Contemporary cultural changes force Polish literary critics to constantly change their views on literature. Traditional literary canon is prone to stagnation and inertia, but multiculturalism may lead to a dangerous melting in the multiplied maze of cultural interconnections. Trying to overcome such antinomies, the author of the article focuses on the criteria that are important in the reception of Polish culture abroad. Literary canon is not regarded as a standard, but it is worth taking into consideration as an exposition of some general aesthetic, axiological and worldview changes.

Translations have been an interesting part of the history of literature. What has been their function and meaning in different literary epochs? Did they promote new tendencies or influence the creativity of the writers? What has been underestimated so far is the art of translation itself, that is, the development of techniques and styles of translation according to changes in the translator’s work conditions, especially the emancipation, secularization and professionalization of the profession, so that they have been seen as equal in importance to the writers themselves. What should be analyzed are the procedures and practices of translation, which can be interpreted according to contemporary textology. The history of the art of translation is also inspired by contemporary cultural studies, because it regards translation as an institution and focuses on translation discourse, that is, the complex of images, ideas and metaphors that each translator must respect when considering their readers. The tradition of translation is partly different from literary tradition in that the rules of ‘good translation’ promoted at certain times create a codex of a translator’s work.

The author of the article focuses on Polish writers that intentionally create their works simultaneously in Polish and in languages other than Polish, situating their creativity directly in European and world literature. She also discusses the case of bicultural authors whose creativity emanates from Polish culture but for whom Polish was only one of the languages they based their literature on. While listing such examples, the author considers the possibility of interpreting such works and placing them in the discourse of world literature.

The article discusses the volume of reports by Ewa Winnicka. The author of the article examines the contact between two different (Polish and British) cultures, both deeply rooted in different traditions and entangled by evident stereotypes. The reason for such cultural interference is, that Polish emigration to Great Britain is facetiously described by the author as ‘the invasion of the colonizers’. Winnicka’s narrative strategy enables readers to observe local inhabitants as well as Polish migrants who have different experiences and attitudes. This ‘unsymmetrical dialogue’ reveals that, a ‘colonizer’ as a stranger must always lose, because he exists in between his native community (that he does not belong to anymore) and the new one (that he aspires to, trying to prove that he is worth being accepted).

The article is an attempt to analyse relations between Polish Jews, the country of their first inhabitancy along with their Polish fellow citizens. It is an extremely complicated matter, because such relations are influenced by their fondness for the lost homeland and resentment felt towards the Poles. The selected poems of the authors, representing different generations, are analysed in the article. They reveal the whole variety of personal experiences and sentiments in a more emotive way than the works of prose. The article consists of two parts entitled: The image of sentiment and The image of resentment. They are based on the poetry of Irit Amiel, Łucja Gliksman, Renata Jabłońska, Szlomo Leser, Aleksander Rozenfeld, Jael Shalitt and Aviva Shavit­Władkowska.

The author of the article regards the development of Polonistic studies in Brazil in the context of the cultural background of this country, Polish emigration heritage, and the challenges for Polonistics in Latin America. The connections between Polonistics, and comparative and cultural studies are also discussed in the article. The examples of traces of Polish in the canons of foreign literature presented in the article may become a starting point for some to regard from a distance something, which is close, for others to look closely at something, which is far away.

The paper presents a new perspective on the traditional research on the reception of foreign literature within the context of national literary processes, discussing the applicability of some new methodological approaches. Specific issues are illustrated with a few facts from Polish­Serbian literary relations.

The author of this article published her first article on the reception of Wisława Szym­borska’s poetry in South Korea in Pamiętnik Literacki in 2014. The previous article aimed at analysing the reactions of writers, poets, artists, critics and readers to the volume The End and the Beginning, which was translated into Korean in 2007. In this article the author continues her research on the reception of Szymborska’s poetry in South Korea. This time she presents the reaction of the Korean media and selected critics on another poetic volume of the Polish Nobel Prize Winner translated into Korean: Enough.

The education of teachers at university is a task that is being undertaken at a time of social and cultural changes, external unrest and political transformation that are affecting education itself. However, maintaining a humanistic approach to education is important. Therefore Polish language teachers at schools need to be responsible for educating young people who are sensitive to the welfare of the others, do not use the language of hate, but are critical thinkers; while at the same time university teachers are responsible for educating teachers who are resistant to political pressure. The author of the article presents a selection of literary works that refer to exclusion on grounds of nationality that can be read with students at different levels of education. Such a strategy proves that Polish language teachers can use literature to uphold humanistic values.

Opposition between the notion of universalism, created in the age of Enlightenment and the Romantic tradition, which dominates in Central Europe is discussed in the article. Universalism is understood as the process of emancipation of man, but at the same time, in countries ‘between Russia and Germany’ it is also understood as the rule of adherence. In the Romantic tradition there is the symbolic extrapolation of historic experiences and the use of metaphors that have ethical universalism, both of which are described by the author in this article. The understanding of culture as a spiritual sphere which unites the national spirit was destroyed in the 20th century due to totalitarianism, but this grotesque tragedy from our absurd history has created ‘anti­modern modernism'.

The article aims at creating a schema that can be used to structure Polonistic linguistic research. The author suggests basic categories, such as METHODOLOGY and METHOD, SUBJECT and SOURCES. Each category, though derived from a different area has specific and relevant information. Each research project described according to such categories would be clearly depicted and placed in an appropriate position within Polonistic linguistics.

There are a wide range of minority languages in Poland – including such languages as Karaite, Lemko and Romani. Polish and international linguists have been studying such minority languages and their relationship with Polish recently, but a lot remains to be done. Such languages are extremely valuable and they must be regarded by the Polonistic linguists as of importance. The article discusses in particular the case of the Romani language. The specifics of the relationship between Polish and Romani languages are discussed in comparison with the relationship between Polish and other languages in Poland.

The article looks into the changing on­screen treatment of Polish immigrant characters living on ‘the Paris pavement’. The corpus of film productions under discussion includes Roman Polański’s The Tenant (1976), Peter Kassovitz’s Mariage blanc (1986), Costa Gavras’s La petite apocalypse (1993), Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Trois couleurs: Blanc (1994), Paweł Pawlikowski’s The Woman in the Fifth (2011) and Małgorzata Szumowska’s Elles (2011). As a comparative analysis of the films involved indicates, both the immigrant characters and the urban space associated with them are subject to gradual changes (although some remarkable spatial motifs, such as the balcony and the roof, make their appearance both in the older and the newer productions). If the earlier films tend to focus on the – often geopolitically connoted – marginalization and degradation of male (anti)heroes in the city’s historical center (or its immediate vicinity), then the more recent films shift focus to the urban periphery, where the Polish characters become part of what Dina Iordanova has called the ‘metropolitan multicultural margins’, along with other, economically underprivileged newcomers from various parts of the (postcolonial and post­Communist) world.

Polish literature is popular in China. For over a hundred years some 330 works of Polish literature have been published in China along with hundreds of critical works. The article aims at presenting the reception of Polish literature in China, it discusses issues such as: the history of translation, the selection of translated works and translators’ interests, interpretation of the works and their significance for both Polish literature and Chinese society.

Soren Gauger is a Canadian writer who has decided to write in Polish. The author of the article examines the writer’s motivations, the way he develops his ideas and his first literary creation in Polish. Soren Gauger’s works reflect his attitude towards Polish culture where he invents defence mechanisms based on feelings of inferiority. In Soren Gauger’s literary works he can be seen to be disregarding the influence of popular trends in hegemonic cultures, referring to old and old­fashioned works, and styling himself on marginality and fantasticality.

The article aims at describing the genocide that happened in Cambodia. It takes into consideration its specific character and focuses on what occurred there. During the Khmer Rouge’s dictatorship not only were hundreds of thousands of people murdered (about 2.5 million victims according to different sources), but also negative symbols became connected with objects of everyday use. Such objects have become a source of memories about events which were final, inevitable and traumatic.

brak

brak

brak

brak