The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen is one of the classics of children’s literature, but due to its complex symbolism, it is also a story for an adult audience. There have been numerous interpretations of this fairy tale. It remains a source of inspiration for culture and art. It has also become the subject of critical polemics, especially of the feminist ones. Reinterpretations of the fairy tale appear in contemporary fantasy novels addressed to young adults: Part of Your World by Liz Braswell, The Surface Breaks by Louise O’Neill, To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo and Sea Witch by Sarah Henning. The revision of this well-known fairy tale brings us new creations of the main character and surprising versions of her fate. These four books also deal with the problems of adolescence, relations with the environment, and difficult choices that determine the lives of the protagonists and allow them to become independent. The novels are the voice of contemporary writers who postulate a new role model of a young woman who is active and decides about her fate.

The author of the article analyses the image of childhood in the short stories of Geza Csáth (1887–1919) in order to demonstrate how the Hungarian modernist writer critiques and subverts modern conceptualisations of childhood as idyllic and innocent. By referencing the works of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and, most importantly, Melanie Klein, the author proves that Csáth’s short stories about childhood are strongly rooted in psychoanalytical thought, with some of them being surprisingly similar to now-canonical descriptions of psychoanalytical case studies. As it is shown, in such stories as Black Silence, Matricide or Little Emma, the modernist writer portrays his young characters as subject to the same suffering as adults, and as evil from their earliest years.

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary analysis of children characters and visions of childhood in the writings of Leo Lipski. Special attention is paid to his early works and to his novel The Restless. The storylines of two characters are interpreted – those of Jano from Śmierć [Death] and Emil from Niespokojni [The Restless]. Drawing from psychoanalysis and Queer Childhood Studies, the author investigates the dialectical notion of childhood to be found in Lipski’s texts. On the one hand, childhood is portrayed there as a period of radical sensitivity and receptivity regarding both sensual stimuli and reactions to tough, distressing or even traumatising experiences; on the other hand, it is a realm of existential experiments of libidinal nature, which often turn into bodily (including erotic and autoerotic) explorations. This paper is meant to be the first in a series of articles regarding the described matter.

The article is an interpretation of Thomas Bernhard’s selected works in the context of the works of Witold Gombrowicz. In my opinion, the mysterious allusion to the Polish writer in the novel Gargoyles is an effect of not only the act of reading but also artistic inspiration. Both Bernhard and Gombrowicz are sensitive to the interpersonal aspect of existence and its cultural determinants. They perceive the family and school as oppressive institutions entangled in symbolic and real violence. The primary defence strategy of the protagonists is the affect of disgust.

The aim of the article is to describe the function of a war and Holocaust fairy tale directed at children. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, the fourth literature changed. It expanded its themes and included issues related to World War II and the Holocaust. In Poland, most such fairy tales were created after 2010. They are based on real events, documents, photos, profiles and biographies of famous people, survivors, and the Righteous Among the Nations. They are written by representatives of the first and second, and soon the third generation. Although not all theorists agree that children should be told about traumatic events, fairy tales’ authors argue that the creation of such literature is advisable. War and Holocaust fairy tales are designed to testify to the difficult past and to settle accounts with it. They allow you to learn about history, draw conclusions from it, define humanity and counteract discrimination. Based on building a bridge between history, myth, and truth, they shape cultural identity. The article focuses on the intertextuality of fairy tales and the second generation’s accounts of the Holocaust and war.

The article is an interpretation of two books by American writer Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. It is devoted to the subject of World War II in the British Isles and the drama of two siblings, victims of domestic violence. A child as the recipient of the works and the child heroine and narrator of both books are the reasons for asking about the therapeutic power of literature for the youth. The acts of reading children’s books and the testimonies of their creative use in the process of development of child characters prove the strength of properly designed fiction. Thanks to it, child protagonists acquire a language to name their own condition and a little hope and belief in a friendly, caring world. In the context of war and domestic violence this may seem a little utopian, but it is necessary to protect the developing psyche (of the hero and of the virtual recipient) from excess pain and fear.

Anna Kuchta’s book Wobec postpamięci. Tożsamość drugiego pokolenia po Holokauście w świetle zjawiska postpamięci na podstawie wybranych przykładów współczesnej polskiej literatury wspomnieniowej is devoted to postmemorial narratives, whose authors confront their parents’ past and attempt to find their
own narration about the Jewish identity and the Holocaust. Kuchta writes about being dependent on the parents’ past, verbal violence and lack of understanding, which are the consequences of being surrounded by survivors. Her book has a chance to become one of the most important contributions on the effects of the Holocaust on the second generation. The Cracow-based literary scholar divides her work into two parts. In the first one, she presents her framework of the book, explains the terms of postmemory and identity, and justifies her selection of texts. In the second one, she examines eight books: Rodzinna historia lęku by Agata Tuszyńska, Goldi. Apoteoza zwierzaczkowatości and Frascati. Apoteoza topografii by Ewa Kuryluk, Utwór o Matce i Ojczyźnie by Bożena Keff, Włoskie szpilki and Szum by Magdalena Tulli, Fałszerze pieprzu by Monika Sznajderman and Wyznanie by Roman Gren.

This essay is devoted to the titular “scabs” – wounds usually associated with childhood, the effects of minor injuries, mainly to the knees and elbows, sustained while playing. These are unique wounds, associated more
with joy than with pain. In Polish, “scab” [strupek] is a diminutive form of the word “corpse” [trup], which is awe-inspiring and disgusting. Such a combination of the delicacy of grammatical diminutive with the aesthetics of deadly decay is surprising. That is why this word is used carefully in Polish, and it is an act of courage to place it in a title of a novel. This risk was taken by Paulina Jóźwik in her prose debut (2019), a story about the maturation of a young woman, where the symbolism of the titular Scabs (Strupki) reflects the bitter-sweet experience of the family home.