Defining academic disciplines as “existential-institutional practices with a high rate of persuasion and an equally high rate of accidentality”, the author reflects on the universality of the claims of literary disciplines and concludes that they can only acquire legitimization in the modern world through their development of two basic, albeit undervalued, skills: argumentation and persuasion. Thus, he puts forward the thesis that the turn from logic to rhetoric, especially from dialectic to elocution, or from expertise in thinking (about the world) to expertise in the study of language (text), has had a disastrous impact on the study of texts. At the same time, he reserves philology for fields that have already been developed, primarily textology, while allocating hermeneutics (interpretation) and poetics (analysis) to literary studies, in accordance with the modern division invented by German philologists in the early 19th century.

In this paper, I advocate for rational and empirically verifiable strategies of interpretive action, emphasizing philology as a source of establishing intersubjectively acceptable criteria of legitimacy. Such criteria serve to prevent the evaluation of interpretation from being based solely on rhetorical persuasiveness. I reject both the absolutization of difference and the pluralism of interpretation-often equated with the act of writing itself-as well as the instrumental view that relegates interpretation to a merely subordinate role in relation to theory. Above all, however, I argue for a model of interpretation that, rather than emphasizing the subjective, individual, and event-like nature of reading, contributes to the construction of a shared space of understanding and communication based on rational argumentation. I propose that interpretation should be understood not only as a cognitive activity, but also as one with didactic, community-building, and therapeutic dimensions – an activity that fosters cooperation, negotiation, and the reconciliation of meanings, grounded in a philologically conceived text as a meeting ground for diverse individual perspectives. Support for this model can be found in several theoretical frameworks: the concept of collective reading developed by American sociologist Susan Long; Wayne Booth’s notion of coduction from his work on the ethics of reading; and Roma Sendyka’s term creative dependence, introduced in her reflections on reflexive and relational forms of identity.

This article examines the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and the language and interpretation of texts, with a focus on their impact on understanding human existence. The subject was undertaken to demonstrate how different interpretative approaches affect the understanding of the psychoanalytic process and its application in literary studies. The first, considered traditional, postulates the interpretation of the text as a hermeneutic method for generating meaning. The exegesis of the symbols contained in the text enables the discovery of meanings not directly revealed. In a more developed approach, hermeneutic exegesis is replaced by interpretation based on the translation process. The translator-interpreter, using the metaphorical surplus of language, elaborates a new text. This approach brings out the semantic aspect of the psychoanalytic process. The second approach aligns with the structuralist and poststructuralist model, focusing on the linguistic sign as the central point of analysis. The adoption of the key role of the element structuring the text leads to the transformation of psychoanalytic interpretation into a method of linguistic analysis. In this case, the semiotic dimension of psychoanalysis determines the literal determinants of the text. The article is theoretical in nature and is based on the juxtaposition of these two approaches, illustrating the transition from Freud’s psychoanalysis to Lacan’s psychoanalysis. The text indicates the consequence of this change in the field of Polish literary studies.

This article is an attempt to delve into a field charted by scholars from Poland and abroad as part of a project called Philology – Renewed: Language, Literature and Culture in the Digital Epoch, which concluded with the 8th World Congress of Polish Studies Scholars at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (12–14 July 2023). It covers key issues in defining the place of language and literature studies in the modern humanities: the disciplinary transformations of knowledge about language and its products, research traditions reflected in the biographies of scholars, the history of concepts, terms and institutions adjacent to the philological tradition, the impact of new technologies and forms of communication, ways of studying representations that meet the challenges of civilisation and processes identified in the sphere of symbolic practices. This article is both a survey of and an introduction to topics discussed in the pieces chosen for the issue, it situates the central problem of philology from three perspectives: an affective relationship with a profession, the practice of building a relationship with the otherness inscribed in language, and its apprehension as part of the translational humanities, conducted in the era of an ‘expanded present’ (Ryszard Nycz), and thus, a time of a particular view of the past stamped with dynamic technological transformations.

Based on the observation that there is a lack of syntheses of contemporary Polish literature that are accessible in terms of content and language for students and other interested readers abroad, I undertake reflections on what kind of synthesis of contemporary literature Slavic studies, more precisely: Polish studies abroad needs. I approach this issue from the perspective of a researcher and lecturer in Polish literature at a German university. The attempts to answer the questions posed are closely related to two projects in which I am involved. One of them is a Polish-German project concerning the contemporary history of Polish literature for German-speaking readers. The second concerns research on the function of children’s literature in diverse cultural contexts. I treat both in this article as an attempt to cross boundaries and open new perspectives for the creation of literary syntheses. I demonstrate that the first project aligns with constellational thinking and the belief that, today, the task of literary history can be understood above all as proposals for how to think about the development of literature, and thus, how to assist in shaping mature recipients of (the history of) literature. I also point out that writing a synthesis of contemporary Polish literature for the German reader requires many pragmatic decisions which influence the form and thematic scope of the presented content. The Polish-German project on literary history eliminates the distinction between popular and high literature, as well as between fiction and nonfiction. It also, at least to some extent, removes the division between children and adult audiences. Referring to four aspects of “children’s” literature (multimodality, crossover, cultural code, experimental aesthetics), I argue why the latter is necessary.

The article commences with an examination of the origins of Polish studies in France, integrating this historical perspective with the evolution of Polish-French cultural interactions. A particular focus is placed on the legacy of the Great Emigration. The author goes on to discuss the first 20th-century institutional initiatives related to the teaching of the Polish language and the literature and culture created in it. She demonstrates the pivotal role of eminent French philologists, including Paul Cazin, Jean Fabre, Jean Bourrilly, Jean Lajarrige and Claude Backvis, who worked in Belgium, in the reception of Polish writers. The reconstruction of the principles underlying their philological expertise based on the pillars of dissertation, translation and explication of the text allows for the demonstration of the specificity of Polish studies in France at the end of the 20th century and in the first decades of the 21st century, situating them against the background of the main theoretical trends in the broadly understood humanities. Within this extensive domain, old philological traditions meet various forms of modern hermeneutics. The pragmatism of recent comparative literary and cultural studies makes it possible to rethink the nature of this encounter and to exploit its cognitive potential in attempts to understand historical phenomena and their significance for the present. The new, expanded philology can therefore be regarded as a public good, serving to protect society from the overflow of mass culture, consumerism, and conformism.

In the academic year 2023/2024, Polish studies in Czech universities celebrated its 100th anniversary. In view of this important anniversary, it is worth outlining the history of the field, as well as its transformation and current status. The roots of Polish Studies interest in the Czech Republic go back to the late Enlightenment, i.e. the beginning of the Czech national revival. On university grounds, i.e. at Prague University, Polish studies emerged in the mid-19th century. The breakthrough moment, however, was the establishment of an independent Department of Polish Language and Literature in the academic year 1923/1924 at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University and Polish language lectureships at the universities in Brno and Bratislava. The direction, which was largely part of the unified Slavonic studies, was represented here for many years in the form of a foreign language course, to which classes in grammar, literary history, Slavic comparative studies and history were linked. However, the disintegration of the former Slavonic studies in the 1950s had negative consequences for the development of individual Slavonic philologies including Polish studies. After the political changes in Czechoslovakia, a long-term process of modernisation of the field of study took place from the 1990s onwards. It concerned the structure of studies, didactic methods and the enrichment of the offer of subjects in the fields of translation studies, business Polish, Central European issues, as well as law, economics and tourism. After 30 years of implementing the above-mentioned changes, Czech Polish studies has taken on the character of a broad-based Polish studies programme. A graduate of Polish studies is now not only an expert in Polish language and literature but also a specialist in the knowledge of Poland, its culture, economic and tourism potential and Czech-Polish relations.

This article examines the current state of Polish translational life in the context of the heightened visibility of translation as both an artistic activity and a subject of reflection, in translation studies as well as in literary-historical and literary-critical terms. It describes the specificity of the “Polish turn towards translators,” different from the analogous tendency in Western translation studies: the Polish turn occurred under different circumstances than in the West, in a situation of the book market’s liberalisation after 1989, a multiple increase in demand for translation services, a decline in their quality, a decrease in the prestige of the profession, and subsequently saturation of the market and increased translational competition, as well as – which is very significant – not without the involvement of the translators themselves. The text highlights the most important monographs and essay collections in translation studies, including books with interviews, biographies of translators, as well as manifestos and discussions from recent years.

The aim of this article is to characterise philological research conducted today using digital tools. Its main idea is to summarise previous research approaches within the new scientific discipline of digital humanities. It is characterised as a new model of scholarly communication that uses new technologies to conduct research and is interdisciplinary and collaborative in nature. The text is of a reporting and reviewing nature and it briefly describes the research perspective of the global digital humanities as a socially open science that exploits the potential of media and digital technologies. It juxtaposes this perspective with digitisation work that aims to archive cultural heritage fixed in language in the digital humanities environment in Krakow. It presents the most important digital resources in the field of historical linguistics in Poland (digitised dictionaries and corpora of historical Polish) and postulates the creation of a diachronic corpus of the Polish language for the study of its linguistic and cultural heritage. The general conclusion of the review is that the use of digital methods in archiving linguistic and cultural heritage brings new results in the form of large, unprecedented data sets. Their processing and interpretation using the methods of computational and quantitative linguistics can help formulate answers to key questions in the humanities. The research was performed with the financial support of Priority Research Areas: POB Heritage and POB DigiWorld as part of the Strategic Excellence Initiative Programme at Jagiellonian University.

Digital scholarly editing is a rapidly growing field that aims to produce and make available in a digital environment scholarly texts. It requires an interdisciplinary approach, combining traditional philological methods with modern technologies such as XML markup language and the TEI practice. The transfer of texts from manuscript and printed form to digital form involves deep remediation, data modelling and adaptation for interactive presentation. Digital editions not only enable novel ways of text analysis but also increase the accessibility and functionality of scholarly editions. The development of this field opens up new perspectives for literature research and scholarly editing. Various projects are underway in Poland, including the scholarly edition of the writings of Piotr Skarga and the Jagiellonian Digital Platform. The key challenges are funding, long-term maintenance of resources and formalisation of publication procedures.

Traces of the presence of the Hermetic tradition in Father Chairemon’s churching in the 1794 and 1804 versions of Jan Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa were already noticed more than 100 years ago by Tadeusz Sinko. Sinko also noted that the quotations from Poimandres and from De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum are fairly faithful paraphrases not of the Greek originals, but of their Latin translation by Marsilio Ficino. However, no further conclusions have yet been drawn from this statement. At this stage of the research, the question of the extent to which the decision to cite Hermetic texts via the Italian Renaissance tradition was a conscious authorial act and should be interpreted as such must remain unanswered. The author situates the references to the Renaissance Hermetic tradition in the context of a general interpretation of the story of the Eternal Jew (present only in the 1794 and 1804 versions of the novel), to which he has devoted a separate study, and posits that it is precisely around the speeches of Father Chairemon that it accrues. They form the real nucleus and give meaning to the narrative. He also makes conjectures about its implicit links with the thinking of progressive freemasonry on religio duplex. Under this term was the conviction, most clearly expressed by Carl Leonhard Reinhold in his text The Hebrew Mysteries, that the ancient Egyptians concealed under the guise of polytheism a philosophy of nature heralding modern Spinozism. The reference to renaissance Hermetic thought, and thus to the idea, popular at the turn of the 17th and 18th century, that the religion of ancient Egypt was the repository of all later cults, can therefore be interpreted as a creative attempt to confront and update the idea of the perennial philosophy in a spirit of tolerance and enlightened deism. The Manuscript Found in Saragossa would thus be placed in a row with works such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Natan the Wise or Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years.

This sketch is an account of the circumstances and context of the creation of the literary magazine “Idące Wilno,” or “Żagary”, in 1931. The author focuses on the artistic and ideological motives stimulating a group of young writers and publicists, students and fresh graduates of the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius; he tries to capture the aura of the city, the country and the epoch, shaping their views and aesthetic choices, but also – their political stance and ideology. He traces the meanders of local cultural and social processes and political turns which led the magazine, starting under the aegis of the conservative-national “Słowo” (edited by Stanisław Cat-Mackiewicz), to find itself under a changed title (“Piony”) under the aegis of the liberal “Kurier Wileński,” and then, very briefly, to experience independence. The sketch attempts to capture the peculiar paradox of “Żagary” and the literary grouping associated with the magazine, immersed in provinciality, they boldly tackled universal issues without cutting themselves off from their Vilnius roots and tried to develop European ambitions. Abandoning Eastern European idyll and genericism, they sought to confront the great crisis of civilisation, the aftermath of which turned out to be the Second World War. One of the factors shaping their aspirations was an attempt to replace – according to them – archaic ‘kresowość’ with a new geopoetical and geopolitical concept, of ‘pograniczność’.

The relationship between language and values has long attracted the attention of linguists, yet the issue of values within the linguistic image of flowers on the material of Polish and Ukrainian has not yet been analysed. The stereotypical features of flowers in Polish language and culture have been studied by a team of ethnolinguists headed by Professor Jerzy Bartminski, resulting in part 3 (Kwiaty [Flowers]) of volume 2 (Rośliny [Plants]) of the Słownik stereotypów i symboli ludowych [Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols]. In Ukrainian, on the other hand, the stereotypical features of flowers were described by Vitalii Žajvoronok in the dictionary Znaky ukrajins’koji etnokul’tury. The author examines the manifestations of valuing at the level of linguistic categorisation of the flower and the recognition of individual plants as flowers, as well as at the level of metaphorisation and connotation of various phenomena, objects, man himself, his life, etc. presented in Polish and Ukrainian. In both languages, the flower itself is the value, while its parts (petals, heads) acquire axiological connotations. Flowers present positive members of axiological oppositions: life – death, top – down, beauty – ugliness, honesty (virginity) – falsehood (lying), sacrum – profanum, brightness – darkness, youth – age, etc. The second, negative member of these oppositions is the flower. The second, negative segment of these oppositions is verbalised in the linguistic image of flowers by the absence / displacement / change of the positive segment, i.e. the absence of the flower / its parts / its inversion on the up – down axis.

The Polish literature written in Brazil is a treasure waiting to be discovered. This is the case with the works of the Polish poet Tadeusz Milan Grzybczyk (1885–1961). His works have fallen into oblivion, while a significant part of his literary output has remained unpublished and, as a result, has not been properly analysed. Some of his works have been irretrievably lost. However, thanks to the research started in 2014 by Marek Stanisz from the University of Rzeszów, the life and work of this poet have once again become the subjects of consideration and new discoveries, a list of which is presented in this article. The article also analyses and interprets Grzybczyk’s poem Tobie Brazyljo!, which compositionally constitutes a separate chapter of the only volume published in the poet’s lifetime titled Wianki parańskie (1921). The poem is an ode to the country of settlement, and Brazil itself is presented in it as a temple. The harmony of all the elements (earth, air, fire and water) creates an orderly, safe world. The mention of young eaglets is an allusion to Polish emigrants in Brazil, whom it welcomed like a loving mother. The poem is saturated with sacred vocabulary, which reflects the poet’s admiration for his adopted homeland.

Relacyja o boskiej prowidencyjej nad P. Jonasz Szlichtingiem młodym AoD. 1665 14 Sept. contained in Andrzej Lubieniecki Jr’s silva rerum was published and fact-checked by Janusz Tazbir. However, this text, which is important for the history of the Polish Brethren, needs to be read from a philological point of view, using the rhetorical tools appropriate to it. The account takes the form of a letter from Paweł Szlichtyng to Jan Trembecki and is thus an example of the typical 17th-century use of private correspondence in the circulation of information. At the same time, it is a text deliberately and functionally crafted by the author. While declaring multiple allegiances to the truth of events, Paweł Szlichtyng made use of various tools for shaping the story in order to increase its persuasiveness and engage the audience Rhetorical analysis demonstrated the use of hagiographic conventions when describing the protagonists of events and the use of the argumentative power of testimony. The logic of the development of the true story, based on the authority of the truth conveyed by the participants in the events, and its transformation into a rhetorical argument in the form of an example, was subjected to observation. Attention was given to the use of narrative shaping techniques (patterns and the role of commentary), especially amplification procedures. Reading the account as a text influenced by literary conventions has made it possible to define more fully the role assigned to it by its author in reinforcing the message of faith addressed to the circle of Polish Arians.

This study examines the linguistic representations of fear in oral history narratives of witnesses to the Warsaw Uprising, with a particular focus on selected nominal and verbo-nominal collocations with the noun strach (“fear”) that indicate both the intensity of this emotion and the way the subject positions themselves in relation to it. The research material consists of over 3,400 transcribed interviews from the Oral History Archive project of the Warsaw Rising Museum. The impetus for undertaking this research was to enrich existing reflections on oral history texts with a linguistic perspective. The theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis draws on memory linguistics, corpus linguistics, and the linguistics of feelings/emotions. Detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses of the affective dimension of these recollections reveal, among other things, that members of this memory community quite frequently verbalise fear related to the events of 1944; the emotion remains vivid and intense in their narratives and is represented in diverse ways. While fear is predominantly depicted as a negative emotion, the narrators also acknowledge its positive aspects, which support the view that autobiographical emotional memory can exhibit remarkable durability.

The scholarly literature devotes considerable attention to the analysis of the image of men and women. Stereotypes related to masculinity and femininity are a subject of exploration across numerous disciplines – anthropology, sociology, psychology, and, importantly, linguistics. Socio-cultural transformations have long influenced research directions, prompting scholars to adopt more up-to-date perspectives on gender in language. One particularly interesting approach is to examine the issue through the lens of linguistic patterns used to speak about women and men, depending on the word combinations in which the relevant nouns appear. The aim of this article is to conduct a semantic and frequency analysis of the collocations of the nouns man and woman with the adjectives real, typical, ideal, average, and one-hundred-percent. The data were sourced from three corpora: the National Corpus of Polish (NKJP), the Monco PL monitoring corpus, and the Contemporary Polish Language Corpus (KWJP). The semantic analysis involved organizing dictionary definitions of the adjectives real, typical, ideal, average, and one-hundred-percent, and describing the semantic relationships among them. This was followed by a presentation of frequency data concerning the occurrence of the analyzed collocations. The research perspective includes an analysis of all language contexts, identifying the most frequent collocations, a description of linguistic ways of speaking about women and men, and reconstructing the linguistic image of women and men. The findings of this study can contribute valuable insights to cultural and corpus linguistics, as well as to gender studies in language.

The article presents a procedure for conducting an innovative analysis of utterance functioning featuring code mixing, from the perspective of assessing the impact of deviations from linguistic norms on the attitudes of recipients of communication involving closely related languages. It thus falls within the scope of contact linguistics, primarily its experimental branch. Particular focus is placed on the communicative potential of Polish and the phenomenon of West Slavic intercomprehension, illustrated by a linguistic stimulus (which also serves as the basis for the discussed communication experiment). The ultimate goal of the presented research is to verify the attitudes of recipients and to examine the degree of potential correlation between the assessment of communication difficulties and the actual decoding capabilities regarding the informational value of communication with ambiguous linguistic affiliations within closely related West Slavic ethnolects, from a symmetrical perspective, i.e., from the perspective of recipients who are native users of both languages in the pair. Statistical tools were employed during the research, enabling precise illustration of the observed processes. The analysis confirmed a clear tendency among representatives of the research group to focus attention on native (“familiar”) features of the linguistic stimulus. However, no correlation was found between the subjective perception of cognitive difficulty and the objective ability to access key informational content.

This article contributes to the body of research exploring the relationship between Polish linguistics and glottodidactics. It responds to the growing call in the literature to strengthen the dialogue between these two disciplines. The paper outlines the key steps of a research procedure based on the idea of mutual knowledge transfer between linguistics and glottodidactics, specifically in relation to the syntactic level of language description in Polish.

Transfer is understood here as the movement of specific experiences and knowledge, from both linguistic material and research observations and generalisations, between linguistic continua. This includes: 1) general Polish and the related research experience, and 2) Polish used by speakers whose first language is Ukrainian, along with the corresponding research experience. Thanks to tandem collaboration between glottodidacticians and linguists, and their creative exchange of ideas and research findings, the relationship between the disciplines can be truly bidirectional. Theoretical concepts and descriptions from linguistics serve as a reservoir of knowledge for glottodidactics, which is then adapted for teaching purposes. At the same time, research findings from glottodidactics and insights from the teaching process can inspire linguistics to broaden its research scope, verify hypotheses, or enhance the explicitness of linguistic descriptions.

The application of this concept is illustrated using specific Polish and Ukrainian language material. The study demonstrates that research driven by glottodidactic needs brings tangible benefits to glottodidactics and Polish and Ukrainian linguistics. It enriches knowledge of the grammatical systems of both languages, thereby enabling updates to grammatical descriptions and lexicographic works and the development of appropriate teaching materials for learners of Polish as a foreign language.

This article examines the narratives describing the 1943 events in Volhynia as portrayed in Polish and Ukrainian documentary films. While documentaries are often regarded as objective sources of information, they also play a powerful role in shaping public consciousness and everyday historical understanding. The Volhynia events hold profound significance for both Polish and Ukrainian audiences. However, the interpretations presented in these films reflect two divergent historical perspectives. Analyzing these narratives – particularly the recurring themes and propaganda techniques – provides a deeper insight into how historical memory is constructed and exprssed. This process is vital for understanding current Polish-Ukrainian relations. Additionally, viewer responses to the films are analyzed separately, as they reveal how historical issues are politicized and emotionally charged, often being transferred uncritically into the present-day discourse.

The text offers a reflection on developments in Polish film and theatre culture in 2024. Its symbolic point of reference is the greatest success of the year – The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer, a production made entirely in Poland, awarded two Oscars and widely discussed for its original way of speaking about the Holocaust. The “Shelf 2024” features four works. Loss of Balance by Korek Bojanowski, a film addressing manipulation and abuse in the acting milieu, as well as the tension between art and ethics. Netflix’s Penguin Mothers – a series about the everyday lives of families raising children with disabilities, showing both the heroism and the vulnerability of parents. Śleboda, produced for SkyShowtime, which combines a crime narrative with the little-known episode of the Goralenvolk during World War II and the rich folklore of Podhale region. The final work discussed is Godej do mie – a play by Robert Talarczyk that takes place not on a theatre stage but in a hotel apartment. This extraordinary performance tells the story of trauma after the loss of a child and presents the Silesian language as a vehicle of emotions. The play is also slated for a film adaptation. Each of the works under discussion is accompanied by (glotto)didactic proposals, highlighting their potential for exploring language, emotions, identity, and culture. The text concludes with a filmography and bibliography, including both Polish and international productions, which provide the context for the 2024 premieres.

This article presents the most interesting and highly acclaimed Polish prose and poetry books published in 2024. Its aim is a summary of what took place on the Polish publishing market over the past year. The author attempts to answer questions about how bestseller lists are shaped and whether the sense of threat, for instance, caused by the war in Ukraine, continues to affect writers and poets, as reflected in their texts. The intention was to examine what type of literary fiction was most willingly published and which authors enjoyed the most significant interest of reviewers. The presented brief analysis and interpretation of ten works (five prose and five poetic) also demonstrate how other commentators on contemporary literary life have written about them. The selection of books was thus based not so much on the subjective impressions of the author as on reception. The aim of the sketch was also to showcase publishing diversity and draw attention to the most popular creative trends. Among the discussed authors this time are: Urszula Honek, Ignacy Karpowicz, Hanna Krall, Monika Lubińska, Dorota Masłowska, Izabela Morska, Tomasz Różycki, Paweł Sarna, Kinga Skwira, and Bohdan Zadura, and thus in most cases, authors well known to the Polish reading public, who published their new books sometimes after several years of silence. From the prepared selection, it appears that particular appreciation (also among “professional” readers) was enjoyed above all by those works in which the authors attempted to confront various fears, traumas, threats, and emotions. The text falls within the field of literary studies and literary criticism.