One of the most common clichés of our culture defines Judaism as the “religion of the Father.” For some this is just a neutral description referring to the fatherly aspect of the Jewish
God; for others this is the very epitome of the patriarchal prejudice which privileges the masculine Father Figure at the expense of everything maternal. In my essay, however, I would like to challenge this staple association, by pointing to the simple fact that Jews themselves very rarely – if ever – describe their religion in openly patriarchal terms. In fact, when described in psychoanalytic terms, the role of the Father is here merely transitory: he is to inaugurate a series of subsequent detachments, starting from the disintegration of the first bonds of love (to maternal body and, more generally, to the body of nature) and ending with the complete neutralisation of the “family romance.” The Father Figure, therefore, is called upon only to counteract the power of the primordial “attachments” and initiate a process of separation which will allow the subject to establish himself as a free and mature moral agent, truly “born” into the world.

The paper is a critical analysis of romance fiction in relation to parental structures visible in patriarchal codes and paternal tropes romance novels pivot around. As such, it provides an insight into the narrative patterns the romance uses to sustain patriarchy as well as recreate the father‑daughter‑like relationship at the center of cultural practices of love.

The aim of this article is to study the underpinnings of the matrixial theory introduced by Bracha L. Ettinger, and her installation in the Freud Museum – to be more precise, Freud’s
study room – so as to examine their paradoxical status in Freudian‑Lacanian space(s). As I attempt to show, both parts of Ettinger’s activity are not against the Law of the Father, but rather they constantly dis‑obey his rules; Ettinger tirelessly endeavours to include the Mother alongside the paternal order. We thus observe not so much the rejection of Freud’s and Lacan’s paradigms as the movement on their boundaries and their subsequent transgression – and this may be seen as the greatest promise Ettinger provides us with.

This paper aims at the interpretation of the father as an empty figure of authority in Samuel Beckett’s radio play entitled Embers. Through the close-reading of this play and the analysis of the relations between the protagonist and the two feminine characters, Ada and Addie, it demonstrates how the father figure coincides with the classical impasse of Beckett’s oeuvre: the subject unable to manifest itself. Due to that fact, the father is presented in the constant process of wearing his authorial space out. It is eventually demonstrated that in Embers the subject is coerced to balance between its self-deconstruction and the paternal violence: its focus on its own materiality results in the collapse of language, whereas overt attention on the linguistic cognition puts forward the logic of remnants resisting father’s orders, be it in the form of sound collage, or material element immune to symbolisation.

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.

The work Daddy #3 (2012) by Italian artist Giulia Andreani, inspired by a photographic archive, represents Heinrich Himmler with his daughter Gudrun. By means of adapting the photographic image into painting, the artist evokes the burden, sometimes heavy to carry, of family legacies. Moreover, Daddy #3 reveals Andreani’s interest in the woman artist figure, and in the issue of artistic heritage. The painting, which provokes one to ponder the political uses of the image of the family, can also be seen as one of the rare works of art representing an emotional relationship between a father and his daughter.

In spite of the implications of its name, the Quiet Revolution in Quebec seems to be rather tempestuous at the family level. The conflict between generations, set in a historic context, puts into question the functioning of the entire society, especially the dominant role of the father. The objective of this article, therefore, is to analyze the position of the father in the social context. Thus, I discuss various types of fathers: a farmer father, the patriarch who leaves the household chores to the wife; a worker father, subservient to both his wife at home and to his boss at the factory; a bourgeois father who works for himself; and finally, an immigrant father who seeks his place within the new society.

This paper aims at examining the figure of the father in the dramas of Carlos Arniches, an author highly valued by directors, whose plays were frequently staged in Spain and Spanish America in the first half of the 20th century. Family relationships, and, above all, the figure of the father as a recurring element and an important dramatic motif in selected texts, are studied in detail. Among the father figures of Carlos Arniches there are: a despot father or a father-tyrant, an overindulgent father abused by his spendthrift family members, a father who sacrifices himself for the family, and a benevolent and spiritual father. In this article, these father figures are examined and classified according to their characteristic features, as well as the way in which they are introduced and how they function within the dramatic structure of the selected plays. This paper also offers an explanation of the ideological function of the author’s message conveyed by the analysed dramas.

The father figure in twentieth-century novels usually appears only as a part of the family. It is rare for a father to become the main protagonist of the book; he is frequently presented as an “addition” to the mother. Rightly or not, the father figure is, however, a symbol of authority and power in the family, hence writers have a tendency to present the parent-child relationships as difficult, bitter, and very, very complex. The situation is not much different in modern Italian literature, in which relationships with fathers during childhood are often a starting point for adult problems. In this article, I try to analyze this phenomenon on the basis of two novels written after 1950: Caro Michele by Natalia Ginzburg and Volevo i pantaloni by Lara Cardella.

This article is aimed at analyzing the break between fathers and their children in the texts of Boubacar Boris Diop, in which another figure often replaces that of the biological parent. Participating in the identity construction of his foster son, the spiritual father grants him memory which is contradictory to the official history. This clash, omnipresent in Boubacar Boris Diop’s novels, testifies of a change of paradigm revealing a deep crisis of the father figure in African postcolonial societies. We are indeed very far from the mythicized image of the pater nobilis which used to be omnipresent in African literature.

Using the explicit‑implicit socio‑critical approach systematized by Pierre Barberis, I will endeavour to trace the heuristic itinerary of a pugnacious illegitimate child in quest of her fugitive father. I will focus on textual clues and hermeneutical levers in order to reveal damages resulted in the absence of the father in the conjugal apparatus. In the first part, I will intend to prove that any paternal irresponsibility affects the vital equilibrium which is necessary to development within family and society. The second part, in turn, puts an emphasis on how psychological damages due to failed family life may result in reifying of minorities through the violation of women and children’s rights. Finally, I will endeavour to show that through the inter‑subjective gender approach one may see the project of a new world which fosters social justice for all sexes.

The figure of the father is presented in a variety of ways in contemporary Latin American literature; one of the popular images, for instance, is that of a despotic patriarchal “macho”
in the drug trafficking literature. However, there is also a new image of paternity linked to “new masculinity,” presented as gender utopia in the short story “Alumbramiento” (“Birth”) by Andrés Neuman (2006). Here, a male narrator gives birth to a new man who is, at the same time, himself and his own son. In this article, I aim to explore the change from traditional images of paternity to the new, disruptive, utopian ones, inscribed within new ideas about gender equality.

Finding new forms for a literary representation of the father is a challenge, as family relations constitute one of the most popular literary motifs. Éric Chevillard’s innovative presentation of this subject takes the form of an unconventional blog, which is more literary than personal, and which exists in electronic and print formats. This peculiar – half-fictional, halfautobiographical – diary tells the story of a “housewriter,” combining creative pursuits with everyday fatherly duties, and thus invites the reader to reflect on the father–daughter relation and the changes it is undergoing in our times.

The parent–child relationship is omnipresent in the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini. In Oedipus Rex, the filmmaker uses both the original myth and Sophocles’ tragedy to underline the fact that the father–son relationship is rooted in the Ancient World. Moreover, as will be depicted later on, Pasolini uses the work to evoke his personal experiences and artistic style. In this sense, the film is founded on psychoanalytic theories. Oedipus embodies the heart of Freudian thought: metahistorical hatred against the father, patricide and incest on the one hand, nostalgia and longing for the mother’s womb on the other. At the epicenter of this reflection lies the Oedipal theme of father–son relationship coupled with his digressions.

The first-person narrative novels, Mes parents by Hervé Guibert and Biographie I, II by Yves Navarre, are part of the characters’ crisis writing where the reason of evil is always the father’s presence. Without hiding behind fictitious names, both writers reveal personal stories centered on the inevitable conflict between father and son. The family theme brings them together while their behavior makes them different. The first part of our study, “The Rejected Father,” focuses on Hervé Guibert’s violent language and attitude towards his father he will never accept. The second part, “The Rejecting Father,” is an analysis of Yves Navarre’s struggle of reconciliation with his father disappointed by his sexual preferences.

The following paper analyzes the theme of homosexual paternity. It analyzes Mazzucco’s novel on three different levels: the legal and social context, the gender perspective, and the level of literary and artistic symbols. In each of these areas we can observe the importance given to traditional paternity, seen as legal power or divine creation of the men. On the contrary, homosexual paternity is excluded by law, denied as containing maternal elements, and endowed with modest symbolic power.

Annie’s Ernaux’ A Man’s Place and Assia Djebar’s Nowhere in My Father’s House can be described as accounts of what separates fathers from daughters in the context of generational and class divisions. Ernaux connects the story of her father’s life and death with the one of herself. Djebar returns to the late colonial period and gives a description of complex transcultural experiences. In both books, the authors employ a special literary form which is referred to as récit de filiation by D. Viart. The reconstruction of the Father is directly linked with the reflection on the processes of writing, the sense of literature, and the necessity of rejection of the fathers’ heritage.

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.

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.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an English-speaking writer who was born in India in 1956 and is currently living in the United States. In Queen of Dreams published in 2004 she depicts the conflicts between Rakhi, a young American in her thirties living in California, and her India-born parents. Rakhi reproaches them for refusing to initiate her to Indian culture, particularly blaming her father for not being able to communicate. However, the mother’s death is the trigger for the father’s story. The father becomes the one who tells his daughter about life in India, thus embodying the missing cultural link in Rakhi’s family tree. The aim of this article is to offer an analysis of the father-daughter relationship as presented in Queen of Dreams. It intends to put into light the part played by the father in helping his daughter understand the way transgenerational loyalties work, and create a new identity of her own.

The Crime of Count Neville is primarily a story of a complex father–daughter relationship, culminating in the attempted murder of the count’s daughter by her own father. Infanticide is inevitable for Sérieuse, which parallels the mythological story of Iphigenia. But Nothomb also develops on an extra-diegetic level, as the meta-narrative of the genesis of the Freudian Family Romance or the Novel itself. Between the concepts of “bastard” and “foundling,” this novel contains many autobiographical elements and borrows from other literary works, most noticeably from Oscar Wilde’s collection Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime.

In this article I endeavour to tackle the myth of Derrida’s untranslatability. First, I present the theoretical basis for my research – Henri Meschonnic’s poetics of translation. Then, I try to determine the factors which make translating Derrida’s texts difficult: the polysemy of his most important terms and the “terminological fields,” that is all the terms related to each other. Two examples of these fields support my argument. Finally, I analyse some Polish translations of Derrida’s text and show linguistic difficulties in Polish translations of La différance and other texts, where not only the Derridean style, but also grammar, vocabulary, and expertise in philosophy leave a lot to be desired.

The Polish translation of Verlaine’s Art poétique marks an important step in the process of acquisition of symbolism as a new paradigm of poetic creation. The analysis presented in this paper puts in the limelight the problem of positioning the translated text in the receptive literary system. The analytic proposal implies the employment of the term “embeddedness,” originally introduced by the historian Karl Polanyi, to render the implication of the non-economic factors in the process of production. Analogically, the production of literary texts is conditioned by factors situated at the frontier of literature. Those wishing to adopt a foreign aesthetics must vanquish the resistance of the local, traditionalist context. As a result, the translation is “embedded” as a manifesto, even if Verlaine’s Art poétique is a parody of the genre and an expression of the poet’s creative doubts rather than a truly prescriptive text. The auto-ironic dimension of the original poem disappears in the Polish translation by Miriam, which becomes a rigorous ars poetica.