The Star summer palace in the ‘New Game Reserve’ near Prague was built by Archduke Ferdinand II (1529–1595). The summer palace was built on the architechtural plan of a six-pointed star and the interior of the ground floor is decorated with extraordinary quality stucco decorations, which is one of the earliest manifestations of this decoration technique in Central Europe. It was built between 1556 and 1560 and the stucco decorations is the work of North Italian artisans around the sculptor Antonio Brocco. The construction was to express the politico-mythological representation idea, to celebrate the Habsburg ruler by comparison to the ancient Roman emperors. Grotesque motifs have been integrated into the decoration system, where they accompany the iconographic main themes of the summer palace and complete the overall decoration system of its interior. They are unique examples of this type of decoration in stucco in Czech renaissance art. Many of these elements were taken from ancient sculptures and architecture from the epoch of imperial Rome. Through their multiple use in decoration based on a highly dense texture of lines, frames and figurative and decorative motifs, they co-created a visual field whose effect on the viewer could be compared to a visual effect of the structure of grotesque decoration. Both figurative and ornamental elements appear in this task. Other elements were taken directly from the grotesque decoration an sich. Their proportion is smaller, but, on the other hand, they represent exceptionally good examples of this type of decoration. The ingenious division of the individual fields of stucco decoration and the depiction of ornaments and accompanying motifs, in which grotesque plays an indispensable role, was a very important artistic act that significantly influenced the aesthetically impressive tone of the whole. The effect that the stucco decorations on the Star summer palace has on its observers is given by the synergy of all these factors, in which the complex structure of the decorations attributed an indispensable role to small motifs and their sophisticated incorporation into the whole.
CS
Letohrádek Hvězda v „Nové oboře“ nedaleko Prahy byl zbudován arcivévodou Ferdinandem II. (1529–1595). Letohrádek byl založen na půdorysu šesticípé hvězdy a v interiéru přízemí vyzdoben mimořádně kvalitní štukovou výzdobou, která patří k nejranějším projevům této výzdobné techniky ve střední Evropě. Vznikla v letech 1556–1560 a je dílem severoitalských řemeslníků kolem sochaře Antonia Brocca. Stavba měla vyjádřit vladařsko-mytologickou reprezentační ideu, oslavit habsburského vladaře přirovnáním k antickým císařům. Do výzdobného systému byly integrovány groteskové motivy, které provázejí ikonografické dominanty letohrádku, dotvářejí celkový výzdobný systém jeho interiéru a patří i k unikátním dokladům tohoto typu výzdoby ve štuku. Řada těchto prvků byla převzata z antického sochařství a architektury epochy císařského Říma. Svým mnohočetným využitím ve výzdobě založené na velice zahuštěné textuře linií, rámů a figurativních i dekorativních motivů pak spoluvytvářely vizuální pole, jehož účinek na diváka bychom mohli označit za obdobu vizuálního působení struktury groteskové výzdoby. V této úloze vystupují jak prvky figurativní, tak i ornamentální. Další prvky byly přímo převzaty z groteskové výzdoby an sich. Jejich podíl je menší, na druhou stranu však představují mimořádně kvalitní ukázky tohoto typu výzdoby. Důmyslné rozčlenění jednotlivých polí štukové výzdoby a ztvárnění ornamentů i doprovodných motivů, v nichž hrají grotesky neopominutelnou roli, bylo uměleckým aktem, který významně ovlivnil esteticky působivé vy- znění celku. Dojem, jímž štuková výzdoby Hvězdě působí na pozorovatele, je dán synergií všech těchto faktorů, v němž právě složitý členící systém výzdoby přisoudil výnamnou roli i drobným motivům a jejich důmyslnému zakomponování do celku.
The aim of the article is to indicate the assumptions which are the basis for setting satire against grotesque by Boris Eichenbaum in his study Jak jest zrobiony „Płaszcz” Gogola. By analyzing Eichenbaum’s argumentation, the author claims that the formalistic conception of literariness, which stresses the autonomous character of an artistic work, was conducive to the tendency for a depreciation of satire and ennoblement of grotesque.
L’élégie érotique de Tibulle comporte de nombreux éléments humoristiques. Grâce au grotesque le poète fait diminuer la signification de son amour aux filles – Délie et Nemezis, ainsi que son estime pour Venus. Son comportement absurde en tant qu’amant démontre la fiction des sentiments présentés dans les poèmes. Enfin, l’ironie à l’aide de laquelle Tibulle décrit des événements mythologiques et la déesse Pax montre son désintérêt pour la politique de l’empereur Auguste. C’est surtout à Tibulle qu’Ovide doit la vis comica dans ses Amores.
Voltaire composed his Memoirs of the Life of Monsieur de Voltaire: Written by Himself at approximately the same time as his novel Candide, or Optimism published in 1759. For this reason, these Memoirs occupy a central place in the philosopher’s work. Combining ironic comment on the important historic events and salacious gossip of the world, they trace very briefly 25 years of Voltaire’s life. The author of this paper tries to analyse the relationship between the memorialist’s style, strongly coloured with the grotesque, and his vision of history. Next, he juxtaposes the Memoirs with Voltaire’s historical works. Finally, he demonstrates the close affinity between their non-linear representations of history, despite differences in their style.
FR
La rédaction des Mémoires de Voltaire est à peu près contemporaine de celle de Candide ou l’Optimisme, conte philosophique paru en 1759. De ce fait, les Mémoires occupent une place centrale dans l’œuvre de l’écrivain. Composés d’une suite d’anecdotes et d’événements d’apparence triviale, ils retracent sur quelques dizaines de pages vingt-cinq années de la vie de celui qui, installé depuis 1755 à Genève, avait côtoyé les principaux acteurs du siècle des Lumières. En étudiant les procédés littéraires mis en œuvre par le mémorialiste, l’auteur de l’article cherche à établir le lien entre ces derniers et la représentation de l’histoire. Ensuite, il compare cette représentation avec celle, non-linéaire, qui apparaît dans l’œuvre historique de l’écrivain. Finalement, il démontre leurs similitudes malgré la différence des moyens stylistiques employés par le Voltaire historien et le Voltaire mémorialiste qui recourt constamment au grotesque.
The Other Side (1909) is the only novel by an Austrian painter and illustrator, Alfred Kubin. His work epitomizes the modernist concept of art synthesis. Kubin, drawing from the aesthetics of grotesque, creates an amalgam of apparently detached forms of representation, literature and painting. The Other Side uses surrealist humour and nightmarish motifs of onirism to convey the existential anxiety of fin de si`ecle.
The subject of the article Parodies, travesties, overtures – meaning of styling treatments in Mark Piwowski’s school films are Marek Piwowski’s early, short films and the stylistic and parodic elements he used. As the starting point of the discussion, Katarzyna Maka-Malatynska adopts the findings of Jerzy Ziomek and Ryszard Nycz, and their definition of parody. Using categories of literary and film studies, the author examines four school films of the creator of The Cruise. Acknowledging parody as the first degree of mockumentary after Roscoe and Hight, she proposes that Piwowski’s first films be seen as mockumentary, which could result in a new interpretation of his later works.
PL
The subject of the article Parodies, travesties, overtures – meaning of styling treatments in Mark Piwowski’s school films are Marek Piwowski’s early, short films and the stylistic and parodic elements he used. As the starting point of the discussion, Katarzyna Maka-Malatynska adopts the findings of Jerzy Ziomek and Ryszard Nycz, and their definition of parody. Using categories of literary and film studies, the author examines four school films of the creator of The Cruise. Acknowledging parody as the first degree of mockumentary after Roscoe and Hight, she proposes that Piwowski’s first films be seen as mockumentary, which could result in a new interpretation of his later works.
The aim of this article is to discuss and analyse the meaning and various forms of grotesque in Polish literature of the interwar period. The author of the paper would like to focus on the use of grotesque by such Polish modernist writers and playwrights as Witold Gombrowicz, Bruno SCHULZ and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. The article aims at examining different forms of this literary genre (humour, parody, absurd), especially its linguistic aspects and at showing their similarities and differences. In the scrutiny of grotesque the author of the paper will refer to various critical schools and approaches in Poland, particularly the contemporary literary and linguistic studies.
The world in which the heroes of Victor Pelevin’s novel live is a claustrophobic world. The author situates his characters in a destructive space. A Yellow Arrow, a train on the deck of which the action takes place, flashes without stopping at the destroyed bridge. It can be read either as a metaphor for human life marked by the absurdity of existence, or as a grotesque image of Russia’s transition. Turning to what is twisted, Pelevin states that the absurd can be overcome when one realises its existence and communicates with the world of absolute values.
The article is devoted to the study of the features of the mask topos in the novels of Witold Gombrowich Ferdydurke and Geo Shkurupia Doors in the day. On the basis of the basic concepts of carnivalization of Mikhail Bakhtin, features of the functioning of the mask image are considered, which is one of the means of expressing new forms of communication with the recipient and the metaphorical language. The mask in the experimental / avant-garde works determines the individual characters of the characters, contributes to the irony of the grotesque. The mask-stereotype in the novel by Witold Gombrowich is the bearer of a certain set of values of the hero, Geo Shkurupii through the mask of the death of the hero demonstrates the existential choice of the hero.
The campus novel, invariably a satire on the university community, typically touches on the subjects of sex, money, power, adultery, or professional rivalry. Tom Sharpe's novels cover similar topics. They are, however, crammed with vulgarity, chauvinism and black humour. The purpose of the article is to analyse Tom Sharpe’s satirical style considering the author's apparent refusal to accept the boundaries of taste and decency. The article will focus on three novels, Porterhouse Blue, Wilt and The Wilt Alternative, which ridicule academics but also contemporary society at large. Sharpe introduces a whole parade of unusual characters, arranges for them a series of preposterous situations and spices his plots with grotesque and sometimes repellent episodes.
Post-apocalyptic novel – a catastrophic branch of science fiction devoted to the vision of civilization ruined by some sort of a cataclysm – managed to form a separate poetics of space creation. Images of the presented world depend on the psychological shape of the heroes who are directly exposed to the extreme boundary experience. When picturing the landscapes of desolated metropolises, the authors use solutions typical for horror and adventure novels, the ex- and impressionistic traditions as well as techniques typical for grotesque and naturalism. By extending the paths typical for science fiction, the post-apocalyptic novel moves away from the main movement and forms a separate convention of the description. The author of the article tries to shed some light on its assumptions by providing numerous examples of urban landscapes.
Starting with a reconstruction of the views of philosophers and aesthetes on the topic of fantastic images, the Author aims to characterize fantasy art. She describes the reception of this art in Poland, characterizes its determinants, and defines the trend, indicating the most important examples of artistic works. While exploring this approach, she refers to Waldemar Okoń, Jerzy Malinowski, Tomasz Gryglewicz, and Antoni Smuszkiewicz. The convention of fantasy art appears to be a vital, developmental quality, an expression of the rebellion of consciousness against simplifications.
The aim of the article is to study the mechanism of creating grotesque in Roman Jaworski’s collection of short stories titled Historie Maniaków (Stories of Madmen). The analysis of the structure of Jaworski’s work (plot, character construction, metaliterary passages) has shown that the contrast between the figure of fulfilment and its degeneration is the semantic category which constitutes the grotesque world of his stories. Meaningful with regard to ontology, epistemology and axiology negative categories such as nothingness, deformation or ugliness, within the historical-literary context function as an opposition to dominant at that time poetics of symbolism. Simultaneously, they become an expression of the typical of modernist awareness crisis of the subject, and of the doubt in the cognitive and representative potential of language.
Thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Macbeth appears to be paradigmatic for the post-Communist Slovak Shakespeare. Several productions have made the play a playground to explore the world in new terms (gender issues, grotesque, social identity). The focus of this paper is on a 1999 production in Nitra which fashioned Macbeth as an Ubuesque petty bourgeois.
In his three novels, commonly referred to as the German trilogy, Céline evokes the story of his dangerous exodus to Germany, from 1944 to 1945, then to Denmark from 1945 to 1951. Our purpose is not to take the whole journey back, but to dwell on his stay in Sigmaringen where almost all the outstanding figures of the Collaboration are depicted and caricatured by Céline in a tone of contempt particular of him and of his exceptional singularity. We will use a few examples to show how the writer amplifies his characters’ features, to strengthen his descriptions. Céline paints their portraits, exaggerating their characteristics or, sometimes, endowing them with ridiculous attitudes. By hilarious, burlesque, comical details, Céline manages to caricature certain figures of the Vichy government in an atmosphere where absurdity, chaos and decadence mingle.
FR
Dans ses trois romans, communément désignés comme trilogie allemande, Céline évoque le récit de son périlleux exode en Allemagne, de 1944 à 1945, puis au Danemark de 1945 à 1951. Notre propos n’est pas de reprendre tout ce périple, mais de nous attarder sur son séjour à Sigmaringen où presque toutes les figures marquantes de la Collaboration sont dépeintes et caricaturées par Céline sur un ton de mépris qui lui est exclusif et marque sa singularité exceptionnelle. Nous en retiendrons quelques exemples pour montrer comment l’écrivain amplifie les traits de ses personnages, pour donner plus de vigueur à ses descriptions. Céline brosse leurs portraits, en accentuant leurs caractères ou bien en leur prêtant, parfois, des attitudes ridicules. Par des détails hilariants, burlesques, comiques, Céline parvient à caricaturer certaines personnalités du gouvernement de Vichy dans une atmosphère où se mêlent absurdité, chaos, décadence.
Without any reason or clue, the main character, Bruno, is convinced that he is cuckolded to the point where he actually wants it to be true, to remove any doubts. This delusion results in words and deeds which come to involve his reason and his relationship to others. But in Le Cocu magnifique, the status of the game is multivocal. It is present in diegesis, but it also related to dramaturgy. We will see how Crommelynck plays with mimesis, with regard to the very notion of the character, through games of masks and double-dealing. Moreover, at the aesthetic level, language games meet with the research into modern poetry. Intertextual games with poetic and theatrical references subvert them through pastiche, and the playwright, playing with registers, upsets aesthetic categories.
FR
Le personnage principal, Bruno, sans raison ni indice, se pense cocu au point de vouloir l’être vraiment pour échapper au doute. Son égarement produit des paroles et des actes qui mettent en jeu sa raison et sa relation aux autres. Mais dans Le Cocu magnifique, le statut du jeu est plurivoque. S’il est attesté dans la diégèse, il a aussi partie liée avec la dramaturgie. Nous verrons comment Crommelynck se joue de la mimèsis, en ce qui concerne la notion même de personnage, par les jeux de doubles et de masques. Par ailleurs, sur le plan esthétique, les jeux sur le langage rencontrent les recherches de la poésie moderne ; les jeux intertextuels avec les références poétiques et théâtrales les subvertissent par le pastiche et le dramaturge, jouant des registres, bouscule les catégories esthétiques.
The purpose of this article is to analyze different aspects of the crisis present in the play entitled The King, the Rat and the King’s Fool by Matéi Visniec. In this grotesque play, we move from a crisis of the monarchy, situated in a world that is both carnivalesque and revolutionary, to a crisis of humanity in democratic society. The madness of the leaders, the degeneration of the society, the crisis of the words and the manipulation of the history, which is at the service of the politics, are the main facets of the crisis, denounced by the author through the various forms of the grotesque and around which the present analysis is structured.
FR
Le présent article se propose d’analyser les différents aspects de la crise présents dans la pièce Le Roi, le rat et le fou du Roi de Matéi Visniec. Dans cette pièce grotesque, on passe d’une crise de la monarchie, située dans un univers à la fois carnavalesque et révolutionnaire, à une crise de l’humanité dans la société démocratique. La folie des dirigeants, la dégénérescence de la société, la crise de la parole et la manipulation de l’Histoire, qui est au service de la politique, tels sont les principaux visages de la crise dénoncés par l’auteur à travers les différentes formes du grotesque et autour desquels s’articule la présente analyse.
The paper deals with a detailed analysis of the characteristics of emotional discourse, organized in a literary text, specifically in the novel Gullo Gullo by Miodrag Bulatovic. Since expressing of emotions can be verbal and non-verbal, both codes relating the organization of emotional discourse have been activated. In the analysis of literary coded emotional discourse the author had to consider two-instance system of art. The fiction as a basic distinctive feature of a literary text has a crucial influence on the emotional semiosis resulting in producing emotional meaning. That process has always been influenced by various features of poetic language and its combinatorics, which are significantly different from encoding in real chronotope expressed in native language forms, governed by quite different rules of expressing emotions and transferred by the people and not the literary structure. Since the fact that disorders of phatic function of a language, communication and culture, are defined as major agents of the process in question their accepted values novels written by Miodrag Bulatovic, the author points out the importance of carnival, grotesque, pornography and satire which have been used as the main degradation processes of the canonized cultural and communication patterns in the novel, whose destructive operation inevitably affects the emotional discourse.
Apart from poetry, Paul van Ostaijen also wrote grotesque prose. The grotesque shows an inverted world that is equally logical as the real world but governed by different norms and an upside-down morality. It is alienating and familiar at the same time. The grotesque texts reflect on the grand narratives of modernism. In this article, I focus on the image of the metropolis in three stories: De kudde van Claire, De gehouden hotelsleutel and De verloren huissleutel. Firstly, I define the concept of the grotesque. Then, I discuss van Ostaijen’s time in Berlin, before I turn to the metropolis and its inhabitants. They seem to desperately hold on to a logical and dual organisation of their city, lives and world, yet van Ostaijen undermines this dualistic world vision and positions his prose in the domain of ambiguity, in a labyrinth that may be the only answer to the question of the crisis imposed by reality.
The carnivalesque of the death in the Russian literature of the 1930s Russian literature in the 30s of the 20th century developed within the totalitarian sphere, recording and mirroring the horror of the Stalinist reality. The impossibility of a direct expression of one’s own pain and grieving over death which was often associated with a sudden disappearance and a necessity to erase the beloved from one’s memory guided the artists’ attention towards new forms of expression. The works which represent a variety of genres and styles, such as Nikolai Erdman’s drama The Suicide, Daniil Kharms’s novel The Old Woman, as well as The Blue Book of Mikhail Zoshchenko, can be seen as examples of the use of carnivalesque which I understand as a defence strategy towards the omnipresent experience of death. I analysed the following features of carnivalesque: satire, grotesque, “black humour”, absurd, laughter, which are used in the above mentioned works.
RU
Карнавализация смерти в русской литературе30-х годов XX века Во многих произведениях русской литературы 30-х годов XX века, возникших вне эстетики соцреализма, кошмар отождествляется с тоталитарной действительностью. Невозможность непосредственно выразить страдание и оплакать смерть близких направляла писателей к поискам новых форм их передачи. Такие отличающиеся друг от друга по жанровым и стилистическим особенностям произведения, как драма Самоубийца Николая Эрдмана, повесть Старуха Даниила Хармса, а также Голубая книга Михаила Зощенко, являются примерами карнавализации, которая воспринимается как защитная стратегия по отношению к смерти. В данной статье анализу подвергаются следующие приемы карнавализации: сатира, гротеск, черный юмор, абсурд и смех, характерные для выше упомянутых произведений.
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