What this article attempts to gauge are the possibilities stemming from combining two methodologies: masculinity studies (as a part of gender studies) and ecocriticism/environmental studies. The material for the analysis is the novel by Sergei Lebedev, Oblivion. The author of the article reconstructs the hegemonic pattern of male initiation present in the novel and related with post-communist inheritance of Grandfather II, one of the novel’s characters. Overcoming the imposed pattern of masculinity (authoritative, totalitarian) takes a form of journey into subarctic Russia and seeking the traces of gulag camps. Climate-related factors play a significant role in this process: motifs of Purga, of permafrost, and endemic plant species of Ural and Syberia.

The article speaks to the deconstruction of men’s images in William Wyler’s films. One may observe a different paradigm of what is male in the said director’s pacifist trilogy. The alternative masculinity utopias constructed therein are quite awe-inducing due to their emancipatory scope. Friendly Persuasion (1956), The Big Country, and Ben-Hur (1959) are films depicting not only the fight against patriarchal stereotype, but also reaching beyond the restrictions of heteronormativity. The libidal coordinates of the narratives are in sync with biopolitical status of modernity. Surprisingly enough, at the heart of Hollywood some brave cinematic post-masculine projects were developed.

Today’s men are faced with ever growing number of expectations, especially related to their looks. To meet those expectations, some men decided to combine two things: grooming and the aura of masculinity. The foregoing combination yielded the popular parlours called “barber shops” with all the accompanying societal and media atmosphere. Moreover, it has appeared that beard, being a historically symbolic part of person’s looks, in this day and age may be the glue of sexually homogenous communities/community characterised by retrotopia (Zygmunt Bauman’s term). The said communities make it possible for men to create powerful brotherly bonds but, at the same time, are potentially the spaces of regression in terms of women’s and other dominated groups’ emancipation.

The presented analysis juxtaposes a half-peripheral, essentially dystopian masculinity depicted in a Polish fantasy universe (including over 30 volumes by Polish and Russian authors of both genders) and a projected (utopian?) masculinity at the heart of another universe, most of all addressed to girls. Visions of masculinity presented in both the universes are the bases of comparative analysis conducted in the article. The differences between the considered warriors are made conspicuous within a few spheres of their relations and actions, from their purity and body care, to their attitudes to women and erotic relationships they engage in. What concludes the article is the analysis of the protagonists’ and narrators reactions to non-heteronormative behaviours (trace amounts of which appear in the world of the Factory Zone [Polish: Fabryczna Zona] novels, yet feature opulently and overtly in Shadowhunters).

The Polish culture suggests to the men two stances: subjugation to the (real or imaginary) female power or, to the contrary, aggressive elimination of “femineity.” The article analyzes these stances as presented in certain works of fiction and their worlds. Femineity is eliminated under the model of homosocial sadism, which must be distinguished both from the traditional patriarchy and from – denied or sublimed – homosexuality. The issue is first discussed based on Wzgórze psów by Jakub Żulczyk; then it is tracked back to the works displaying similar psychosocial structures, even though they may not obviously belong to the same historical literary community (despite their chronological proximity). These works are: Zwał by Sławomir Shuty, Ciało obce by Rafał Ziemkiewicz, White Raven by Andrzej Stasiuk, Morfina by Szczepan Twardoch and His Current Woman by Jerzy Pilich. The theoretical tools applied come from politicized versions of the late psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis (along the Lacan – Deleuze – Theweleit line).

The article presents an analysis of an MTV’s show Ex on the Beach Poland, which focuses on male characters who exhibit masculinity “patterns” promoted (“constructed”) by the reality show in question. First off, the show’s “format” is presented, including its specificity in the context of reality show genre development in relation to the theory of paleo- and neo-television. The article’s subsequent sections analyse the characters appearing in the second series of Ex on the Beach Poland. In the end, the conclusions are presented that pertain most of all to entirety of commercial side of promoting particular “patterns” of masculinity.

In the article the author presents her interpretation of corporeality in Szczepan Twardoch’s books. She performs her analysis of male body’s image by emphasizing the opposition between biology-based disruptions of social constructs and machine-like process yielding the projection of a perfect soldier. What was indicated by the author is the influence of German authors on Twardoch’s novels, particularly Klaus Theweleit’s works. The analysis focuses on Josef Magnor, the main character of Twardoch’s Drach, serving as a figure of defeat in the context of variegated social relations, most of all relating to masculinity. The key to understand the failure of masculinity in Twardoch’s works seems to be the opposition: the dry – the wet, which facilitates transferring of considerations on war symbols directly into interpretation of Polish recent literature.

The present article aims to analyse the depictions of male protagonists in the oeuvre of Marek Hłasko. The post-World War Two crisis of hegemonic masculinity resulted in transformations of male and female gender identities in the 1950s. What seems to reflect the said reconfiguration of masculinity model are the changes occurring between the main protagonists of the particular pieces of Hłasko’s prose. In the 1954 short story entitled Baza Sokołowska, the men’s identities are, in the natural way, embedded in biology. In order to join the male community of drivers and gain their respect, it is enough to go through an initiation ritual. In the prose written by Hłasko after 1955, however, more and more often appear the male characters who humiliate the young and thwart them on their way to join masculine community, yet simultaneously some characters are presented who contest forms of patriarchal culture and refuse to participate in it. Hłasko’s Israeli novels, in turn, feature a series of male protagonists for whom gender (or even sexual) identity is merely a social construct. The narrator/protagonist of Drugie zabicie psa (Killing the Second Dog) would even consciously “perform” his masculinity to obtain an affluent female tourist’s trust and, as a result, to cozen her out of her money, which he needs to pay back his debts.
The analysis of Marek Hłasko’s selected prose writings focused on the representation of various masculinity models leads the author of the article to a conclusion that male gender identity is consistently shifting towards constructivist concepts.

The article’s aim is to reflect upon the transgenerational and transnational sustainability of Central European memory in literary and cultural space of South Africa. It also investigates links between John Maxwell Coetzee’s oeuvre, as well as works by other South African authors (e.g. Dan Jacobson, Lionel Abrahams, Deborah Levy), with cultural and, above all, literary universe of Central Europe. While analysing selected literary and cultural texts (among others, hitherto unpublished archival documents), the author points to the fact that the Nobel laureate’s consistently and programmatically displayed interest in Central Europe ought to be considered within a wider context of systematic and creative “dialogue” with Central Europe which has been carried out by writers and artists from South Africa in the 20th and 21st centuries. The present study is an original attempt at capturing the phenomenon of mutual cultural flows and horizontal exchange taking place between some minor literatures (and cultures), in this case: South African and Central European.

The presented text is the verbatim record of the address delivered on 23rd of October 2018 by John Maxwell Coetzee on the occasion of conferring on him a title of doctor honoris causa by the University of Silesia in Katowice. The theme of the speech in question is the significance of the English language in contemporary world.

A conversation with J.M. Coetzee, carried out in the July of 2019 via mail, touches upon such topics as the learning and teaching processes, the teacher‒student and the writer‒reader relations, as well as the notions of “death” and “alive [way of] reading,” the influence of Polish literature (in particular the poetry of Zbigniew Herbert) on the Nobel laureate’s works, and the Anna Wierzbicka’a concept of natural semantic meta-language.

The present foreword refers to the address delivered by J.M. Coetzee on the occasion of conferring upon him by the University of Silesia the doctor honoris causa degree. Particular attention is paid to his thoughts on the role of English in the world of today. The author of the foreword shows that reflection on language in general and its role in moulding one’s identity in present in the Nobel laureate’s works, including his most recent novels. Further into the foreword, the author briefly discusses text reprinted in Śląskie Studia Polonistyczne: the already mentioned address by J.M. Coetzee, the conversation with the Author, and an article devoted to his works written by Robert Kusek.

The article aims at analysing the motif of dream and its function in fairy tales and stories by Hans Christian Andersen. The Dannish author wrote during the Romantic era when the unconscious was of great interest to the creators of all kind. It was widely acknowledged then that dreams are a gateway to a hidden reality, and therefore, they constituted a great creative material. In Andersen’s work, the oneiric narrative abounds, for instance in Little Ida’s Flowers and The Little Match Girl, and dreams perform multitudinoulsy functions, from familiarizing children with death, to unveiling fears. The examples of dreams presented in the article indicate to the fact that Andersen’s oeuvre was addressed not only to children, but also adults.

The text presents an interpretation of poetical pieces by Bolesław Leśmian and Leopold Staff with the same title: Pszczoły (“The Bees”). What constitutes the departure point for the said analyses is a prolific metaphor theme that has been present in interpretative discourse since Antiquity, namely that of the “bee-poet”, but also identifying those insects with the Death, the mystery of existence, and with the being, all of which facilitates the reading of these two forgotten poems of Polish modernism in terms of the sacred (sacrum) and existence as well as the identity of beings (the latter category is referred to in interpretation via the ship of Theseus paradox).

The article contains a discussion of the author’s correspondence with Tadeusz Konwicki pertaining to socialist realism in literature, particularly to the latter’s novel Władza. Thus far unpublished Tadeusz Konwicki’s letters are quoted here in their entirety.

Due to dedicated efforts of the eminent American novelist Philip Roth, several novels from behind the Iron Curtain were published in the USA in the series “Writers from the Other Europe”. Starting in 1974, during the following 15 years, the novels of Andrzejewski, Borowski, Gombrowicz, Schulz and Konwicki were published by Penguin. This article concentrates on the American reception of Konwicki’s novels.