Contemporary Arabic literature is slowly approaching a local production of the “fantasy” genre through attempts that can be considered an important starting point for this new genre still being defined in the Arab world. During the last decades the influence exerted by Western countries on the production of this literary genre, that reaches the Arab world around the twentieth century, has been evident mainly through the translations of Western fantasy novels. Among the various genres of fantasy novels which still enjoy international fame and have been translated into Arabic we find: The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien; A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–2005) by Raymond Richard Martin and Harry Potter (1997–2007) by Joanne Kathleen Rowling. The delay in the introduction of the fantasy genre in the Arab countries has begun to be overcome in recent years, in fact many Arab authors have tried to write new fantasy novels. The fantastic tradition of Arab Islamic civilization is also an important part of drawing on the creation of original fantasy works. The study shows a general propensity of the contemporary Arab world to create a local fantasy, in which the Arab authors try to put the accent on the characteristic elements of Middle Eastern culture, though also drawing on the Western fantasy tradition.
The article is a presentation of the subject of a lawyer in the Russian literature of two eras – the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. The object of comparative analysis are two literary texts: the first is the story by Leo Tolstoy – “Father Sergius” (1911), the second is a novel by the modern Russian writer – Evgeny Vodolazkin, which entitled “Laurus” (2012). The author of the article concludes that the multifariousness of the life of lawyers in both writers underlines their life experience on the way to holiness. An important element of the characters’ description is their sinfulness, in particular the fi ght against their own pride and human passion. In the case of Leo Tolstoy, the image of his literary right-wing was influenced by the writer’s views on the essence of holiness and the complex human-God relationship. In their portraits of heroes striving for spiritual perfection, both Tolstoy and Vodolazkin show a connection with the genre of hagiography.
Since modern usage of the core terms is essential in the appropriate interpretation of ancient rhetoric texts, the paper starts from a discussion of semantic differences between the concepts of advice, counselling and deliberation in the Polish language. Ancient rhetoric takes as its starting point an overarching notion of ‘deliberative genre’ which includes not only laymen and expert advice, but also the political deliberation. It offers some theoretical categories, universal enough to address these apparently incompatible contexts of advice-giving and advice- taking. Rhetorical approach points out the relation between axiology and persuasive mechanisms. It identifies also some persuasive devices likely to enhance the efficiency of advice-giving, such as the use of examples and reasoning based on probability evaluation.
The article is an attempted analysis of the literary genre of fable as a case study of a selection of fables by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. In particular, the analysis focuses on the fable cycles: The New Adventures of Helen the Beautiful, Adventures of Barbie and Wild Animal Fables. The perspective adopted in the article focuses mainly on the axiological aspect of the fables and the reconstruction of their moral message. The moral sense in Petrushevskaya’s fables is veiled under their overt sense. Even the overt sense is hidden deeply under the multiple levels of “intertextual irony” (Eco). The analysis also explores the links between Petrushevskaya’s works, folk magical fairy tales and the prototypical genre of the classical Russian fable. The innovative fables created by Petrushevskaya de-conventionalize the classical schemata of the genre, and as such they constitute an ironic, mocking and sometimes a bitter commentary on the contemporary world. The fables exhibit a high degree of “poetics of everyday life” – a merger of popular and high culture. They both recreate and at the same time mock the schemata and rituals of pop culture, also displaying noticeable feminist tones. In their poetics, the fables employ cyclic and serial arrangement, and are completed with “words of wisdom” that are far from naïve moral judgements.
This is a critical profile of Wiadomości Bibliograficzne Warszawskie [Warsaw Bibliographical News], a learned journal with a mission to keep a systematic record of current Polish publications and provide bibliographic information about their contents, published in 1882–1886 Teodor Paprocki, a leading Warsaw bookseller. The article outlines the history of the journal; analyzes its structure, layout, contents, editorial techniques, and its functioning in the bookselling trade and the academic community; and, finally, assesses its role in the development of professional bibliography writing in Poland.
Summary
The article is an overview of chosen elements of press media discourse, treated here as a kind of broadly understood media discourse. Press discourse is examined as the oldest medium with well-developed tools and tradition, but tendencies redefining classic journalism and press are also highlighted. The author discusses the Internetization of press discourse, clear sender-recipient differentiation, “citizen journalism”, fake news, tabloidization and genological changes.
Streszczenie
Artykuł ma charakter przeglądowy, jest szerokim spojrzeniem na wybrane elementy, aspekty medialnego dyskursu prasowego, który traktuję jako rodzaj szeroko rozumianych dyskursów medialnych. Na dyskurs prasowy spoglądam jako na najstarsze medium z wykształconym własnym instrumentarium i tradycją, ale równocześnie wskazuję na tendencje, które redefiniują klasyczne dziennikarstwo i tradycyjną prasę. Wskazuję na internetyzację dyskursu prasowego, wyraźną dyferencjację nadawczo-odbiorczą, zjawiska „dziennikarstwa obywatelskiego” i fake- newsów oraz na tabloidyzację i przemiany genologiczne.
Hanna Krall is an acclaimed journalist and author, whose books were translated into multiple languages. However, relatively little critical attention has been given since her rise to world fame to her early work as a journalist. This article revisits this unjustly neglected part of her biography, when she made her name by reportages portraying the realities of life in Poland in the 1970s (the Edward Gierek's decade) and registering the tensions that led to the political earthquake of 1980 and culminated in the collapse of the communist system in 1989.
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