacjami)

[Model of a Film Fairy Tale in the Disney Golden Age (with Later Modifications)] The article attempts to determine the constitutive elements of a model film fairy tale in the so-called Disney Golden Age and to examine how it was used in later works, both these created by the studio and those by unrelated creators. After preliminary remarks, the author analyses three feature-length animated films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959). In these works, as he notes, one can notice a set of features that make up the classic Disney model of a film fairy tale. Next, the author discusses modifications applied to the pattern during the Disney Renaissance and Revival. Finally, he cites examples of cultural texts polemical to this paradigm which point to the cultural vitality and heterogeneity of the studio’s films.

Znaki na czarnym płótnie, czyli o estetyce przemijającego piękna i o twórczej melancholii Charles’a Baudelaire’a

[Signs on Black Canvas, or Charles Baudelaire’s Aesthetics of Transient Beauty and Creative Melancholy] This article focuses on Charles Baudelaire’s poetics of negativity which exploits absence, blackness, negation, defectiveness, associated by the poet in a paradigmatic way with melancholy and the aesthetics of transient beauty. The basis of the proposed interpretation is the paradoxical metaphor of luminous blackness (a black sun, a radiance without source, a black star, a black canvas), which the poet exploits in his metatextual works. The paper focuses on poems in which Baudelaire approaches that which is beyond the limits of expressibility and is symbolised by blackness and emptiness. Baudelaire’s melancholic poetry appears as a poetry about poetry, a poetry that is paradoxical in the sense that it contradicts stillness, acedia, and creative stagnation, while retaining its negative dimension, rising up against itself.

Karmicielki świata. Mamki mleczne w świetle reprodukcji życia społecznego

[Feeders of the World. Wet Nurses and Social Reproduction] The article is an attempt to outline the history of wet-nursing on the example of France from the late 18th century until the beginning of the 20th century. The main aim of the article is to highlight the social and economic changes undergone by the profession of wet-nursing. This study explores the process in which increasing industrialisation and urbanisation leads to wet nurses becoming gradually subjected to what Karl Marx described as formal subsumption of labour under capital. Wet-nursing was one of the most important functions contributing to societies’ survival and reproduction, which is why at the turn of the 19th century it was commodified and transformed into one of the most alienated types of labour. These processes were accompanied by a series of changes in the social and cultural perception of wet nurses, notably by the so-called rabble discourse typical for the 19th-century means of racialising working class people.

Fenicjanie a sprawa polska. Problemy reprezentacji w „Faraonie” Bolesława Prusa

[Phoenicians and the Polish Cause. Problems of Representationin Bolesław Prus’s Faraon] This article proposes to reflect on selected paradoxes of representation in Bolesław Prus’s novel Faraon [The Pharaoh]. First of all, the author discusses the validity of the notions of “truth” / “falsehood” in literary studies and proves that there is no reason for applying them to fiction. Then, he focuses on the depiction of the uncanny magician Beroes and his actions, which transgress realistic standards of probability. Finally, the author argues that the analogy between the novel’s fictional Phoenicians and 19th-century Polish Jews drawn by some researchers is unjustified both because of the novel’s narrative mode and the writer’s opinions expressed in his other texts.

Henryk Sienkiewicz wobec kryteriów rasowo-antropologicznych. O listach Z wystawy antropologicznej w Paryżu

[Henryk Sienkiewicz and Racial-Anthropological Criteria. On the Letters Z wystawy antropologicznej w Paryżu] This article discusses Henryk Sienkiewicz’s approach to the 19th-century “scientific racism” in his “letters” (press reportage) Z wystawy antropologicznej w Paryżu [From the Anthropological Exhibition in Paris] (1878). The paper proves that the writer’s attitude towards such anthropological criteria as the cephalic index, facial angle, skull volume, and hair shape was significantly influenced by Oscar Peschel’s work The Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution (1876).

Czym jest wielokulturowa literatura dziecięca i młodzieżowa i jak ją badać? Propozycje metodologiczne z perspektywy literaturoznawczej w kontekście polskim

[What is Multicultural Children’s and Young Adult Literature and How to Study it? Methodological Proposals from a Literary Studies Perspective in the Polish Context] The aim of the article is to present several methodological proposals based on literary studies in reference to Polish multicultural literature for young readers. The author discusses foreign theoretical concepts regarding multicultural works and their components and explains the key terminology. She discusses difficulties that arise when trying to apply these concepts and terms in research on Polish multicultural children’s and young adult literature and presents her own definition of this phenomenon. Finally, the author proposes four methods for researching this type of literary works.

Ślady człowieka piszącego. O Pismach ostatnich Henryka Markiewicza

[Traces of A Man of Letters. On Henryk Markiewicz’s Pisma ostatnie] The article is both a review of the book by Henryk Markiewicz and a presentation of the writer’s figure which transpires from its content – a figure of an incredibly reliable and knowledgeable researcher of literature, a seasoned polemicist, and a keen observer of the most recent changes in literary studies.

Tłumacz architekt a tłumacz konserwator zabytków. Kanoniczny i polemiczny przekład Anne of Green Gables Lucy Maud Montgomery jako ogniwa serii translatorskiej

The Translator as an Architect or as a Conservator: Polemical and Canonical Translations as Links in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables Series of Translations into Polish Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables has always been very popular in Poland. Since its first publication in 1908, there have been more than a dozen Polish renderings of this novel, which can therefore be regarded as a translation series. This paper compares two opposite links in the series: Rozalia Bernstein’s canonical and Paweł Beręsewicz’s polemical translations. This paper also includes an analysis of those passages which reflect some characteristics of the juxtaposed renderings, especially the different roles that the translators can play in the reception of a foreign language text as well as the translation strategies they use.

Szczerość i autotematyzm. Przypadek dwóch tekstów publicystycznych Wilhelma Macha

Sincerity and Autothematism. The Case of Two Journalistic Texts by Wilhelm Mach In the present article I examine in detail two journalistic texts by the Polish writer Wilhelm Mach. The main concern of the analysis is Mach’s implicit anxiety to be sincere. I am arguing here that the requirement for sincerity is intricately connected with the political atmosphere of the Thaw period in Poland, which began after Stalin’s death. I put forward the thesis that Mach’s positive validation of sincerity influences his programmatic metafiction and constitutes a reaction to the political situation. At the same time, reading the writer’s proposals against the background of the then-popular Soviet philosopher Vladimir Pamerancev’s ideas, I demonstrate that Mach is not convinced by the model of subjectivity behind the idea of honesty promoted at the time. His awareness of the role of literary conventions leads him to ironic subversion of the idea of directness and sincerity in literature.