The article is devoted to the problem of modern masculinities considered as a set of dominant and alternative images of men, ways of behaviour or identity strategies. Their sources can be tracked to the 19th century, the time when – according to many researchers – the modern masculinity was constituted. Connell’s claims about the “hegemonic masculinity” (and also Bourdieu’s concept of the “male domination”) are treated as a starting point. Moreover, the article presents factors that influenced initiation of the new type of man (the Renaissance culture, modern philosophy, the development of empires, large-scale wars, class society and capitalism etc.) and describes such categories as: male honour, the figure of a gentleman and a dandy, male beauty canons and androgynous masculinity.

The article discusses ways of presenting male homosexuality in Polish prose after 1989. Against the historical and anthropological background, as well as on the basis of literary texts, the author gathers arguments for the thesis about the “epistemological turn” (in perception, presentation and conceptualization of gayness) in the Polish culture of the first decade of the twenty-first century. This breakthrough exerted an influence not only on the way of constructing gay characters, but on the whole represented world in Polish prose after 1989.

The review discusses Dorota Kozicka and Tomasz Cieślak-Sokołowski’s (eds.) book on the 1910 generation in Polish literature, literary criticism and culture. The reviewer discusses selected articles from the volume. The undeniable value of the book is that it presents a new and broader approach to the subject.

Moje zdziwienia /My Marvellings/ is a column run by Henryk Markiewicz, retired Professor of the Jagiellonian University and one of the most outstanding Polish literary historians and theoreticians. In his essays, Professor Markiewicz presents and discusses various literary theory publications, comments on current events at the academia, argues with and questions authors of scholarly and popular articles, all the time being indefatigable in his insistence on respecting standards of academic professionalism, competence, honesty and responsibility for judgments and opinions expressed. This time Markiewicz focuses his critical attention on: Marek Piechota’s book about the work of Adam Mickiewicz, Lena Magnone’s article about Maria Konopnicka’s poem Rota, and Krzysztof Zajas’s article about theory of interpretation.