PorownaniaPub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.14746/por.2021.3.1
R. Bartnik, Leszek Drong, Małgorzata Zduniak-Wiktorowicz
{"title":"Wstęp. Brexit i inne współczesne kryzysy społeczno-polityczne w literaturze europejskiej","authors":"R. Bartnik, Leszek Drong, Małgorzata Zduniak-Wiktorowicz","doi":"10.14746/por.2021.3.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2021.3.1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37922,"journal":{"name":"Porownania","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44865736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PorownaniaPub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.14746/por.2021.3.4
R. Bartnik
{"title":"From Unparalleled “Greatness” to Predictable Insularity. A Composite Sketch of “Warped Britishness” as Drawn in Selected Works of Contemporary English Fiction","authors":"R. Bartnik","doi":"10.14746/por.2021.3.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2021.3.4","url":null,"abstract":"Brexit, as seen from the present perspective, is seemingly a success story. Taking into account a myriad of voices expressed in the public domain over the past few years, it is legitimate to make a cautious claim that some of the expectations people shared before/during the referendum have been inflated and deflated in the post-plebiscite reality. In 2016, across the majority that voted for the divorce, a growing consensus on the soundness and solidity of pro-Leave arguments about Britain being in crisis was seen. The proponents of change had endorsed the policy of restoring a sense of national dignity. That mode of reasoning, though still present within current “British” mindsets, has been confronted with the “unplanned” turbulence of national (re) adjustment. The whole process of bidding farewell to the European Union has led to sentiments of uncertainty/anxiety/regret, rather than to the anticipated sense of satisfaction/relief. Therefore, it seems both vital and interesting to juxtapose the passion about restoring people’s trust in Britishness/Englishness, and its “exceptionality” with more sobering projections of a new post-Brexit world. In order to discuss the consequences of this self-inflicted condition, I will here elaborate on selected English literary texts. They feature authors who draw conclusions running parallel to Anderson’s assumptions that in times of crisis a general predilection for self-deluding (re)constructions of collective identity can be observed, which are variously expressed in a merely referential, subversive or satirical manner.","PeriodicalId":37922,"journal":{"name":"Porownania","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41793289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PorownaniaPub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.14746/por.2021.3.23
Marcin Czardybon
{"title":"O duchu (brexitu). Z dodatkiem uwag o tymotycznej stymulacji narodu w najnowszej polskiej literaturze","authors":"Marcin Czardybon","doi":"10.14746/por.2021.3.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2021.3.23","url":null,"abstract":"Artykuł stanowi próbę odpowiedzi na pytanie o obecność „ducha brexitu” w tekstach literackich powstających poza Wyspami. Pierwsza część poświęcona jest wyjaśnieniu sformułowania „duch brexitu” w świetle kategorii Zeitgeist. W drugiej partii tekstu wskazuję na zbieżności i różnice pomiędzy eurosceptycznymi nastrojami w brytyjskiej literaturze, a eurosceptycyzmem polskich XXI-wiecznych pisarzy, sytuujących się blisko prawej strony sceny politycznej. W myśl głównej tezy artykułu „duch brexitu” uobecnia się tak w brytyjskiej, jak i w polskiej literaturze w pracach dowartościowujących kategorię narodu, jego tradycji i dziejów. Prace te pobudzają godnościowe roszczenia i aktywizują narodowe resentymenty. Wykorzystane w szkicu ustalenia filologów, socjologów, filozofów i badaczy retoryki służą dowiedzeniu przedstawionej tezy, ukazaniu sposobów przejawiania się omawianego fenomenu oraz sformułowaniu odpowiedzi na pytanie o jego przyczyny.","PeriodicalId":37922,"journal":{"name":"Porownania","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48858274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PorownaniaPub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.14746/por.2021.3.14
Leszek Drong
{"title":"Borderland Anxieties: Brexit, Upper Silesia and Irish Partitions in Recent Novels by Glenn Patterson and Szczepan Twardoch","authors":"Leszek Drong","doi":"10.14746/por.2021.3.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2021.3.14","url":null,"abstract":"Northern Ireland owes its existence to a partition of Ireland that took place a century ago. The knottiest problems involved in the UK’s recent divorce with the European Union can be traced back not only to the Belfast Agreement of 1998 but also to the establishment of a new border, and a new borderland, in the island of Ireland in 1922. The same year (1922) saw the coming into effect of a partition of Upper Silesia, which was triggered by the events and political decisions taken in 1921. The primary focus of this essay is on literary representations of crises and anxieties connected with the transformations of the geopolitical statuses of the two provinces (i.e. Northern Ireland and Upper Silesia) and selected historical, political and cultural parallels between them. Those anxieties are exemplified and illustrated by the leading characters of Glenn Patterson’s Where Are We Now? (2020) and Szczepan Twardoch’s Pokora (2020). Both novels yield to provincial readings that explore basic aporias of uprootedness, displacement, deterritorialization and identity crises, collectively identified here as borderland anxieties. In consequence, transnational and postnational perspectives that emerge from Patterson’s and Twardoch’s works count as proactive responses, encoded in literary texts, to current geopolitical crises in Europe.","PeriodicalId":37922,"journal":{"name":"Porownania","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48525470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PorownaniaPub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.14746/por.2021.3.11
Justyna Jajszczok
{"title":"The Last Day and Brexit: Delusions of Future Past","authors":"Justyna Jajszczok","doi":"10.14746/por.2021.3.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2021.3.11","url":null,"abstract":"The paper aims to show how the traditions of science fiction and, above all, invasion literature provide the ideological background for reading Andrew Hunter Murray’s The Last Day as a novel about Brexit. As it draws on anxious visions of the future, in which the enemy lurks around every corner, and the only salvation is complete isolation from the world, Murray’s work is read here as a Brexit dream come true, in which Britain is once again great, independent and uncontaminated by foreign elements. By evoking the myths that focus only on glory and conveniently “forget” the dark sides of the empire, the novel demonstrates that the fantasies of the past are as distant as the fantasies of the future; the loss of the world that never was is reworked in The Last Day into the loss of ecologically viable planet.","PeriodicalId":37922,"journal":{"name":"Porownania","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43224776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PorownaniaPub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.14746/por.2021.3.6
B. Kucała
{"title":"Under Irish and Foreign Skies: Home, Migration and Regrexit","authors":"B. Kucała","doi":"10.14746/por.2021.3.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2021.3.6","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses literary reflections on the process of migration both from and to Ireland in selected contemporary short stories and poems. Changing Skies (2014), an anthology of stories by Manchester Irish writers, represents a wide spectrum of the Irish migrant experience. Although traditionally perceived as a country which has sent waves of emigrants to other parts of the world, recently Ireland has itself become the destination and adopted home for thousands of immigrants. The second part of the article discusses how foreign writers residing in Ireland view the questions of home, identity and migration in two companion volumes of poetry. The concluding section surveys a sample of Irish writers’ reactions to the process of Brexit, which is redefining migration, home and identity both in Britain and on the island of Ireland, and is causing widespread regret in the Irish community that the tendency towards greater diversity, mobility and heterogeneity has been halted.","PeriodicalId":37922,"journal":{"name":"Porownania","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42583561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PorownaniaPub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.14746/por.2021.3.3
F. Ferguson
{"title":"Northern Soulscapes: Writing through Brexit in the work of Gerald Dawe, Angela Graham and Dara McAnulty","authors":"F. Ferguson","doi":"10.14746/por.2021.3.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2021.3.3","url":null,"abstract":"At a time of when the global crises of pandemic and climate change could be said to offer sufficient challenges to life in the British and Irish Isles, the implementation of Brexit provides a further gargantuan difficulty. Borders, bureaucracies and belief systems dissolve like the certainty that subjects once felt to their connection to states or Unions. Or new borders and systems appear, bringing with them unwieldy new protocols and practices. Shelves empty, goods sit locked in containers; caught up in the holding pattern of another new normal of online retail inertia. Dislocation, fear and anger rise. The epicentre of the Brexit shambles can be said to be located in the ever betwixt and between location of Northern Ireland. Here with its newly imposed sea border with Great Britain and its maintenance of European Union relations with the Republic of Ireland we see a fractured and fractious society struggling as ever to come to terms with how to balance the aspiration of opposing ideologies and national ambitions with an additional level of chaos. In a time of catastrophe what can literature do? This question, often posed during “The Troubles” has very much come back to be painfully reiterated to writers, readers and critics at a time of multiple lockdowns. However, if an examination is made of publishing in Ireland in the last couple of years, we see a buoyant press offering a number of intriguing responses to the significance and efficacy of literature to respond to the current human predicament. In this article I will examine the work of three contemporary writers, Gerald Dawe, Angela Graham, and Dara McAnulty. I will argue that their use of genre (memoir, short story, nature diary) provides a fresh and robust response to the chaotic present of Northern Irish political life. In their separate ways they contest the fixed, static and impermeable political echo chamber of Northern Ireland. Dawe, I contend, seeks a means through his autobiographical work to retrace time and space in the history of the province and articulate alternative ways of interpreting the past. He is able to draw sustenance and restoration from often overlooked times of possibility in his own and the wider story of Belfast. In Graham’s case, I would suggest that her bold and assertive first collection of short stories provides an acerbic and raw inspection of the past but one that also provides glimpses of reconciliation and genuine hope in the face of trauma. I conclude by exploring the work of McAnulty. Ostensibly a diary that traces his engagements with nature, his book is a tour de force that reimagines Ireland as a location gripped in the ravages of the Anthropocene startlingly brought to life by a young man faced with the challenges of autism. Part memoir, part praise poem to nature, it is a remarkable coming of age non-fiction work, which along with Dawe’s and Graham’s writing suggests that Northern Irish literature offers a broad and brilliant retort to the current ","PeriodicalId":37922,"journal":{"name":"Porownania","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44804584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PorownaniaPub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.14746/por.2021.3.18
M. Rygielska
{"title":"„BrexLit” po włosku dla dzieci i dorosłych: Rosie e gli scoiattoli di St. James oraz La mia Londra Simonetty Agnello Hornby","authors":"M. Rygielska","doi":"10.14746/por.2021.3.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2021.3.18","url":null,"abstract":"Artykuł poświęcony jest porównaniu dwóch książek Simonetty Agnello Hornby ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem tematyki migracyjnej, którą autorka, urodzona w 1945 roku we Włoszech, a od 1972 roku mieszkająca na stałe w Wielkiej Brytanii, poruszała także w innych utworach. La mia Londra to autobiograficzny przewodnik po Londynie, w którym Hornby opisała na własnym przykładzie przebieg procesu adaptacji do życia w kulturze innej niż rodzima. Spędziła w tym mieście prawie pół wieku, z perspektywy czasu zwracając uwagę na zmiany, jakie zaszły m.in. w strukturze społecznej, relacji z imigrantami, stylu życia londyńczyków. Główną bohaterką opowieści dla dzieci Rosie e gli scoiattoli di St. James jest Rosalia Giuffrida-Watson, dziewięcioletnia córka londyńskich imigrantów (Włocha Bruna i Jamajki Brendy), która w dzień referendum dotyczącego pozostania Wielkiej Brytanii w Unii Europejskiej staje się świadkiem obrad parlamentu zwierząt w parku królewskim, a także walk jego mieszkańców: przybyszów i autochtonów. Ich poglądy, zachowania i decyzje pozwalają Rosie zetknąć się z problemami, ale i potencjałem, jakie niosą ze sobą procesy akulturacji, adaptacji kulturowej, a nawet – asymilacji. Tłem porównawczym dla rozważań są inne utwory wpisywane w nurt BrexLitu.","PeriodicalId":37922,"journal":{"name":"Porownania","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47485320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PorownaniaPub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.14746/por.2021.3.20
K. Okoński
{"title":"Schiller w masce. Literatura krajów niemieckiego obszaru językowego wobec pandemii sars-cov-2","authors":"K. Okoński","doi":"10.14746/por.2021.3.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2021.3.20","url":null,"abstract":"Interwencje pisarzy w czasach przełomu lub kryzysu mają w krajach niemieckojęzycznych długą tradycję. Pandemia sars-cov-2 zrewidowała jednak dotychczasowe praktyki obywatelskiego zaangażowania i literackiej refleksji nad problemami współczesności. Autorzy są konfrontowani nie tylko z zagrożeniami dla ich własnego bytu materialnego, ale także z koniecznością znalezienia nowych form komunikacji z czytelnikami, rozwojem radykalizmu oraz rosnącą wrogością wobec elit. Niniejszy artykuł omawia w oparciu o wybrane materiały prasowe i radiowe takie kwestie, jak reorganizacja życia literackiego w Niemczech, Austrii, Szwajcarii i Liechtensteinie, reakcje pisarzy na ograniczenia spowodowane lockdownem, literackie obrazy pandemii, polaryzacja społeczeństwa oraz instrumentalizacja motywów literackich i historycznych przez ruchy antycovidowe.","PeriodicalId":37922,"journal":{"name":"Porownania","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45168572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PorownaniaPub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.14746/por.2021.3.13
L. Sikorska
{"title":"In the Labyrinth of Forgetfulness: Charley Grainger’s Joycean Journey in Christine Dwyer Hickey’s Cold Eye of Heaven","authors":"L. Sikorska","doi":"10.14746/por.2021.3.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2021.3.13","url":null,"abstract":"Cold Eye of Heaven (2011) shows pre-Brexit Dublin steeped in the post-Celtic Tiger anxieties. The novel narrates the life of a contemporary Everyman, Charley Grainger, known as Farley, from his final moments back to his childhood. Thus, Farley’s journey envisages both a Joycean interior monologue depicting his old-age bafflement in the meanders of memory and a realistic description of the character’s bewilderment at the changes in the cityscapes of the Dublin of 2010. The present paper is a comparative study of the first two chapters of the novel in reference to the history of the city present in the entire text, through the use of the tropes of the mental and urbane labyrinths. Imbued with the allusions to current reality, i.e., the presence of immigrants, Hickey’s observations are in line with Joycean anti-nationalism, as the story offers a nostalgia-stricken picture of the inevitable economic transformation of the metropolis.","PeriodicalId":37922,"journal":{"name":"Porownania","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41988749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}