The author discusses the issue of consequences of editor's 'final says', especially with regard to texts preventing any indisputable or unambiguous decision. Using two examples, i.e. the critical editions of B. Prus' 'Faraon' (Pharaoh) - by Zygmunt Szweykowski and of Jan Kasprowicz's works - by Roman Loth, he focuses on two issues. Firstly, manuscript copies of text fragments which the author has not included, for any conceivable reason (be it, e.g., censorship intercessions), in the version to be edited and published, or, fragments removed from subsequent editions, make one reconsider how much of a 'final say' such authors' decisions may have, and review the status of editions containing text versions not authorised by the author, not having been read and/or commented on by his/her contemporaries. Secondly, should one select the last author-approved edition of an early work as a basis, then the issue of chronology and dynamism of that particular author's artistic development, or his/her actual positioning in the literary life of his/her own time, cannot possibly be neglected - the same being true for the question of which text was the basis for critical reception (and sometimes also literary-history reception). As a consequence, one cannot thus avoid the question whether the editor can cope with a 'work in motion' - a text that appears in, and exists through, several much differing editorial versions. Thus, a very basic problem requires being considered. If the editing rules assumed by the editors trigger so much doubt, then one might state with certainty that they appear not to cover the real textual-critical issues relative to pieces being published.
The Libyan writer, Ibrahim a l - K o n i is one of the most outstanding authors of the Arab world, the first world-famous contemporary Tuareg writer. He is the author of more than sixty works published so far, most of which comprise short stories and novels. He also published poems and aphorisms. A l - K o n i's writings are almost entirely devoted to to the life of Tuaregs in the desert presented in terms of magic realism. The chief plots of his novels and stories include: human unification with nature up to the point of mysticism, human relationships with jinns and magic practices, contempt for gold and material goods and the ensuing conflict of freedom and attachment for a woman, longing for the lost paradisiacal oasis and durability and inviolability of the desert law in conjunction with specific beliefs. The writer is the chief representative of the Arabic variety of magical realism.
The contemporary rebirth of literary cultural life in Bahrain began only with the start of the twentieth century. An important role in the development of contemporary Bahraini literature has been played by the press. Its development is linked with the name 'Abd Allah az-Za'id who, in the period 1939-1944, published the weekly 'Djaridat al-Bahrayn'. The first socio-cultural journal was Sawt al-Bahrayn'. The creation of literary clubs and the development of the press directly influenced the flowering of cultural-literary life in Bahrain by creating conditions in which writers, poets and intellectuals could be published. Their works presented a vast array of viewpoints and positions reflecting the changes underway in the country. The output of 'Ali Sayyar, Muhammadal-Madjid and Khalaf Ahmad Khalaf constitutes their own form of literary document. They introduced a new means of viewing the world and new ways of expression.
The article discusses the diversity of understanding about the category of poetry at the backdrop of the tension between substantial definitions of poetry (and the lyric) and functional and sociological approaches to literature. After addressing the limitations of Jonathan Culler’s construction of the identity of the lyric, it summarises Miroslav Červenka’s views on what constitutes poetry in the era when metre, rhyme, and other formal elements are no longer operative with regards to defining poetry. Subsequently, it provides a short discussion of sociological approaches to the study of literature in the context of other social phenomena (Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour) and lists a few cases which demonstrate the way literary fame was evidently consciously created by actors and groups in the literary field (Walt Whitman, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Emily Dickinson). In the final sections, the article briefly mentions several similar examples from post-1989 Slovak poetry, addresses the ways in which modern and contemporary poetry crosses various boundaries, and introduces the articles included in this special issue of Slovenská literatúra.
Since the 1990s, literary censorship has been a focus of scholars not only in terms of literary history but also as a specific literary-theoretical problem. Czech literary studies entered the new discourse on censorship in 2015 with an extensive two-part monograph on censorship and social regulation of Czech literature published by the Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences (1749–2014). This study follows upon the above-mentioned project, in particular the research mapping censorship mechanisms after 1989 in Slovakia. It draws from the theoretical works of Pierre Bourdieu, who sees censorship not exclusively as a legal authority that sanctions and punishes, but as a field that behaves similarly to the market. In this sense we can talk about a socially authorized discourse rather than censorship. The study includes some censorship “cases” from post-1989 Slovakia (concerning the authors Martin Kasarda, Peter Pišťanek and Dušan Taragel) that have been seen as efforts by certain religious groups to regulate cultural and literary processes.
Ahmadou Kourouma is one of the most renowned authors writing in French. The notion of the authors writing in French is a new way of referring to the formerly known francophone literature. We address this issue shortly in the introduction of the paper before approaching the writings of Kourouma, a former mathematician and a literary autodidact. The literary style of Kourouma´s writing is seemingly that of a plain, documentary rendering of the African reality; nevertheless, the extra-literary reality is encoded into a multi-layered textual entity. One of these layers conveys the author´s ambiguous relation to the language of the ancient colonizers. While Kourouma deliberately chooses to write in French, he adjusts this, as he calls, “pale” and cold” language to better fit the African temperament. The aim of the paper is to show such double coding functions in the novel Allah ńest pas obligé (Allah is not obliged, 2000): the novel, depicting a story of the children soldiers, simultaneously probes the universal questions of the human existence and the portrayal thereof in the work of art.
Folklore does not have only textual character in literature. Folklore was and still is syncretic, and thus manifests also itself in literary form. It can have educational, instructive, social – creative, informative, aesthetic, ideological, political or humorous function in literature. Literature and folklore constitute two different communication systems. Folklore incorporated into the other communication system frequently, it becomes normative on the level of style and composition ad influences further development of tradition.
The literature for the children of Vojvodina Slovaks living in Serbia first received attention in year 1968, when it was prompted by magazine Nový život as a part of the Literárna porada discussion. Another of such discussions called Naša detská poézia po oslobodení /Our children´s poetry after the liberation/ took place in 1983, where children´s literature was seen as the most important line of the literary production written by Slovaks living in Serbia. Between 1996 and 2015 Slovak Vojvodina literature for children underwent development in all the forms (poetry, prose, drama) and genres. In addition, the professional reflection on children´s literature improved, too (Pavol Mučaji: Podľa duše dieťaťa /In Line with A Child´s Soul, 2005; Jarmila Hodoličová: Prehľad dejín slovenskej vojvodinskej prózy pre deti /A Concise History of Slovak-language Vojvodina Prose for Children, 2005).
This article is a discussion of a lesser-known episode in the history of Czechoslovak emigres. In 1956, the year of the historically important Second Congress of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union, some of whose participants spoke out against the repressive aspects of Communist policy on the arts for the first time, a meeting of Czechoslovak emigre writers was held in Paris. It was organized by the Arts Council of Czechs Abroad, which was founded and run by the poet, literary critic, and publisher Robert Vlach (1917-1966). Called the 'Arts Council Congress', it was attended, for example, by Jan Cep (1902-1974), Frantisek Listopad (born Jiri Synek, 1921), Jaroslav Strnad (1918-2000), and Jan M. Kolar (1923-1978). The principal topics of the congress speeches and discussions were the starting point, possibilities, and position of the artist in exile (given by Pavel Zelivan, b. 1925, and Listopad), reflections on the most recent social, cultural, and political developments in Czechoslovakia (Jaroslav Jira, 1929-2005), and the possibilities and limits of communication with readers at home after the hypothetical return of emigres to their native country (a speech given by Cep). The congress sessions, the author argues, can reasonably be considered the height of work in the arts amongst the Czech emigres in the first half of the 1950s.
The article describes an 1844 romantic trip through the Alps by the Polish writer Łucja Rautenstrauch from the princely family of Giedroyć (1798–1886), an account of which was later included in the memoirs In the Alps and beyond the Alps (1847). The author has established the route followed by the traveller: from Grenoble through the Chartreuse Mountains to La Grande Chartreuse, and from there to Geneva, Coppet and Ferney, then back to Montmélian from the Simplon Pass and through the Great St Bernard Pass, Maurienne Valley and Mont Cenis Pass to Turin. He demonstrates that Łucja Rautenstrauch often followed routes marked by famous events and distinguished people, choosing sites associated with such figures as Napoleon I, Voltaire, de Staël and Rousseau or with well-known literary works (The New Heloise, The Prisoner of Chillon). In her memoirs Rautenstrauch described the conditions and ways of travelling, local inhabitants (highlanders but also midgets, people affected by cretinism, a congenital disease) as well as Alpine nature. She paid particular attention to views of streams and rivers, precipices, ruins, sunsets, valleys, mountain passes and Mont Blanc, stressing, first of all, the wildness and danger of the mountains. In the Alps and beyond the Alps is thus an expression of the Romantic vogue for travelling, presenting an original image of the Alps in Polish literature – an image presented from the point of view of a woman.
The article refers to forming the genre of reportage in the 19th century, pointing at its strict connectioin with the literature of that time. The process of the genre reconstruction is hindered, on the one hand, by the morphological openness of the form related to the types of expression which appeared in the press (letter, report, journey description, feuilleton, article) as well as in belles-lettres (novella, story), on the other hand, not high opinion of a reporter’s work, usually associated with sensation and chase after novelties. Despite these hindrances Polish literature notes in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century a number of splendid models of report writing, from J.I. Kraszewski, through Sienkiewicz, Reymont or Korczak, today perceived as an important stage of forming the modern interest in documentary writing.
The study contains a survey of cognitive literary studies, research programmes, disciplines and issues. The general goal of cognitive literary studies is to grasp and reveal common principles and processes of the literary text. Imagination and thinking, that means to give a cognitive explanation as to the operation, constituents, means and purposes of the literary process. The cognitive literary studies reassess the aims of traditional literary theory, its orientation to construct correct meaning, principles of the text and to determinate the value of artwork. If we add the authorial and perceptive procedural competences (memory, attention, emotions, etc.) to the system of literary notions, we will acquire better methodological instruments for the analysis of the literary expression and the shifts in perceiving thereof, the examination of literary understanding and its types, resolution of literary agents (author, character, reader), the analysis of reasons for popularity of literary works and value/negative value attributed thereto. It is expected that owing to that we can understand the main problem of literary theory not resolved yet – what literariness means.
The paper discloses the double standards in age ratings applied to literature and video games in Poland. The equivalent of age rating for literature can be found in school obligatory reading lists: e.g., books recommended for 13-15-year-olds must have been rated [13+]. Curricular criteria can, then, be compared to video games ratings thanks to the PEGI Questionnaire: 25 out of its 50 questions focus entirely on thematic content, which makes them applicable to any medium - including literature. Applied to selected books prescribed for Polish schoolchildren aged 10-13 (primary school, three final years) and 13-16 (junior high school), PEGI generally confirms school ratings of Sex, Drugs and Bad Language, but repeatedly produces ratings [16+] and [18+] in the Violence and Discrimination categories.
The main concerns of this article are 1. quantifiable outcomes as a game-specific factor; 2. the possible application of the theory of quantifiable outcome to the study of the book/game genre; 3. English-Polish translation of terms. The question is, could so-called books/games (generic books designed to be games) have quantifiable outcomes? It seems that some of the game design patterns describing game goals can be applied to games/books, and although the outcome of an interaction with a book/game fails to meet all the suggested criteria, it is still satisfactory enough to be ranked as typical of a borderline category.
The paper studies the theoretical and literary-historical aspect of autobiographical writing, drawing from French theories. It attempts to define the character and content of the concept of autobiographical writing, deals with the problematic of authorial subject, touches upon the problem of historiography, genre characteristics and reception. It briefly describes the development of autobiography in the last two decades.
Peter Zajac advocates the synergy approach to literature in his monographs and studies. In his opinion, literature deals with the theme of problem situations, which do not necessarily have to be crises, but also acts of anticipating and defusing a crisis. The functional sign of their presentation is the pulsatory character as an output of multidimensional nature and manifold interaction, which resulted from thematising the life world. The creativity of literature seen in this way is closely related to the dynamics of creation, construction, reading, impact of a literary work.
Comparative balance inventory of the post-Velvet Revolution development in both Slovak and Czech literature represents a record of the qualitative and quantitative differences connected with a reintegration of works belonging to samizdat and exile communicational circle in the national literary corpuses. Besides, it places on record different forms of such phenomena like spiritually oriented poetry, surrealism, postmodernism with their specific features in the both Slovak and Czech environments. It also points out the fact that while in the Slovak society after November 1989 the impulses from the exile and its literature influenced mostly political and religious life, in the Czech environment they were manifested mainly in a new value ordination of the national literature. The article concludes that two decades of democracy evidently confirmed autonomy of both the mentioned national literatures, although some of the phenomena seem to be common on the both sides during the mentioned period. The main common denominator was the fact that both of the literatures were quite remarkably enriched during the last two decades from quantitative as well as qualitative aspect.
Decoding and creating meanings, book readers always participate in a game. A book can be, however, a game space or a play space in the literal sense. It can be an accessory and a board, often combining the written text with two- or three-dimensional graphic representations. The article focuses on the book publications which are games in their own right (in accordance with Salen and Zimmermen's definition). After a brief discussion of the development and background of such publications, as well as the presentation of their crucial features, the intermediality vs interactivity continuum is being established. The continuum acts as the visual representation of actual and assumed features of the analysed examples, with the conclusion that the assumed position is invariably higher than the actual one.
The thesis advocating a 'bankruptcy' or crisis of experience at the verge of 20th century, as first formulated by W. Benjamin and subsequently reconfirmed several times, aptly identifies a diminishing significance of the traditional concept of experience for the modern time and a modernist literature alike. It does not refer, however, to any other forms of experience, the need and possibility of articulating which having been the focus and source of creativity to certain most outstanding authors in modern literature. This article provides a synthetic characteristic of four main options of such writing quest, including: literature of experiment, literature of internal experience, literature of testimony, and, literature as experience, arguing, in consequence, in favour of validity of consideration of the entire modern literature as a literature of experience (in the modern forms assumed by the latter).
Laszlo Cholnoky (1879-1929) was a talented prosaist belonging to the first generation of the journal Nyugat [The West]. His oeuvre fell into oblivion for some time, but recently it has started commanding renewed interest. This paper is a first attempt in the literature at introducing and characterizing Cholnoky's style. One of the main traits of Cholnoky's style is concretization of abstract mental processes or contents of consciousness. When the imagery of these concretizing metaphors involves an inanimate thing, property or event, we can speak of objectification; if it involves an animate (human) being, property or action, we have to do with personification or, in more elaborate cases, with allegorization. The author analyzes examples taken from Cholnoky's three best-written short novels, 'St. Bartholomew's night' (1916), 'Prikk's way to heaven' (1917), and 'Thomas' (1918). In conclusion, the paper deals with the novelist's position within the history of Hungarian styles. Cholnoky's style is a clear example of the developmental trend from Art Noveau via symbolism to surrealism. The author also raises the possibility of a parallel between Laszlo Cholnoky's and Attila Jozsef's world and style.
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