Résultats de recherche

Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Dinamiche identitarie nel contesto coloniale ne L’abbandono. Una storia eritrea di Erminia Dell’Oro

Wiesława Kłosek

Date de publication: | Résumé

The main goal of the present analysis is to show the formation of four characters’ identity in the colonial times. The analyzed novel is set in an Italian colony called Eritrea. There are four main characters: Carlo from Italy, Sellas from Eritrea, and their children Marianna and Gianfranco. They are all interpreted with reference to the three concepts related to the notion of belonging, namely, “I,” “we,” and “others.” The changes which take place in their personal and social identities are examined, as the characters form bonds with one another and with the society. They are examined as representing the following identity models: “individual identity,” “social identity,” “balanced identity” and “lack of identity.” These forms of identity, however, are never definitive because the shaping of identity is always a dynamic process, and thus every social or cultural context may require that identities be reformulated. The novel may be interpreted not only as the memoirs of the colonial times, but also as a tribute paid to the colonists, the colonised, and specifically to the Métis people who had to take up the challenge of redefining themselves. The author also encourages the reader to reflect on today’s nomadic, multiethnic, postmodern societies.


Key words: Italian postcolonialism, identity dilemmas, Italian literature of migration, Erminia Dell’Oro.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

I riti quotidiani connessi al caffè nel romanzo di Widad Tamimi Il caffè delle donne

Wiesława Kłosek

Date de publication: | Résumé

Martine Segalen, French ethnologist, pondering over rituals in lives of individuals and societies which are technology oriented, points not to the de‑ritualization but to change of the plane on which rituals occur (a shift from center to margin). Repeated everyday actions always become rituals when they carry symbolic meanings.

According to Stewart Lee Allen, drinking coffee together is one of the most prevalent social rituals. For ages coffee was called a ‘devilish beverage’; on the other hand, it was used in religious rituals as a means of contact with God.

For Qamar, the protagonist of Widad Tamimi’s novel Il caffè delle donne, drinking coffee becomes a ritual which was analyzed on the three levels: collective, individual and intimate relationship. The main point of the novel is coffee taseography, a mantic technique; it can be traced to the beginnings of Arabic traditions. For Qamar, of Arab origin, coffee not only becomes a ritual of initiation, but also is a stimulus for her new identity to emerge. An everyday cup of coffee shows a process of changes she undergoes, and helps her in solving her identity crisis.

It appears that one of the keys to reading Widad Tamimi’s novel is a meaning of rituals for immigrants who must find themselves in the new social environment and determine their new identity.


Key words: daily rituals, Italian migration literature, coffee tasseography, meaning of a ritual in the migration context, identity crisis



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Poemas al servicio de los grupos dominados: la identidad (afro)cubana y la poesía de Nicolás Guillén

Ewelina Szymoniak

Date de publication: | Résumé

What characterizes Latin American literature starting from the 19th century, after gaining independence, is, without a doubt, the search for its own unique features. Scientists, thinkers, novelists and poets have been trying to provide Latin American people with the consciousness of their own identity, defined, in most cases, in terms contradictory to those used in Europe or the United States. The aim of this paper is to present how, in this context, Nicolás Guillén, an Afro-Caribbean poet, builds a concept of (Afro)Cubanism (or Americanism, as his theses apply to the entire region). Given the assumption that identity is a project of a reflexive character (Giddens), and that discourse determines the relation between power, knowledge and identity (Foucault), the paper analyzes the poetry of Nicolás Gullén in the light of various concepts from the field of cultural studies, including ethnic absolutism, creative geographies, transculturation/acculturation, ideology, hegemony and symbolic violence.


Key words: Nicolás Guillén — identity — (Afro)Cuban — cultural studies.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Verso l’abolizione dell’identità di genere ne Il corpo odiato di Nicola Lecca

Wiesława Kłosek

Date de publication: | Résumé

Towards the Abolition of Gender Identity in Il corpo odiato by Nicola Lecca

Gabriele, the main character of the novel by Nicola Lecca, discovers within himself a homosexual inclination which doesn’t conform to a traditional masculinity. Thus, it causes identity crisis. The protagonist carries out an obsessive auto analysis. He tries to represent self-discipline. This should lead him to regain confidence and social assimilation. The Article shows three stages, which Gabriele goes through: the ideal type of masculinity, the protest period and the discovery of his real identity. All three describe a subordination, an attempt to get the autonomy back and the awareness of freedom. This process was analysed in a range of few components: the main character’s space, his social relations, his homosexual experience, judging his own body, the emotional conflict between trying to be perfect, low self-esteem and the act of writing. Nicola Lecca’s text may be read as a voice in discussion about stereotypical masculine pattern which in this case is questioned.

Key words: gender identity, stereotypical masculine pattern, homosexuality, Italian modern literature.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

A Floating Homeland: (De)Constructing Canadianness from the Insider‑Outsider Perspective of Japanese‑Canadians

Rafał Madeja

Date de publication: | Résumé

On the basis of Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, the main objective of this paper is to take under the scrutinizing eye how the central protagonist retrieves a selective portion of her childhood memories during the Second World War in an effort to reshape her fragmented identity as a Japanese‑Canadian and to deal with the feeling of displacement. Analyzing essential memories, conversations, and stories within the plotline, the aim is to demonstrate that Naomi, in order to fight her identity crisis and feeling of displacement — due to the Japanese community’s sense of belonging in Canada being shuttered by the Canadian government — recasts her personal experiences to her own needs for the identity refashioning in‑between cultures, therefore, in Homi Bhabha’s terms, giving life to a sort of “Third Space.” This paper will therefore demonstrate numerous ways in terms of which the protagonist intrudes upon iconic wilderness and rural landscapes in Canada — hitherto emptied of the indigenous and minorities and thus functioning as a sort of privileged sites of national identity — so as to transform them into heterogeneous and more inclusive spaces, breaking the binary opposition between away and home, a newcomer and native. Significantly, the protagonist’s storytelling may be distinguished by great attention to nature, botanical imagery, and landscapes shaped by experiences of displacement, and it may be argued that the novel is targeted at re‑visiting traditional sites of identity construction as well as bringing into tensions historicizing and idealizing visions of the natural environment to challenge the myths of Japanese‑Canadians’ identity that these sites were hitherto created to support. It brings into life a “Third Space” in the form of a personal island which will neither float to the Japanese Archipelago nor towards Canada, but it will be a separate entity including both. Hence, the dialogic relation between identity and rural and wilderness landscapes provides alternative forms of meaningful emplacement for the self — a personal “floating homeland” anchored in‑between the two cultures.


Key words: Japanese‑Canadian, diasporic self, feeling of displacement, sense of belonging, Third Space, nature, landscape



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Le rôle de l’espace dans la littérature acadienne contemporaine Chacal, mon frère (2010) et L’Ombre de Chacal (2016) de Gracia Couturier

Anna Żurawska

Date de publication: 28-12-2020 | Résumé | p. 98-107

The aim of deportation and expulsion of the Acadians during the so-called Grand Dérangement, also known as the Great Upheaval, was to deprive them of their land, which is presented in their history and literature. The idea of space is in this case closely connected with the question of identity in Acadian literature. Not referring directly to the above-mentioned historical events, Garcia Couturier explores in her novelistic diptych the relation between identity and space. Although Couturier’s writing is largely based on categories which characterise Acadian literature, she is able to go beyond them in order to concentrate on individual identity and liberty. She also investigates metaphorical expulsion, which shows her desire for autonomy from tradition and underlines modern aspects of the two novels.
The aim of the article is therefore to examine the narrative representation of the space, its symbolic function and its role in shaping both individual and collective identity in Couturier’s novels.

2020-12-28



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Los modelos de mujer y las sexualidades disidentes en las novelas de Lucía Etxebarria Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas y Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes

Marta Kobiela-Kwaśniewska

Date de publication: | Résumé

The Women’s Models and Alternative Sexuality in the Novels of Lucía Etxebarria Love, Curiosity, Prozac and Doubts and Beatrice and the Heavenly Bodies

The main aim of this article is to present ways in which a controversial Spanish novelist, Lucía Etxebarria, expresses and subverts traditional social models and sexual identity of Spanish women at the end of the twentieth century by creation of female protagonists such as a promiscuouos girl, a workaholic executive or a housewife that tend to deconstruct socially normative conceptualizations of their roles and sexuality and they search for alternative constructions of feminine identity, both social and sexual one. It seems that a lesbian model of relationship is alternative to a monogamous compulsory heterosexuality.

Key words: Spanish feminine literature, women’s sexual identity, lesbian model, Lucía Etxebarria.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

La quête identitaire dans l’œuvre romanesque d’Ananda Devi

Anna Szkonter-Bochniak

Date de publication: | Résumé

This article examines three novels by Ananda Devi, a well‑known francophone novelist from Mauritius, the author of many novels, short stories and poetry books. In her novels, theauthor portrays the lives of women, the roles and norms that have been imposed on them, as well as their place in the conservative and patriarchal society in Mauritius and in India.

The protagonists of Pagli, Le Voile de Draupadi and Indian tango, whilst searching for their identity, rebel against the society, their families and religion which marginalise them and deny their right to make decisions about their own lives. The protagonists of Devi’s novels by objecting to such a lifestyle, by violating the social norms and breaching bans, discover their identity. Pagli symbolically rediscovers her true name, Anjali freedom and Subhadra her body/sexuality.

Key words: Ananda Devi, francophone novel, woman, identity, freedom, violation of social, religious and moral norms




Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Corpo femminile come strumento d’indagine nel romanzo Acciaio di Silvia Avallone

Małgorzata Puto

Date de publication: | Résumé

Body Image as the Way to Express Femminity Acciaio by Silvia Avallone

The analyzed text puts a great emphasis on the human as physical beings in a physical world, in which body image is a meaningful and conscious way to express identity. The female identity includes concepts of self-esteem, self-perception, sexuality and social role and it can be challenging for a number of reasons. Body image can be a powerful way to fulfill the social expectations but it can also be very vulnerable because appearances change so much and cultural messages that fuel dissatisfaction can be very strong. Having a beautiful body can easily be linked to the concepts of success, sexuality, great expectations. Having ugly body can lead to emargination and struggling against the world that from the ancient times promotes the value of beauty in female.

Key words: body-conscious, identity, evolution, postmodernism.




Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Folle de Nelly Arcan (2004) : les « déterminations biologiques » dans la construction identitaire masculine

Christina Brassard

Date de publication: | Résumé

Folle by Nelly Arcan : Biological Determinants in the Construction of the Masculine Identity

The reading of Folle, a novel written by Nelly Arcan, might well be an experience of disillusionment. The current analysis suggests that its principal masculine character insists on the primacy of biological factors. Through this line of thought, the reader and the contemporary thinker may want to question their perception of the construction of masculine identity as the principal masculine character is oblivious to theories of gender. He forgets that the modern human brain is not immutable and that femininity and masculinity are social constructions. For him, there is a huge gap between man and woman and this space seems to be the result of testosterone.


Key words: construction of masculine identity, biological determinants, gender differences, Québécois literature, Nelly Arcan, Judith Butler, Nancy Huston.




Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Amérindiens – figures identitaires de la littérature canadienne-française et québécoise

Petr Kyloušek

Date de publication: 30-06-2025 | Résumé | p. 1-10

The “ensauvagement” – a term coined by Voldřichová Beránková (2021) – that characterizes the ongoing transformation of Quebec literature due to both the intense interest of certain authors in Amerindian topics and the gradual assertiveness of Amerindian authors themselves can be traced back as far the earliest writings of the Nouvelle-France period (Marc Lescarbot, Relations des jésuites, etc.). “Savage” characters were appropriated by 19th- and 20th-century literature as identity figures, authenticating Quebec’s identity. Works by Antoine Gérin-Lajoie (Le Jeune Latour, 1844), Louis-Honoré Fréchette (Papineau, 1880), Jacques Ferron (Les Grands Soleils, 1958; Le Ciel de Québec, 1969) and Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers, 1967) follow this increasingly important thematic thread. The paper attempts to link this progression of aboriginal resurgences to the activation of identity models (Bouchard, 2001) over the history of literature, and to the transformation of poetics that converts Amerindians from secondary and minor figures into complex characters on the way to “ensauvagement” of Quebec literature.

2025-06-30



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Il romanzo Zamel di Franco Buffoni come un contributo alla letteratura post-gay

Aneta Chmiel

Date de publication: | Résumé

Franco Buffoni’s Zemel as a Contribution to Post-Gay Literature

This text, which contains some remarkable references to literature, appears to treat only of homosexuality, gay identity, and its history. In fact, however, an attempt was made to redefine the extensively discussed issue as to go even further and relate it to the roots of humanity: the relationship between sexuality, desire, and identity.

Key words: gay identity, gay relationship, desire, homosexuality.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

“Investigación” de los misterios familiares en el contexto de la historia reprimida (Ricardo Piglia, Edmundo Paz Soldán, Rodrigo Rey Rosa)

Nina Pluta

Date de publication: | Résumé

This paper analyses contemporary Spanish American novels whose plots are motivated by a private investigation into the mysteries that lead to collective memory. In the second half of the 20th Century many Latin American countries were being torn apart by civil wars, guerilla wars and dictatorships. The societies in these countries (Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Central American countries) have not yet come to terms with their personal and collective wounds and crimes. Recent history has not yet been totally restored. The official versions of history have been distorted and the heroes of the novels analyzed here begin their private investigation of facts, which leads them to uncover not only the mysteries in the recent histories of their countries, but also the political affiliations of members of their own families. As these heroes are always
somehow involved with writing, their para-detective search turns out to be a struggle about a discursively and textually formed identity, as well as a negotiation of values between the public and the private, between official historiography and the memory of individuals and their families, between the traditional and postmodern sense of patriotism. This process illustrates that in some contemporary Latin American societies, conflicts between the accepted version of history and marginalized private memory correspond to the postcolonial model of identity problems.


Key words: Contemporary Spanish American novel, detective story, identity, postcolonial studies.




Revue: Romanica Silesiana

« Le mythe du supermâle » : entre la France et le Maghreb dans La vie sexuelle d’un islamiste à Paris de Leïla Marouane

Magdalena Cebula

Date de publication: | Résumé

“The Myth of Supermale”: Between France and Maghreb in The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris by Leïla Marouane

Leïla Marouane is a maghrebian writer and feminist. The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris is her 5th novel. It is a story of a 40-year-old Maghrebian man born in Algeria who spent his life in France in a traditional Muslim family. The tensions between his country of origin and the host country appear at all levels. The protagonist cannnot combine his traditional side (associated with religion and family life), with his modern side (his work and desires). These contradictory elements constitute his identity, but his psyche is occupied by the question of sexuality. Contrary to the expectations of the reader, “sexual life of an Islamist in Paris” is virtually non-existent, at least for the hero. The dissonance between the title of the novel and the story of the protagonist’s life reveals its schizophrenia. The inability to realize that it is impossible to achieve this “myth of masculinity” can lead to mental disorders, as in the case of Marouane’s hero.

Key words: maghrebian literature, men’s studies, identity, sexuality, Islam.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Fuera del tiempo y del mundo. Literaturas centroamericanas actuales frente a su historia reciente: Horacio Castellanos Moya

Adriana Sara Jastrzębska

Date de publication: | Résumé

The article analyzes nine novels of a Salvadorian writer, Horacio Castellanos Moya, written between 1994 and 2011, and indicates elements that could be considered to be paradigmatic of the current Central American narrative and its links to the topic of the recent past of the countries of the region, namely, militarisms, political violence, civil war and its consequences, as well as criminal violence and political frustration. The aspects that are analyzed are the distortion of the classic model in of the police, the possible therapeutic value of literature, and finally, the problem of collective and individual identity affected by violence.


Key words: Violence, Central America, novel, Horacio Castellanos Moya, El Salvador.




Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Alda Merini: la scelta della follia, la salvezza della parola

Stefano Redaelli

Date de publication: | Résumé

Alda Merini: The Choice of Madness, the Rescue of the Word

Alda Merini’s early vocation to poetry produced a twofold clash with society: as a woman and as a poet. Madness was for her both a choice of otherness (as the choice of living homeless) and diagnosis: a sentence by society to her disadvantage. Through and notwithstanding the experience of mental illness, of imprisonment in a psychiatric hospital, and of the consequent stigma, Alda Merini was able to build up her identity. Against the power mechanisms of psychiatry and against social exclusion, she grabbed the sword of writing. Thanks to writing (which is therapy and singing) Alda Merini did not let the hell experience of the psychiatric hospital and the stigma of illness overcome her. She was able, in this way, to realize her vocation as woman and poet.


Key words: poetry, madness, woman, vocation, identity.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Suono magico del violino come rito fondatore in Stabat Mater di Tiziano Scarpa

Małgorzata Puto

Date de publication: | Résumé

Tiziano Scarpa’s novel puts a great emphasis on the ritualistic expression in human life, which tends to be a meaningful and conscious way to expressing identity and personality. Music is a powerful means of expression for Cecilia, a young woman who considers herself as a weak creature. Deprived of any knowledge about her parents, she cannot find the way to fulfill social expectations and she is very vulnerable. Her talent to play the violin is linked to the concept of God, but then gives her the power to struggle against the world and all odds. In the music she plays, Cecilia can finally find her identity, and realizes that she is unique because of her music.


Key words: rite, expression, music, identity



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

El entenado de Juan José Saer, mito, islas y límites

Maria Elena Blay Chavez

Date de publication: | Résumé

A cabin boy arrives with his crew to the territory of the Rio de la Plata. Saer was inspired by the story of Francisco del Puerto, a ship’s boy who travelled with the expedition of Juan Diaz de Solís that allegedly ended up eaten by a cannibalistic tribe of one of the islands of Parana’s delta. The hero is bound to learn from the new territory two times; but it is the search for identity, the narration to preserve memory, the construction of the general history, and the limits of one’s self that this article deals with.


Key words: Island, tribe, language, identity, memory, otherness



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

L’impact de l’archéologie et de l’idéologie sur les stéréotypes dans quelques fictions ayant pour sujet la Carthage punique

Wassim Seddik

Date de publication: 11-02-2021 | Résumé | p. 59-70

Fiction that had Punic Carthage as subject was, until the beginning of the 19th century, exclusively based on the historic sources written by Greeks and Romans. Nevertheless, the first – rivals of Carthage, and second – their enemies, have necessarily proposed to their posterity a biased story, full of subjectivity, rivalry or even hate. The development of archeology as a field of research as well as an auxiliary science of history has allowed to confront the ancients texts with the material coming from the Punic civilization, and consequently questioned centuries old ingrained stereotypes about Carthage. The decolonization of two countries that were directly influenced by Punic Carthage – Tunisia and Lebanon – has then emerged new stakes: the ideology used historic information to support the national identity of these freshly born countries. In Salammbô the autor of the Dictionnaire des idées reçues paradoxically mentions the historic stereotype that nourished the existence of Moloch god. In Elegie à Carthage, Senghor use the Didon myth to support the Panafricanist ideology. Finally, the Tunisian Fawzi Mellah and the Libanese J-J Tabet both dispute Elyssa identity.

2021-02-11



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

La réécriture du mythe d'Ulysse dans le roman migrant. Errances de Sergio Kokis

Piotr Sadkowski

Date de publication: | Résumé

The article focuses on the analysis of Sergio Kokis’ novel “Errances” as an example of contemporary transvalorization of the myth of Odysseus. Kokis’ novel is treated as a „récit odysséen” (an „Odyssean narrative”), i.e. a type of fiction characterized by the theme of an exile’s return to the native land and the exploration of the protagonist’s narrative identity by means of metafictional devices. In the process of rewriting the Homeric epic and 20^th century versions of the myth of Odysseus (Nikos Kazantzakis’ “The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel” and Joseph Conrad’s novels), Sergio Kokis deconstructs the concept of the return to the native land defined in terms of territory and ethnicity. What emerges from the novel, is a concept of the ethos of the eternal wanderer based on the shattering of the illusion of collective belonging as the source of identity.

Key words: Odysseus; transvalorization; narrative identity; return 



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Les états de femme et la construction de la féminité dans la fiction durassienne

Anna Ledwina

Date de publication: | Résumé

The Condition of Woman and Modelling of Femininity in the Novels of Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras’s writings are a part of a broadly defined discourse on the condition and role of women in a patriarchal society. The author criticises the fact that women are excluded from the public sphere and deprived of the right to self-determination and choice. Consequently, her heroines rebel against the existing mores and are determined to break with their current existence. By shaking off motherly supervision, the protagonists are capable of achieving their own aspirations and of transgressing to independence even against public opinion. The hidden and suppressed longings of the heroines manifest Duras’s own experiences. Through an image of a strong and courageous woman, the author shows a representative of her own gender — a multi-dimensional character, capable of self-discovery, defying reality, and expressing her own sexuality. The search for love, one of the leitmotifs of Duras’s works, reflects the author’s desire to discover and name her own female identity.

Key words: woman, identity, freedom, desire, rebellion, transgression.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Doctor doctor, please, oh, the mess I’m in : la figure paternelle et le père figurant en tant que signe identificateur du fils nazi dans Les Bienveillantes de Jonathan Littell

Magdalena Łachacz

Date de publication: | Résumé

The article proposes a critical reading of the father figure in Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones. While taking into account various interpretative contributions to the analysis of the
theme, formerly neglected and subjected to Julia Kristeva’s theory of abject mother, this article explores an alternative, esthetic, culturally oriented approach to the phenomenon. By grouping together father and a man who, in the absence of the former, takes power over the son, the story’s protagonist, the figure of the father can be understood as a key-symbol of a Nazi perpetrator’s identity. However, the article aims to show that this image can stem from the specific cultural context of contemporary representations of Nazism and influence today’s perception of the perpetrators.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Indocile Bodies: Bodily Transgressions in Selected Canadian Movies

Tomasz Sikora

Date de publication: | Résumé

The article looks at the representations of corporeality, desire and transgression in selected films by David Cronenberg, Guy Maddin and Bruce LaBruce. The body acquires some kind of independence in these films, and the forces of excess that work in/though it (drives, desires) push the modern subject into various acts of transgression, thus threatening its propriety and stability. At a cultural level, this phenomenological instability of body- and self-boundaries may be linked to the Canadian sense of a “weak” national identity, rephrased by some as a positive case of “queer” nationality.

Key words: Body, desire, sexuality, transgression, excess, queer, Canadian cinema.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Girlhood, Disability, and Liminality in Barbara Gowdy’s Mister Sandman

Anna Czarnowus

Date de publication: | Résumé

Barbara Gowdy’s 1996 novel Mister Sandman centers on the mysteriously silent figure of Joan Cannary, a mentally disabled child who yet does not become a spectacle of the grotesque in the mode quite standard for representations of the disabled female figures, as Rosemarie Garland Thomson noticed in her magisterial study Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. In her disability Gowdy’s Joan does not constitute a metaphor of the condition of her family, either, despite the transgressions they are prone to devote themselves to. The novel offers an open-minded outlook on transgression as a means of liberating oneself from the social constraints and from the self-imposed limitations. Joan’s eternal girlhood makes her a lens for the family members’ tendency to transgress against the norms, which is ultimately received with affirmation. Her figure offers a valuable commentary on other texts by Gowdy, which present a discourse on the liminality of human body and on the boundaries of identity.


Key words: Barbara Gowdy, Canadian novel in English, disability, body, gender.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Deconstructing Colonial Misconceptions Potlatch Ceremonies of Kwakwaka’wakws First Nations in Life Writing and Fictional Discourses

Hanna Mrozek-Granieczny

Date de publication: | Résumé

For centuries, Western culture (mis)represented and appropriated the First Nations. Aboriginal peoples were regarded either as primitive, animal-like savages, or they were romanticised and eroticised in order to justify the Canadian policy of civilisation and assimilation of the natives into the monolithic “Britain of the North.” Even though since the time of the signing of the Multiculturalism Act, the concept of Canadian identity has been undergoing major changes embracing racial and cultural minorities, native people still have to fight for recognition and their rightful place in the Canadian discourses. The problem of misrepresentation of indigenous cultures has not been eradicated. This article focuses on the analysis of the potlatch ceremonies of the Kwakwaka’wakws. Using the postcolonial perspective and methodology, it explores both the past and the contemporary culture of potlatches. It also examines the colonial misconceptions of potlatch ceremonies and the current revival of the Kwakiutl potlatching. This postcolonial analysis shows the subversion of the colonial “truths” and looks at the revival of Kwakiutl culture as the aboriginal way of re-reading and re-writing of Canadian history, deconstructing conservative national mythologies and fighting for recognition by the Canadian discourse. The following analysis also reveals changing attitudes toward Kwakwaka’wakws’ potlatches and the evolution of opinions regarding this ceremony. The discussion is based mainly on selected published official government documents, books, life writing and information obtained from a personal interview gathered by the author during her research trip to British Columbia in March 2010 (Student Mobility grant obtained by the Canadian Studies Centre, University of Silesia).


Key words: the potlatch, Kwakwaka’wakws, Kwakiutls, First Nations.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Del pesimismo identitario a la creolización en el ensayo antillano

Amán Rosales Rodríguez

Date de publication: | Résumé

Focused on the broad topic of national identity, the main purpose of this article is to expose the significant change suffered by that concept in the modern Antillean‑Caribbean essay‑writing. Departing from a stark pessimistic viewpoint represented in influential works by the Puerto Rican writers and intellectuals Antonio S. Pedreira, René Márquez and José. L. González, a more moderate, cautiously optimistic perspective has been put forward more recently by Antonio Benítez Rojo and Édouard Glissant. The main difference between the two positions is the replacement, in the second one, of a concern with essentialism by a more open and cosmopolitan instance centered on a pan‑Caribbean multicultural experience.


Key words: national identity, essentialism, creolization, Antillean essay, Caribbean essay



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Subjectivité îlienne et cheminement : De Patrick Chamoiseau à Soeuf Elbadawi

Buata B. Malela

Date de publication: | Résumé

Our purpose is to study how the island is manifested in the relationship between the movement in space and identity in the Caribbean literary discourse. We took Chamoiseau for paradigmatic case of contemporary writer. Our idea is this: the question of the subject is a way to make a double social and literary attack in the intellectual universe. And subjectivity is only possible by a self‑inner journey to another. This approach remains partial in Elbadawi which itself is limited to the exploration of an ego that suffers. And the conditions of possibility of this approach are threefold and is measured in space possible.

Key words: Chamoiseau, Elbadawi, comparative literature, Island, francophone literature



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Le père et sa fille : le sceau paternel dans la prose colettienne et beauvoirienne

Anna Ledwina

Date de publication: | Résumé

The character of the father in French literature, especially in the works of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette and Simone de Beauvoir, is significant. He may be perfect or not without faults, withdrawn or authoritative, fascinating or disgusting, but invariably – even if he is overshadowed by the mother – the father inspires his daughter. The latter treats him as a kind of spiritual guide, a confidant who gives her life energy, is an example to follow, and passes on his value system and the need to write on his daughter. Love for the father or the lack thereof allows an adolescent daughter to find her own identity and define herself, and in the case of a mature woman it allows her to revisit her own childhood and youth through writing, so as to resurrect the image of the father and reflect on her own life and the writer’s vocation.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

L’image de la « belle Gitane » dans la littérature romantique allemande et française

Alice Le Trionnaire-Bolterauer

Date de publication: | Résumé

The Image of the “Beautiful Gypsy Woman” in German and French Literature of Romanticism

In my article I try to analyze the image of the “beautiful gypsy woman” on the basis of four literary texts from the period of Romanticism. The image, in fact, is an invention of the Romantic period, and is discussed here as the reflection of a changing female identity. Male authors respond to the demands of a new generation of women by creating new representations of femininity which, on the one hand, are fascinating and, on the other, quite threatening. The figure of the beautiful, but “foreign” woman is where these authors locate their dreams and fears.

Key words: Gypsy, Romantic literature, image of women, sexuality, emancipation.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Réécriture de Montréal dans La Brûleried'Émile Ollivier

Józef Kwaterko

Date de publication: | Résumé

In its exploration of the images of Montreal in Emile Ollivier’s fiction, the article discusses the topics of alienation, hybridity and identity, central to immigrant literature of Quebec. In order to highlight new imaginary strategies that aim at regaining ownership of Montreal, the author investigates how “La Brûlerie”  transgresses and fictionalizes the topics of dispossession and fragmentation.  

Key words: Montreal; hybridity; transculturalism; metatext; memory; desalienation; identity



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Sous le signe de Méduse : masque et miroir d’Anne-Marie Stretter ou la recherche identitaire chez Marguerite Duras

Anna Ledwina

Date de publication: 29-06-2024 | Résumé | p. 1-11

Anne-Marie Stretter, marked by contradictions, both distant and fiery, witch and fairy, occupies a unique place among Duras’ heroines: that of the universal rival, gentle and medusating. Symbol of an ambiguous femininity, an emblematic figure of Eros and Thanatos, she could be seen as a new Medusa: a modern femme fatale fighting for freedom, who has made mad and absolute love the basis of her existence. This complex and fascinating character from the Durassian universe embodies par excellence the seductress, wandering and solitary, in search of her fluctuating identity and a desire, conveying both her intimate cartography and her unbearable suffering.

2024-06-29



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

El homo sexualis latinoamericano de la época tardíomoderna La narrativa de Jaime Bayly

Ewelina Szymoniak

Date de publication: | Résumé

The Latin American Homo Sexualis of High Modernity. Jaime Bayly’s Narrative Fiction

Jaime Bayly is one of the most controversial Hispanic-American writers of recent times. Both his provocative media image and his writings — which supposedly reffer to his personal experience — focus on gay themes. The aim of the present article is to show, by way of the work of literary scholars who engage in queer theory and sociologists who examine questions of sexuality, how certain changes in the sexual dimension of human life typical of societies of so-called high modernity (although with marked influences from Latin American culture), are reflected in th Peruvian’s writings. Situating Bayly’s novels in a broader literary and social context, the article attempts to shed light on the cultural construction of gender and sexuality.

Key words: (homo)sexuality, hypermasculinity, hegemony, identity.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

À l’origine de tout, la Peur. Le cas de Roland Barthes

Magdalena Marciniak

Date de publication: | Résumé

In this paper I analyze several contexts in which the phenomenon of fear appears in Roland Barthes’ thinking In the first place, I will point out that Fear (written in capital letter in L’Image) placed “at the origin of everything”, becomes the fundamental fear, inseparable from the human condition. After all, for The Pleasure of the Text Barthes chose as its epigraph a quote by Thomas Hobbes ‘The only true passion in my life has been fear’, before introducing the idea of the proximity (identity?) of bliss and fear. Secondly, I will show that when Barthes writes about fear, he often refers to Donald Woods Winnicott’s article The Fear of Breakdown. In conclusion, I will point to an ambivalent status of fear in Barthes’s analysis: its recognition and acceptance are accompanied by desire for its
disappearance.


Key words: Roland Barthes, Fear, Donald Woods Winnicott




Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Madeleine Blais-Dahlem et sa vision de l’autotraduction

Małgorzata Czubińska

Date de publication: 28-12-2020 | Résumé | p. 46-60

Nowadays self-translation remains a frequent practice in the literary field in Canada. A close reading of the self-translations done by Canadian writers such as Nancy Houston, Marco Micone or Patrice Desbiens allows to discover each author’s own vision of self-translation as a creative process. The aim of the paper is to determine, through a comparative analysis of excerpts from the two language versions of the play La Maculée/sTain (2012) and the latest bilingual novel La voix de mon père / My Father’s Voice (2015) by Fransaskois playwright Madeleine Blais-Dahlem, to what extent her self-translating practice guides the reading of the text. Examining
the back and forth between the two versions of the same work will allow to delve deeper into the subject of the identity and privileged status of the translator (Tanqueiro 2009: 109, Saint 2018: 120), but also into the role and skills of the receiver of Madeleine Blais-Dahlem’s bilingual writings.

2020-12-28



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Les stéréotypes culturels dans Une année chez les Français de Fouad Laroui

Olga Kulagina

Date de publication: 31-03-2021 | Résumé | p. 211-220

This paper deals with the linguistic representation of cultural stereotypes that greatly influence the interaction of French and Moroccan cultures in the novel A Year with the French (2010) by Fouad Laroui, a Moroccan-Dutch French-language writer, as the multicultural and autobiographical character of his work makes this text a particularly interesting and credible study material. We are going to put under analysis the linguistic means used to translate the stereotyped view of each culture by the other and the representation of autostereotypes and heterostereotypes. Finally, we will define the impact of these stereotypes on the communicative behaviour of the representatives of the two cultures in question, in particular their way of either becoming more enclosed in their own identity or, on the contrary, of overcoming differences and finding common ground.

2021-03-31



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

L’Adversaire d’Emmanuel Carrère : transgressions des limites, limites de la transgression

Alain Romestaing

Date de publication: | Résumé

The Adversary, a narrative by Emmanuel Carrère, based on a sordid and disconcerting true story, revolves around an act of transgression — that of Jean-Claude Romand who, after deceiving his relatives for 18 years into thinking that he was a renowned doctor, killed all his family when the truth about his life was about to come out into the open. Carrère, in identifying Romand with the “Adversary” (i.e. with Satan) proposes a metaphysical, moral, social, as well as literary reading of transgression. The combination of deception with murder not only causes the irruption of evil in apparently peaceful lives, but it also challenges language itself, as well as writing which has to deal with a man both monstrously other and monstrously familiar. So, looking at it more closely, it seems that the explosion of transgression in The Adversary is to be read more as an anxious consciousness of the flimsiness of the boundaries than as the latter being called into question.


Key words: Emmanuel Carrère, transgression, evil, identity.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Le plat pays vallonné ou comment se déconstruit et se reconstruit le stéréotype paysager de la Belgique

Judyta Zbierska-Mościcka

Date de publication: 23-02-2021 | Résumé | p. 168-178

Landscapes, just like stereotypes, should be perceived as mental constructions. They appear in literature as indispensable tools in the development of identity, both collective and individual. The present paper traces the evolution of this construction and its different uses changing with time: from the emergence of the Belgian literature (and Belgium) to the present days. Literary examples used in the paper refer, among others, to the works by Gautier, Verhaeren, La Garde, Gevers, Masson, Rolin, Bertrand, Delaive and Gunzig.

2021-02-23



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Hushed Bodies, Screaming Narratives: The Construction of Trans-Identity in 19th- and 20th-Century French Literature

C.J. Gomolka

Date de publication: | Résumé

Michel Foucault described 19th-century France as a period of intense sexual scrutiny as well as a watershed moment that gave birth to the formal recognition, evolution, and study of “deviant” sexual identities. While this may be true, modern French studies still idle in examining the epistemological effect of this operative change in French ideology, society, and more specifically literature. If studies into 19th- and 20th-century French gay and lesbian literatures and ideologies have begun to flourish in some academic francophone circles, trans-literature has been overlooked. Moreover, this critical oversight inadvertently highlights the all too often modern omission of the “T” in the LGBT community. This article will place the works of five French authors spanning the 19th and 20th centuries in communication with contemporary queer theory in an attempt to examine the nascent evolution of what today might be considered transgender identity, as well as analyse the meaning attached to queer identities during this period in French and francophone literatures.


Key words: transgender, queer theory, 19th century, 20th century, France, narrative.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Los jóvenes escritores hispanoamericanos : literatura y cultura de masas

Ewelina Szymoniak

Date de publication: | Résumé

The presence of materials and structures derived from mass culture is considered one of the distinctive features for South American literature in the post period. However, while more experienced writers (that is those associated with the boom) had been clearly denoting the inferior character of mass culture in comparison to high culture (literature), this distinction started to vanish gradually over the 1990s. This paper is to demonstrate that the dexterity of young South American novelists in exploring the fast culture world (Paz Soldán) can be explained in the light of the theory of literary generations by Kazimierz Wyka. It transpires that the so-called period of rooting in society (Spranger), overlapping the 1970s and 1980s, coincided with a rapid development of mass media in South America. Being the fundamental source of mediated experiences (Giddens), mass media have become a looking glass for the perception of reality and an individual’s identity. This is reflected in the writing of young authors: in Por favor, rebobinar (1994), Alberto Fuguet represents the life of young generation Chileans connected with the mass media world, using its diverse discourses.


Key words: South American literature, mass culture, young generation writers.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

L’identité adolescente face à l’Autre dans l’organic fantasy de Nnedi Okorafor

Ewa Drab

Date de publication: 29-06-2021 | Résumé | p. 129-139

The present paper aims at discussing What Sunny Saw in the Flames by Nnedi Okorafor as a fantasy novel for children and young adults focused upon the question of self-identification. In the framework of fiction for younger audiences, the fantasy mode becomes a tool which allows to examine the topics important to young readers, such as identity and their place within the society, by providing a confrontation with the Other. The example of Nnedi Okorafor’s book, known in the USA as Akata Witch, shows how the instrumentation of a fantasy novel enables an exposition of the process in which the protagonist grows on the intellectual, emotional and cultural levels. In other words, the fantasy mode aids in the exploration of Sunny’s American-Nigerian origin, her albinism, coming of age and the comprehension of her identity. Simultaneously, as additional topics emerge from the analysis, it becomes visible that the question of the Self cannot be separated from the concept of the Other, with the lesson of empathy and respect for what is different.

2021-06-29



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Langue (dé)colonisée, langue colonisatrice La surconscience linguistique et la condition juive chez Albert Cohen et Piotr Rawicz

Piotr Sadkowski

Date de publication: | Résumé

Albert Memmi, one of the forerunners of the postcolonial thought, perceived the Jewish condition as an emblem, even an archetype, of any dominated, oppressed, dispossessed condition. The highly specific consciousness of the colonised condition which the Jewish writer manifests seems to be shaped by the centuries-long communal experience, which exceeds the historical and political frames of postcolonialism sensu stricto, as the Jewish identity is stigmatised from its beginnings (conceived of as a narrative conveyed by the biblical tradition) by the experience of oppression and the threat of extermination or assimilation. These transhistorical factors determine to a large extent linguistic strategies typical for Jewish literature written in European (non-Jewish) languages. It is from this perspective that the present article discusses the role of the linguistic superconsciousness of Albert Cohen and Piotr Rawicz, two francophone Jewish writers, whose works — precursory to the postmodern condition — reveal identitarian, ethical and esthetic challenges related to the use of the language of the other in the creative process.


Key words: Jewish literature, linguistic superconsciousness, oppression, postmodern condition.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

La figuration du sujet afro-polonais : Identité, Liberté, Musique dans le discours littéraire de Dongala et Dove

Buata Malela

Date de publication: 30-06-2025 | Résumé | p. 1-23

Le texte explore la représentation du sujet afro-polonais dans le discours littéraire de Dongala et Dove en se concentrant sur l'identification ontologique et la conception humaniste du sujet. Il applique ces deux notions à l’analyse de la figuration du sujet afro-polonais dans le roman "La sonate à Bridgetower : Sonata Mulattica" (2017) d'Emmanuel Dongala, en faisant de cette représentation une instance de questionnement de la liberté. Parallèlement, la poésie de Rita Dove, à travers "Sonata Mulattica" (2010), met en avant l'espoir et la puissance libératrice de la musique dans le parcours de Bridgetower, élargissant ainsi la perspective à l'échelle européenne, notamment en incluant l'Angleterre et la France. Dans les deux récits, la figure de Bridgetower incarne un nouvel humanisme afro-polonais dans l'Europe du XVIIIe siècle, tout en soulignant les enjeux contemporains de discrimination et de quête d'acceptation sociale.

2025-06-30



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Crainte, jalousie, indignation, espoir… ou le chemin vers la reconnaissance des écrivains immigrants au Québec

Tina Mouneimné

Date de publication: | Résumé

This article aims at browsing the reasons why French-speaking authors of ethnic origin had to “fight” for their place in the Quebec literary pantheon and how they have succeeded in doing it. The battle for the recognition of the immigrant writer has proceeded in parallel to the battle fought in the name of recognition of the immigrant himself in the society. It was, in fact, due not only to the outstanding quality of some of these francophone authors’ works, but also to the socio-political circumstances related to the changes occurring in Quebec since the 1960’s. However, as it has been underlined through the “Affaire LaRue”, the only criteria of recognition of anyone’s text should be the quality of their work, otherwise, we fall into other, endless discourses concerning identity, immigration policies, etc. that take us away from literature.


Key words: Literature, Quebec, immigrant, LaRue, recognition.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Bio‑graphies. De la figure paternelle à la pratique scripturale dans La place d’Annie Ernaux

Jolanta Rachwalska von Rejchwald

Date de publication: | Résumé

Over the years Annie Ernaux has been trying to deal with the theme of her father’s death. And yet she could not find the appropriate form to express a specific distance that emerged
at some point when her father was still alive. By experimenting with various novel literary forms she came to a realization that only the departure from fiction would allow her to convey a kind of “truth” about her father and this unique distance (supposedly attributable to her leaving the social class she had been born and raised in). Consequently, Ernaux decides to reject “literature” and to write an autobiographical piece in the first person, which is somehow flat because it is stripped of all rhetoric layers. In this article I endeavour to show that a deeply engraved thirst for telling the truth about one’s father simultaneously becomes a story about one’s ambitions and about seeking one’s identity. Primarily, however, A Man’s Place is a story about searching for one’s own form of expression and growing up to writing.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

«Por la carne también se llega al cielo». Cuerpo, éxtasis y paraíso en la poesía mexicana erótico-amorosa contemporánea

María Ema Llorente

Date de publication: 01-02-2021 | Résumé | p. 117-129

The article focuses on the study of the representation of time and temporality in contemporary Mexican poems about eroticism-love. Recreating the moment of the union of lovers, a situation that does not conflict the concept of transcendence, plays a fundamental role in such a poetry. Similarly to what happens during mystical ecstasy, this union affects the perception of the individual identity, usually reduced to dualist and exclusive terms such as body/soul, outside/inside, form/essence, etc., as well as the time-space categories involved in its building process. In an attempt to communicate this transcendence, poems resort to figurative and symbolic wordings including, for example, “heaven,” “paradise,” or “golden years,” which seem to be restored since ecstasy enables participation by suspending the chronological time and its course.

2021-02-01



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Sicilia, un’isola dentro un continente umano

Małgorzata Puto

Date de publication: | Résumé

The analyzed text puts a great emphasis on the concept of an island perceived not only as a geographical autonomic zone, but also as a cultural and personal continuum. Culicchia’s novel focuses on the emotional and generational voyage preceded by the images that are alive in the mind of a child who now becomes an adult. Sicily is an example of the concept of mente locale which defines the relationship between space and human being for whom it is essential and primordial.

Key words: Giuseppe Culicchia, island, voyage, identity, mente locale



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Sexual Politics: Mapping the Body in Marguerite Duras’s L’Amant

Richard J. Gray II

Date de publication: | Résumé

In L’Amant (1984), through the juxtaposition of traditional male/female sexual roles, Marguerite Duras painted a gynocentric portrait of sexual politics. By depicting a series of encounters in diverse parts of the Indochinese (Vietnam) landscape, Duras’s novel described the sexual “coming of age” story of her female protagonist’s. Each Vietnamese setting became a visual and sensory metaphor for the various developmental stages of the protagonist. In this essay, I contend that Duras’s use of contrasting settings serves to “flesh out” the sexual politics conveyed in the novel. Herein, I examine the geographic locations illustrating the sexual politics of the novel, including the Mekong River signifying the female protagonist’s rite of passage, Cholon, the city where the girl experiences sexual liberation and a struggle with the established authority, the lover’s apartment where the couple consummates their relationship, and finally, France representing the land of wealth to which the protagonist will eventually return.


Key words: autobiography, Judith Butler, Cholen (Cholon), colonisation, crossing, gender, juxtaposition, Marguerite Duras, Julia Kristeva, liberation, liminal space, mapping the body, Mekong, Kate Millett, Other, post-colonial, prostitution, sexploitation, sexuality, sexual politics.

In L’Amant (1984), through the juxtaposition of traditional male/female sexual roles, Marguerite Duras painted a gynocentric portrait of sexual politics. By depicting a series of encounters in diverse parts of the Indochinese (Vietnam) landscape, Duras’s novel described the sexual “coming of age” story of her female protagonist’s. Each Vietnamese setting became a visual and sensory metaphor for the various developmental stages of the protagonist. In this essay, I contend that Duras’s use of contrasting settings serves to “flesh out” the sexual politics conveyed in the novel. Herein, I examine the geographic locations illustrating the sexual politics of the novel, including the Mekong River signifying the female protagonist’s rite of passage, Cholon, the city where the girl experiences sexual liberation and a struggle with the established authority, the lover’s apartment where the couple consummates their relationship, and finally, France representing the land of wealth to which the protagonist will eventually return.


Key words: autobiography, Judith Butler, Cholen (Cholon), colonisation, crossing, gender, juxtaposition, Marguerite Duras, Julia Kristeva, liberation, liminal space, mapping the body, Mekong, Kate Millett, Other, post-colonial, prostitution, sexploitation, sexuality, sexual politics.

-->