The object of the reflections I shall engage in is the story and storytelling in its canonical variant, which our civilization inherited from Greek antiquity, as well as the modern variants of this narrative category. What the article is not about is the story as an epic genre or subgenre, even if there are important common points between the category in question and the (sub)genre in its various manifestations. Drawing on a number of sources, from Aristotle to Genette and Gefen, this article brings together relevant notions, conceptions and their implementations, and concludes with some pertinent examples.

Boulevard theater is often considered a dramatic art that strictly adheres to the fixed rules of the ‘well-made play’. One of its offshoots is the ‘thesis play’, which, while appearing to respect the traditional model, perverts it through openly epic elements. Indeed, at the turn of the 20th century, in dramas addressing thorny social issues, authors readily resort to narratives to lead spectators, through unshakable evidence and reasoning, to adhere to their theses. This inherently rhetorical method undermines the very foundations of the canonical form of drama, while contributing to impairing its smooth functioning. Two plays particularly illustrate the alteration of the Aristotelian ‘beautiful animal’, primarily due to the intrusion of narrative sequences: Les Avariés by Eugène Brieux and Ces Messieurs by Georges Ancey.

Fauconnier’s work, Malaysia, which has fallen into oblivion today, was ahead of its time. Awarded the Goncourt in 1930, it nevertheless raises doubts about its genre. Written during the colonial era, it differs from colonial works of the time both in its approach to the theme and in its style. It features a French rubber planter and gives an example of perfect intercultural communication, even of annihilation of one’s own individuality in favor of a fusion with the host country, Malaysia. Lescale, Fauconnier’s autofictional alter ego, seduced by the country, by the culture of its inhabitants with customs and beliefs, takes the reader into an exceptional, bewitching world, that of a tropical Malaysia. The novel exerts a profound influence in various ways – atmosphere (rather than plot, which is almost non-
existent), rich and elegant language, presence of elements of culture (including Malay pantouns).

Silvia Baron Supervielle’s work brings an original voice to contemporary French and Francophone literature. The work of this writer, born in Argentina but living in France and writing in French, is that of a nomad who has never been uprooted. Her work not only constructs dialogues between two languages, between two continents, but also between poets and painters, between words and photographs, between prose and poetry. Indeed, it is part of the exploration for new forms of poetic novels, autobiographical texts and essay collections. Finally, this work is a great humanist endeavour which, built on the absence of the mother, celebrates fidelity and love.

The article discusses Polish translation of Georges Perec’s La Disparition. In 2022, this famous lipogrammatic novel was translated in Poland under the title Zniknięcia by René Koelblen and Stanisław Waszak. By analyzing the translation of the organization of the novel and of surnames, the article aims to show the choices made by the translators.

This study examines the representation of the Afro-Polish subject in the literary works of Emmanuel Dongala and Rita Dove, with a focus on ontological identification and the humanistic conception of the subject. These two notions serve as analytical frameworks for exploring the portrayal of the Afro-
Polish figure in Dongala’s novel, La Sonate à Bridgetower: Sonata Mulattica (2017), where Bridgetower’s journey becomes a lens through which questions of freedom are interrogated. Simultaneously, Dove’s poetry collection, Sonata Mulattica (2009), underscores the themes of hope and the liberating power of music in Bridgetower’s life, expanding the discourse to a broader European context, encompassing England and France. In both narratives, Bridgetower emerges as a unique embodiment of Afro-Polish humanism in 18th-century Europe, while also highlighting contemporary issues of racial discrimination and the struggle for social acceptance.

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.

This article achieves a better understanding on contemporary “impegno” by delving into the comparison between the positions of authors such as Saviano, De Luca, Moresco, and the logics and repertories of action proper to what sociology calls new social movements (della Porta and Diani, 2006). The article opens with a minimal and provisional history of impegno, or rather some notes, useful to put the following comparison into perspective. In the last part, after showing the similarities between today’s impegno and forms of actions and logics of the movements, the comparison itself is overcome in the direction of postesecular spiritualities.

The article discusses selected short stories from Michele Mari’s latest collection, Le maestose rovine di Sferopoli [The Majestic Ruins of Sferopolis], published in 2021. This fourth anthology in Mari’s oeuvre includes both new narratives as well as those previously published in newspapers or other short story collections. A unifying theme across these diverse stories – varied in form, language, and subject matter – is the exploration of imagination and linguistic creativity. The short stories invite a deeper, meta-literary reflection on the mechanisms of narration and expression through artistic text, on challenging established literary canons, on expressionistic compositional oxymoronization, and on influencing how the work is received by drawing on the cultural traditions shared with the recipient.

The article entitled “Rethink the paradigm. Observations on the humanistic culture in the novel "La linea del colore by Igiaba Scego” aims to show that the novel by the Italian contemporary writer is a critique of the paradigm of humanistic culture. This thesis is based on frequent references in the novel to the art of the humanist era and to classical culture. The analysis shows that the novel points out that the definition adopted as the basis of humanism excludes people who are of a race other than white, a gender other than male, and people who have the status of a slave or immigrant. The novel points to the discriminatory, androcentric and Eurocentric nature of the culture of humanism.

In this paper, geopoetics constitutes a starting point for the exploration of Raúl Zurita’s monumental project entitled La vida nueva. Versión final that was written over the years 1983–2019. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how the work of the Chilean poet aligns with the paradigm shift in thinking about the relationship between the man and the environment, as observed among researchers by the end of the 20th century. Moreover, the paper draws on the  theoretical reflection and literary practice of the founder of geopoetics, namely Kenneth White, to present the main assumptions of this research orientation that represents the environmental humanities. Next, selected aspects of Zurita’s collection of poems are analysed. Those aspects illustrate him as an intellectual committed to the present and future of nature in southern Chile.