The function of dance in Shakespeare’s plays, as in all Renaissance culture, has its roots in the antiquity in which dance symbolized concord and harmony that reflected the cosmic movements of celestial bodies. In this context the significance of dance in the ball scene at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet presents itself as a fascinating material to be studied from the perspective of the theatrical potential of the dramatic text. In this scene, music and dance play a symbolical role the aim of which is to highlight the dramatic irony realized by the fusion of rhetorical language and choreography, with the rich formalized poetic language and the ball situation as the key elements of the plot. This fusion opens a range of possible theatrical interpretations, each decision having a major influence on the meaning of this episode. In the article the ball scene is analyzed from the literary, dramatic and historical perspective. The realization of its theatrical potential is illustrated with chosen stage productions which prove this scene’s crucial role in suggesting possible interpretations of the whole tragedy. 

Byron claimed that Manfred had not been intended for the stage, but his dramatic poem was occasionally produced in the nineteenth-century theatre. In 1848 Robert Schumann adapted the poem for stage performance, composing the Overture and incidental music. Schumann’s version of Manfred was staged in Warsaw Teatr Wielki, with Józef Kotarbiński, a well-known actor, theatre manager and critic as the protagonist. The production was followed by a heated debate in the press. The central controversy focused on whether Byron’s “metaphysical drama” was suitable for the stage and relevant for the late nineteenth-century Polish audience. The aim of this paper is to examine central issues in this debate by scrutinizing the press reviews of the Warsaw production. As the reviews are by their very nature subjective, their examination reveals much more about their authors’ literary and theatrical preferences than about the performance itself, and provides an insight in the early stages of the development of the so-called Young Poland movement (Młoda Polska), with its emphasis on individualism and subjectivity, interest in metaphysics, and prevalence of lyricism. The 1892 Manfred in Warsaw may be seen as an attempt at introducing great Romantic poetry in the theatre, paving the way for the theatre productions of Polish Romantic drama, which Kotarbiński was to stage as the manager of Teatr Miejski in Kraków. The article also contributes to the history of Byron’s reception in Poland.

The research analyzes the Serbian Uprisings against the Ottomans as the transgression into Modernity. A special consideration is given to ideological and cultural changes in Serbia in the 19th century. The author explains how the overthrow of the Turkish rule made it possible to initiate the process of creating of the modern Serbian state, nation and culture. The paper analyzes selected works of Serbian authors and activists: Dositej Obradović, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and Svetozar Marković who contributed significantly to the success of the Serbian transformation in their cultural and ideological spheres. The article conludes that the Serbian Revolution created a model of political and social progress in the Balkans.

Postcolonial discourse in modern Russian literature is conditioned by the peculiarity of Russian colonization, which was most interestingly characterized by Alexander Etkind in his conception of “internal” and “external” colonization. This conception became the basis of the analyses of the novel Sorrow Sleepers by Vera Galaktionova presented in this article. The action of the novel takes place in a small village in Northern Kazakhstan, inhabited basically by Russians. The perception of the novel based on the conception of “internal” and “external” colonization allows to explicate the connection between the postcolonial trauma and the moral and religious crisis, which hits not only the Russian minority in former Soviet republics, but the Russians in Russia as well.

Paula von Preradović’s literary output consists mainly of poems, including the lyrics for the national anthem of Austria, Land der Berge, Land am Strome [Land of the mountains, land on the river] (1946/1947), but she also wrote several novellas, autobiographical sketches, small scenic works and journalistic texts, as well as one novel. This article investigates the conception of holiness in Preradović’s novella Die Versuchung des Columba. Saint Columba, the protagonist of the novella, was an Irish abbot and missionary. He is remembered today as a Catholic saint and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. The analysis focuses on the character of Columba, his behaviour, actions, development and the psychological stages he has gone through. Preradović explains her conception of holiness with the example of Columba’s life. She does not define holiness as infallibility, but primarily as integrity and a sense of responsibility for fellow men. The author describes it as that virtue by which one makes all one’s acts subservient to God. She ranks it among the infused moral virtues.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the representation of landscape in the novel Eyes of the Rigel (2017) by the Norwegian writer Roy Jacobsen from the perspective of geopoetics, including literary sensory geography, which accentuates geographical conditions of perception by making use of the findings of geography and anthropology of the senses. The protagonist of the novel lives on a small island off the northern coast of Norway and goes on a journey lasting several weeks, heading towards the south, from the sea through the interior of the country. In Jacobsen’s novel, the sensual landscape of the mainland is shaped mainly by auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, and visual experiences, while the home island of the protagonist remains the reference point for these experiences.