Astrid Lindgren’s genre equilibristics

The paper examines genre strategies in a number of children’s books by the well-known Swedish author, Astrid Lindgren. Drawing on the reception theories of Hans Robert Jauss, Aidan Chambers and Reinbert Tabbert, the paper demonstrates that the stormy reception of Pippi Longstocking (1945), prompted by a review by Professor John Landquist, had principally genre-related grounds. The book made readers feel a sense of provocation because it challenged their archetextual horizon of expectations by evoking certain traditional genres and simultaneously twisting them in almost anarchic ways. In later books Astrid Lindgren makes a more elaborate use of classic genre structures. She generally chooses one well-known archetext as the generic dominant and allows it to interact with a set of other genres, thus calling forth the main aesthetic effect of the book from the archetextual dialogue between the dominant and the accompanying genres. The paper specifically investigates this polyphonic method in three of Lindgren’s most popular books. In All about the Bullerby children (1947–52) the generic dominant is idyll and the subordinated archetexts satire, parody, burlesque, farce, fairy tale and ballad. Mio, my son (1954) can be considered as an artistic fairy tale (Kunstmärchen), this dominant genre correlating with some other interwoven archetexts: apocryphal gospel, myth, legend, heroic tale and idyll. Finally, the generic dominant of Ronia, the robber’s daughter (1981) – a novel about the adventures of a band of robbers (Räuberroman) – finds its archetextual counterparts in folktale, popular legend, myth, burlesque, fantasy and Bildungsroman, among others.

Lord Byron and the Metamorphoses of Polidori’s Vampyres

The aim of this article is to investigate the links between vampire stories and plays and Lord Byron in the context of his early nineteenth-century reception in Europe, and particularly in Poland. Byron is often regarded as one of the main originators of vampire stories in modern European culture and occasionally even as a model for vampiric characters. This image of Byron was mainly constructed on the basis of a passage in The Giaour and John Polidori’s tale The Vampyre, which had first been erroneously attributed to Byron. Owing to Byron’s literary fame as the greatest living British poet as well as to his scandalous reputation, The Vampyre gained great popularity both in Britain and on the Continent, which resulted in numerous theatrical adaptations, especially in France and in Germany. In Poland the French melodrama Upiór (Le Vampire) by Charles Nodier, Pierre Carmouche and Achille de Jouffroy was a great stage success and was published in a book form.
Polidori’s tale allegedly originated in Byron’s idea, the record of which appears in the fragment called “Augustus Darvell”. Echoing the techniques Byron used to suggest to his readers that he himself might be identified with the protagonists of his poetic tales, Polidori similarly invites the reader to identify his eponymous vampire Lord Ruthven with Lord Byron. In Byron’s fragment one can trace only a hint of vampirism; in Polidori’s story it becomes a metaphor not only of sexual profligacy but also of “byromania”, the cult of Byron among his female readers. In popular melodrama the vampire character is conflated with Don Giovanni from Mozart’s opera, possibly because of Byron’s publication of the first two cantos of Don Juan.

The Game of Masks and Desires. Notes on Bernard Shaw’s You Never Can Tell

Bernard Shaw’s Plays Pleasant are an example of realization of convention of realistic social dramaturgy as well as a proof of a serious reflection on condition and construction of the institution of marriage and the family of Victorian era. You Never Can Tell which is an object of analyses in this article raises the question of dramatization of behaviours of individuals, masks worn by individuals because of social situations, a strategy of seduction (social life as drama/game). The institution of marriage functions as an object of critique, a tool in the games between sexes and as an object of affirmation. The “duel of sexes” is the key problem of comedy. Bernard Shaw presents the mechanism of arousing of desire as well as demonstrating that love is a form of game and desire is the basic experience in the construction of human identity.

What’s past is prologue: the Age of Caliban

The article provides a brief comparative study of the reception history of Shakespeare’s Caliban in the early modern period and in the contemporary literary criticism. The analysis aims to delineate a fundamental difference in the reception of the character of Caliban throughout the ages which I attribute to a historical shift in the understanding of the notions of humanity and monstrosity.
The first part of the article concentrates on the description of the historical and social circumstances of the Elizabethan discourse of monstrosity and draws a link between them and the literary and political context of the time, while engaging into a close reading of The Tempest that brings to the fore the origin and nature of the “servant-monster”. The second part of the paper focuses on the gradual change in the interpretations of Caliban who ceased to be seen as a monstrosity and with time acquired undeniably human characteristics. That shift has been observable since the 19th century and has found its culmination in the postcolonial strain of Caliban’s contemporary interpretations, in which Prospero’s slave becomes a native trying to find a language for himself in a colonial regime his body and mind are subjugated to. The postcolonial project of the unfinished monstrous humanity of Sycorax’s son is congruous with the postmodern condition that can be dubbed, to use Harold Bloom’s phrase, “the Age of Caliban”. It is exactly that liminal and paradoxical notion of monstrous humanity that resides at the core of the contemporary fascination with “Monsieur Monster”.

The Natural and the Supernatural in Muriel Spark’s Fiction

A striking feature of Muriel Spark’s fiction is its insistence on the reality of the supernatural, which occasionally breaks into the naturalistic level, defying and challenging habitual modes of perception. The fact of Spark being a religious convert is well known, but her faith is manifested in ways different from what is normally assumed to be religious writing. Spark’s novels are never overtly didactic or moralistic; the impact of her faith is manifest in the notion of reality as conveyed by her fiction. Spark’s vision of reality, underlain by her Catholicism, is based on her conviction that empirical reality coexists with the supernatural world; therefore, interactions with the supernatural, however strange they may seem, are presented in her fiction as compellingly plausible. It is argued in the article that Spark’s ontology of fiction is rooted in a tradition going back to Chesterton, who insisted on the paradoxical conjunction of nonsense and faith, both capable of invoking a sense of spiritual wonder at the world we normally take for granted. Memento Mori, Reality and Dreams as well as selected short stories are referenced to illustrate the peculiar combination of the empirical and the supernatural in Spark’s fiction. The article asserts the paradox, central to Spark’s vision of reality, that the supernatural should be accepted as a natural part of profane experience.

The many lives of Henry James – biographers, critics and novelists on the Master

The return of life-writing genres, biographical writing in particular, to the heart of present-day literary practices remains one of the most interesting phenomena in contemporary literature written in English. The article discusses a number of narratives (written by biographers, literary critics and novelists) which have emerged in the last decades and which attempt to present and critically analyse the life of Henry James, the master of American fiction at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The author recapitulates on the major trends in contemporary biographical practices which address the life of Henry James – especially the conclusions reached by biographers and critics associated with Marxism, Deconstruction, Feminism and Queer Theory. Moreover, the article investigates the phenomenon of the nearly simultaneous arrival of several biographical novels about Henry James.

Works of S. de Beauvoir as an expression of a search for identity

The works of Simone de Beauvoir – an intellectual writer, an icon of feminism, and a representative of existentialism – explore the issues of gender identity and femininity. This article reflects on the writings of the author, which reveal the otherness of a woman who asserts her right to be present in culture. Her works also stress independence and autonomy. Beauvoir’s largely autobiographical texts express a search for identity by a woman with strong social and political commitments, who fought against injustice, intolerance, and wars, defending the rights of women and the human dignity. Through her critique of the bourgeoisie Beauvoir manifested her need for freedom, identified with her occupation. Aware of the limitations attributed to her sex, Beauvoir draws the portrait of a courageous woman with unrestricted identity.
These works remain valid even outside the academic discourse owing to their constant emphasis on creation, independence, and individualism as well as revealing exposures. Self-creation provides an interesting perspective on today’s humanities and inspires women’s writing in the 21st century.

The «beautiful Jewess » in La Comédie humaine by Honoré de Balzac. Ambivalences of a representation

There are many Jewish female figures in French literature. In the 19th century, this fictional, polymorphic character flourished as the ‘beautiful Jewess’, who had a number of permanent traits that reveal her outsider’s relationship with French society, whether as a woman, a Jewess, or an Oriental figure.
Within this literary construction, there is a moment when Balzac takes this character to its extreme. The Jewess, possessing great physical beauty and always depicted in contrast with Jewish men’s appearance, becomes a courtesan and, as such, experiences tremendous joy and suffering. Seeking to escape her twin fate as a Jewess and a prostitute, she remains a victim and never finds happiness. Even though Balzac gives her a richly human character capable of becoming integrated in society, his ‘beautiful Jewess’ stays a prisoner of the limitations of her Jewishness and the established order.
She not only reflects the fantasy of the ‘other’ as a symbol of desire and the forbidden, but also reveals the degree of interdependence and interaction between non-Jewish and Jewish societies. One can therefore legitimately question the meaning of these representations and their subsequent functioning. Rather than anti-Jewish or pro-Semitic, they are primarily ambivalent and do not prejudge their social or even political use. In fact, Balzac’s work, while expressing its author’s unconscious view of Jews in general, is first of all inspired by and borrows from the collective consciousness of his contemporaries.

On disglossia in literature: example of Salvatore Satta’s Il giorno del giudizio

Salvatore Satta’s Il giorno del giudizio is an interesting example of a bilingual novel where co-exist Italian as a dominant or high language and nuorese dialect commonly considered a low language. Sardian language appears in special communicative contests in which Italian results inadequate, despite all its richness and cultural heritage. In the novel relatively few and repetitive words of foreign origin are inserted, and the author involves himself in almost simultaneous translation. Translated words reveal the real possibilities or incapacities of Italian: circumlocutions and synonyms of apparently similar meanings result to be only Platonic shadows, poor reflection of ideal linguistic reality inaccessible for those who use a language different from nuorese. The hierarchy of high-low language is subjected to inversion - a minor, or low language is suitable to express more when it refers to the notions existing only in its particular reality. Any attempt directed to find adequate linguistic analogies between the phenomena of a given social group in a different language results in failure.

Dante’s Ovid in the context of the medieval literary tradition

The aim of this paper is to present the position and role of the poetry of Ovid, primarily the Metamorphoses, the product of a great poetic talent (ingenium) and an equally great poetic art (ars), in the work of Dante. The author’s point of departure in an analytical and interpretative approach is a synthetic overview of the Ovidian literary tradition in the medieval Romanic culture. The original and creative allusions Dante makes to Ovid in The Divine Comedy, which is the main focus of this paper’s intertextual analysis, stand out more clearly against this background. A distinct evolution may be observed in the way Dante assimilated the work of Ovid. In his early work, the Rime and Vita Nuova, Dante treated Ovid as an authority and referred to him to corroborate his own ideas, or tended to imitate the Ovidian style in his erotic lyrics. In the spirit of his times Dante resorted to the allegorical potential of the Metamorphoses in his prose treatises such as the Convivio. But it was not until the Divina Commedia that he embarked on an intertextual dialogue with his mentor, occasionally adopting a polemical stance and endeavouring to stress the superiority of his own ideas. The paper employs the motif of metamorphosis to illustrate the aspect of aemulatio which superseded Dante’s earlier imitatio approach to Ovid.
 

Literary Onomastics in Interpretative and Translatological Context (Sasha Dvanov as the Character of the Chevengur Novel by Andrei Platonov)

By focusing on Sasha Dvanov – the main character in the Chevengur novel by Andrei Platonov – the author points to possible interpretations and connotations of his name, patronym and surname. Thereby, she proves that the writer was choosing meaningful names and surnames for his characters, thus trying to underline their function, their role in the storyline or emboss their destiny. And even though the translation of the character’s surname into Polish was not very difficult for the translators, due to the proximity of the languages and lexical convergence, the wide association context of the surname may be difficult to understand for a statistical reader.

Irish History in the Novels of Sebastian Barry

Critics of contemporary Irish literature note a surprising omnipresence of historical themes in the novels of a country whose present day is so eventful. Such prominent writers like, Roddy Doyle, Patrick McCabe or Sebastian Barry seem to be immersed in Irish twentieth-century history and the national myth. Barry’s theatre plays and novels usually question the official, heroic version of history by focusing on the forgotten and the marginalised: loyalist Catholics, single women, children. The present article analyses two of his novels: The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) and The Secret Scripture (2008), which share some of the characters and are both set in Sligo in the first half of the twentieth century. The present article claims that in the ten years that separates the publication of these novels, Barry’s attitude to history visibly changed. Contrary to the opinion of most critics, Barry’s approach evolved from the uncompromising revisionism of the earlier novel to considerable scepticism about the possibility of objective history and historical truth in the later work. The article also suggests that tracing this process allows the reader to appreciate the writer’s motivation as an attempt to deal with the taboos of the past before embarking on the problems of the present.

Gide with Said. On a case of the (neo)paederastic Orientalism

The article offers an interpretation of André Gide "L immoraliste" novel by combining the views of the gender and gay and lesbian studies with Edward Said theory of Orientalism. The analysis opens with the summary of the cultural context of late 1800s, hostile to men and women engaging in emotional and sexual relations with people of the same sex. It then goes on to argue that a reference to the ancient paederasty presented a positive alternative to the prevailing attitude of that time towards same sex relations, regarding them as medical pathology. The interpretation of Gide novel demonstrates that the paederastic model based on polarized gender roles is transferred into the new cultural context through the Orientalist ideology. Michael (the main character) (neo)paederastic relations with Arab boys are founded on the dichotomous and hierarchical opposition between the people of the Orient and those of the West. Yet the very Orientalist ideology transforms the (neo)paederastic model into its exact opposite: an Arab boy, enclosed in his otherness, passes his own difference on to his European partner, the (neo)paederast thus beginning to resemble the homosexual who was in turn also enclosed in his alleged radical "otherness" by psychiatrists of the 19th century.

Skaz in short stories of Stig Dagerman

In this paper I investigate the narrative techniques in short stories by Stig Dagerman, one of the leading Swedish writers of the 1940s.
I focus on the auctorial narrative situation, in which the narrator exposes his presence in the literary text, taking a position between fiction and reality outside the literature. My observation is that this phenomenon is characteristic for Dagerman’s short stories and that it can be further examined through the perspective of skaz, the oral form of narration.
In the first part of my article I briefly discuss different concepts of skaz presented by different scholars, e.g., Eikhenbaum, Vinogradov and Bakhtin, and I point out their limitations. In my analysis I use Titunik’s model of skaz, which makes it possible for me to describe this narrative device in the most complex way with different kinds of determinants, namely grammatical, situative, expressive, allocutive, dialectical and semantic ones. In the second part of my article I show how these determinants manifest themselves in Dagerman’s short stories. The third section of the article includes my conclusions from the analysis.
Dagerman uses the technique of skaz in his short stories frequently and intentionally, both in homodiegetic and in the heterodiegetic narration. He applies all determinants of skaz from Titunik’s model, a number of different ones at the same time. He uses dialectical determinants of skaz at the lowest pitch, he rather concentrates on expressive and allocutive ones. The narrator does not only mark his position in the literary text, but he also draws the attention to the presence of the narratee. In this way the very act of communication is stressed in Dagerman’s short stories. The analysis of skaz can therefore make an interesting contribution to the studies of communication strategies in Dagerman’s short stories.