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Memories of War as Literature and Historical Sources in selected diaries of II World War This paper aims at defining the features of literature of reminiscence, especially of works related to the Second World War. The analysis is based on two memoirs: „Mój wrzesień 1939” [„My September 1939”] by Marian Jędo and „Inną drogą” [„Another way”] by Wiesław Widloch. The texts shows how the authors share their experiences/stories with recipients. As noted by Hayden White, it is impossible to get an objective image of past events, but one can analyze the way these events were experienced and described. As a consequence, the paper starts with theoretical considerations about the functioning of both historical narration and narration of reminiscence in contemporary historical and Literature theses, and also among the recipients of historical books. In fact it is worth mentioning the connection between the research on literature of reminiscence and microhistory studies. In both cases the key issue is to focus on the life of a selected person and to see the world from his or her perspective. Among the research methods used in the present work one can find not only methods defined in the literature dedicated to memoirs analysis but also methods created by historians representing historicism.

Biography of the journalist in communication aspect on the example of books by Angelika Kuźniak This paper attempts to legitimize and distinguish the journalistic variant of biographical writing from other functional forms, including scholarly and literary biography. The presence of the term „journalistic biography” in the professional and amateur criticism is a manifestation of the readers’ awareness of genre theory and understanding a genre as a communicational convention. This kind of perception is closely related to the phenomenon called „horizons of expectations” and the particular pact made between the author and the reader. Focusing on Angelika Kuźniak’s works, the paper shows the specific role of a reporter being the biographer and a biographer being the reporter. The analysis of Kuźniak’s biographical books (Marlene, Papusza and Stryjeńska) and reportage (Mam bardzo cienkie powieki) helps to recognize the differences between the biographical reportage and the journalistic biographical story. Following this distinction, the paper suggests that the term „journalistic biography” should be considered as a name of the group of genres and discourses related to the functional styles or, in other words, a specific transmitter–receiver situation.

“Papirene brik” (The Paper Bridge) – the poetry as the crossing of the identity boundaries in the early Kadia Molodowsky’s output This paper presents how woman’s subjectiveness is expressed in the early (pre-Second World War) Kadia Molodowsky’s poetry and how it influences the definition of a social role of the poetry and the voice of the poetess in the debate about the Yiddish women’s lyric. These problems are described with the connection to the Jewish religious tradition which was a very important background of Molodowsky’s poetry.

Between the World and the Image – Signs, Symbols and Visual Metaphors in Iwona Chmielewska’s Picturebooks In this article, Marta Kotkowska appeals to the category of the iconic turn and appoints insignias of picturebooks of Iwona Chmielewska. The researcher also analyses meanings of the artistic expression which author uses in her books. Relying on this characterization, Marta Kotkowska presents how this “in between” words and images works, and how, almost in the real time, it generates and transform meanings. In the description of the almost indiscernible and elusive relation between the word and the image which constitutes picturebook, the semiotic categories, such as the sign, the symbol and the visual metaphor are used. The editorial deliberations concerning the congeniality of analyzing projects are summing the whole article. They emphasize that Chmielewska creates every book even in the smallest detail and with full consciousness and that both format, cover and paper, and words and images, are significant.

Ludwik Osiński – professor-aesthete. An attempt to valorize the comparative literature lectures The article is an attempt to give a broad outline of the profile of Ludwik Osiński as a literature lecturer at the Warsaw University. Over the centuries, the author of Zbiór zabawek wierszem has been accused of: lack of originality in concluding, imitativeness, deficiency of qualifications characteristic for a university lecturer, and finally, disapproval for transformations taking place in literature. The purpose of the article is to answer the question about the Osiński’s position among the scientists of the Congress Kingdom. Moreover, this paper is also an attempt to verify the slightly understated, still taken over and reproduced judgements about unilateral and definitely negative attitude of scientists towards the critical legacy of the author of Zbiór zabawek wierszem. When assessing the aesthetic and literary achievements of Ludwik Osiński, two points of reference were determined; the first one is the heritage of Antique, and the other one – the European literary doctrines developing in the 2nd half of 18th and the beginning of 19th century. In the exemplification, the author of the article subjects a fragment of the Osiński’s course (Wykład literatury porównawczej, czytanej w Uniwersytecie Warszawskim, [The lecture of comparative literature, read at the Warsaw University]) devoted to lyrical poetry to research review. A detailed presentation concerns a few issues, mainly the attitude to the antique tradition and the European literary doctrines, as well as understanding of the rules of evaluating and valuing of literary works.

School and academic canon In this paper author considers the question, how literary canon is created and used in education. The answer is based on four points which are: 1) history of the nation, 2) identity of the reader – canon’s receiver, 3) rules of literature’s theory and 4) authority of the educational institutions and the people involved.

Mickiewicz, poetry and anecdote. Questions about the identity of the creator in poem Ten to też by Tadeusz Różewicz The paper addresses narrative strategies applied by Tadeusz Różewicz in his poem Ten to też (This is also) from the volume Szara strefa (Grey zone), an imagined episode in Adam Mickiewicz’s life. The analysis of the ironic intertextual play with the genre of epistolary reminiscences shows the contemporary writer’s struggle with the Romantic myth of the outstanding, pioneering poet. In the light of parallel experiences of living and writing, Różewicz’s dilemmas of an artist and a human being can be shown by means of an apparently amusing story of a social insult. The biographical anecdote turns out to be a latent attempt at an autobiographical utterance.

Biography as a representation The article presents biography understood as a representation, using Frank Ankersmith’s concept of „rendering justice” to the past, Philippe Lejeune’s referential pact, and Michał Paweł Markowski’s typology of four ideologies of representation. Biography as a representation refers to the very essence of the issue (representation) and textuality, therefore a dedicated subchapter is devoted to literary ways of creating the past. Finally, in paper’s ending part, the issue of re-presenting as embodiment of the author in a symbolic frontier is brought forward, along with the problem of the relationship between the author and the reader.

Periphrasable-metaphorical tombstone inscriptions from the polish cemetery in Adampol (Turkey) The subject of this study is a cultural and poetical analysis of the periphrasable – metaphorical tombstone inscriptions from a Polish cemetery in Adampol (Turkey). Adampol is a Polish village in Turkey. It has been created in 1842. The Polish cemetery located there is a source of interesting information regarding the local Polish society. The tombstone inscriptions show the culture and interference mainly between two different cultures – Polish, closely tied with Christianity, and Turkish, tied with Islam. One of the tombstones analysed shows elements of Hindu culture which makes it a very interesting research material. This paper focuses only on the inscriptions that use figurative language. The material from this cemetery includes only seven tombstones with this kind of epitaphs.

The limits of literary knowledge. On some new theories of interdisciplinarity (including one example) The paper consists of the review of a number of academic approaches to interdisciplinary research as represented by the Polish theorists of literature (Andrzej Hejmej, Michał P. Markowski, Ryszard Nycz). On the example taken from Tadeusz Nowak’s novel A jak królem, a jak katem będziesz, the author attempts to identify the nature of the close relations between anthropological and literary discourses, where the border line between them lies, and, consequently, what benefits for literary studies stem from anthropological readings.

Paper Ariadne, Theseus virtual. The text in the hypertext of city guide The article is devoted to the relationship between “the text of city” and the text of city guides (traditional, in the form of books; and electronic – professional and emerging en route, wandering through social media and mobile devices). The author uses a heuristic metaphor of the city as a maze and a palimpsest that is widely used in the current humanistic reflections on the city. It refers to the myth of Theseus and Ariadne: the former is considered a virtual figure, the latter is a viable form that holds the thread, the solution of the mysterious maze, and also its projection, which is a challenge for Theseus.

Tourist experience in the postmodern city – perspective of urban tourism and latest Polish prose The type and speed of changes that are taking place in today’s world as well as the architecture of the changing social relations and the mode of participating in space directly affect the nature of cities. The article is an attempt of showing the impact of changes in the modern city on urban tourism and connecting them with the image of the tourist identity of literary heroes in the latest Polish prose. The paper is based on findings from the fields of tourism anthropology, urban sociology and the prose of Polish authors born in the 70s and 80s. The combination of tourism and literary perspective aims at showing the relationship between new forms of urban tourism and the experience of urban tourists that is present in the Polish prose. The diagnosis is based on the distinction between two types of spaces of global cities: hyperspace and peripheral space, as well as reflections on the category of the tourist gaze.

My autumn, the sore legs of my mother, the public houses of my Lublin friends. Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki and imitating nothing The article – which is an abridged version of a paper presented on a conference devoted to new views on the category of realism – has two aims. Firstly, to think over the traditional way of formulating the effect of reality as something that is placed inside a literary work of art. Starting from theoretical identifications of a broadly understood poetics of reception, the author tires to show that it is the reader who is responsible for creating this effect, also because he possess the extratextual knowledge about the text, which it cannot be eliminated from the act of interpretation. In the analytical part – and this is the second aim of the article – the author undertakes an attempt of checking his theoretical intuitions in confrontation with poetry by Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki from the tome A song about dependencies and independencies (Piosenka o zależnościach i niezależnościach) which is exceptionally strongly marked with both autobiographical context and figurization aimed at blurring it.

An unfaithful phrase. Semantics of the enjambment in Mieczysław Jasturn’s translations of Das Buch der Bilder by Rainer Maria Rilke The article discusses a broadly understood relation between the translation of a poetic text and versification. Assuming that reading a poem (as well as its translation) is always an interpretation that heavily depends on the reader’s activity, his choices and intentions, and assuming that the prosodic shape is an important sensemaking factor, the author of the article tries to show how the title “unfaithfulness of a phrase” – translator’s incorrect reading of the source text’s prosody (in Bloom’s understanding) – might influence the shape of the reader’s perception of the text and thus become an important factor of the poetic semantics. Assuming the asymmetric paradigm of the theory of a poem, the author does not focus on the metrical size nor the poetic rhyme (as it is frequently done in older papers) but on those aspects of a poem (like enjambment or the graphical shape of the text) that used to be marginalized, and which – if viewed from the perspective of the reader – are easier to notice than intertextual qualities of the meter that require familiarity with versification rules.