This article is devoted to zoonarratology as a variant of postclassical narratology. It discusses issues that require rethinking in the context of the transdisciplinary animal turn. The fundamental epistemological assumptions of narratology are openly anthropocentric. Narration is conceptualized as a mental and linguistic category dependent on the way in which the human mind functions. Variety of disciplines pose questions about the possibility of communicating with an animal as an autonomous and separate subject, whose cognition is primarily born through interaction. Thus, it requires a new approach to such important narrative categories as character, empathy, identification, and the narrative perspective. In this article, the author shows the role of the secondperson perspective as a narrative tool for thematizing the reflection on anthropocentrism of the narrative.

This article is an attempt to interpret The Book on Friends, a volume of short stories written by Zofia Nałkowska and Maria Jehanne Wielopolska, published in 1927 year. The Book on Friends was devoted to the theme of animals. Both Nałkowska and Wielopolska were animal lovers, protesting against all forms of human cruelty towards them, and establishing close emotional relationships with them. In The Book on Friends, numerous traces of criticism of anthropocentric attitudes and voices in defence of animals can be found. Nałkowska and Wielopolska were able to penetrate into the psychological life of animals, portraying them as individuals with great cognitive and emotional abilities. The Book on Friends can be seen as an example of the Polish zoonarrative (an animal narrative), presenting animals not in a conventional way, but as subjects whose experiences broaden the cognitive horizons. Nałkowska’s works were characterized by a certain stylistic restraint, while Wielopolska preferred poetic prose with an emphatic style.

The article is an analysis of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s epistolography written during his stay in Greece (in 1886). The basic interpretive category is the figure of the pilgrim, which is used in two modalities: (1) as a unifying and organizing autobiographical project and (2) as a description of a specific journey to a sacred place (here: the Acropolis). In the first case, the trip to Greece will be an attempt to return to the self from the period of philological studies; in the second one – to perform a private ritual on the ruins of ancient temples. The second aspect will be analysed in depth in terms of: (a) impressions, (b) imaginings and (c) explanations that are triggered by a stay on the Acropolis. As a result of the inquiry, the presence of an attitude of aesthetic pantheism, which acquires a Stoic tinge, is established in Sienkiewicz. In the conclusion, the difference between this stance and a strictly religious experience is indicated, which is subject here to a clear suppression.

The article presents the influence of Henri-Frédéric Amiel’s The Journal Intime published between 1882–1883 on the works and world-view of the 1905 Polish Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz, and in particular on his novel Without Dogma. The Polish writer must have read Amiel’s journal around early 1890. It seems however, that Amiel’s popularity, amplified by Ernest Renan’s and Paul Bourget’s sketches about him, had already induced a shift in Sienkiewicz’s artistic interests, who in the late 1880s moved from historical epics in favour of the issues of modernity and a first- -person-narrative novel. The comparative analysis investigates the Europe-famous novel Without Dogma (1891) touching upon the crisis of modern European identity. The analysis of the novel, as well as Sienkiewicz’s epistolography, points out to a number of world-view analogies with Amiel, especially in terms of where they saw the roots of the crisis of European culture and humanity in the second half of the 19th century. Both writers emphasized the destructive influence of rationalist self- -analysis, positivist methodology drawing on humanities, and a mechanical perception of the idea of progress. Sienkiewicz also shared Amiel’s political prophetism and approach to revolutionary movements, characteristic for representatives of modern European conservatism professed by Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville.

The article focuses on the analysis of classic utopian texts (Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella, Johann V. Andreae, Francis Bacon) in terms of women’s image presented in them. The author discusses the issues of the women’s place in the organization of utopian societies, the role of women in the family, the work of women and women’s access to science, in context of the equality of men and women declared by the authors of the literary utopias. The text compares utopian visions of ideal societies and the results of historical research on women’s place in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The article is concerned with one of the most fascinating prose texts of the 20th century – Livro do desassossego (The Book of Disquiet) by Fernando Pessoa, one of the most prominent poets of the Portuguese language. The uniqueness of the Book, among others, is illustrated by the fact that it can be freely composed from 30,000 fragments Pessoa did not publish, but whose authorship he did not ascribe to himself, but to his half-heteronym (porte-parole), Bernardo Soares. The article explores the philosophical sources of the phenomenon of heteronymy characteristic for Pessoa’s work and the obsessive thread of the Book – the narrator’s inability to grasp the sense of his life and his own identity. In this context, the issue of relations between literature and philosophy is considered, with regard to the modernist undermining of philosophy’s claims to truth, and equating both of these areas of their creativity in terms of possibility of accessing the truth and expressing it.

* Artykuł powstał przy wsparciu Narodowego Centrum Nauki, numer grantu 2017/27/B/HS1/00234.

This text reports on the discovery, which was made in Tadeusz Komendant’s apartment, of a significant part of the original manuscripts that were included in his book Lustro i kamień… [The Mirror and the Stone…], and then answers the question of what consequences this find has for the interpretation of the aforementioned book. The author also points out to the correlations between Lustro i kamień… and Władze dyskursu [The Power of Discourse] by Komendant and interprets the crypto-autobiographical parts of the latter. In the last part, he generalizes the observations acquired from theseerpretations and uses them while reflecting on the idea of the archive and the desired form of making Komendant’s heritage accessible.

The author of the article presents selected threads of the book of Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden. Animal and Disability Liberation. Taylor is an American writer, painter and activist, who suffers from artrogryphosis. The essay is, on the one hand, based on author’s autobiographical experience of disability, and on the other hand, it concerned with the disabled community, defined as the “largest minority.” In the discussion of the book, the author of the article focuses on several issues. First, she presents Taylor’s argument leading to the recognition of the twin status of people with disabilities and animals. Secondly, based on disability studies and animal studies, the author considers the meaning of Taylor’s ideas, which points to the areas of mutual human-animal interactions and the possibilities of interspecies understanding based on care. The second part of the article presents the possibility of interpreting two novels: The Friend by Sigrid Nunez and Suka by Andrzej Stasiuk based on Taylor’s theories and the perspective of zoothanatology.

In the article, the author presents certain issues concerning autobiographical archival practices of Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna. The basis and inspiration to discuss these practices is Iłłakowiczówna’s Paper. The Archive as Research Object, a monograph by Lucyna Marzec. In the first part of the essay, the author describes problems associated with a strictly relational character of the archival processing of the poet’s legacy. The creation rules of biographical narrative and the question of agency are among the main themes in the second part of the article. In the last part, the author discusses the importance of a bricolage in the workshop of an archive researcher.