In the paper dedicated to prof. Jerzy Jarzębski I deal with the transformations in experimental narrative in contemporary prose, especially with ways of using pronouns and gender forms. I concentrate ...on the interpretation of novels written by Zbigniew Kruszyński, Olga Tokarczuk and Jacek Dukaj, whose shared main feature are the relocations of grammatical forms of the text. Mixed narrative forms (pronouns “we” and “you”, reflexives, transformations of the neuter gender, etc.) open new possibilities of worldview and self-identity.
Zoper »naravni« red sveta Strajn, Jelka Kernev
Primerjalna književnost,
08/2016, Letnik:
39, Številka:
2
Journal Article
From the perspective of the late philosophy of Gilles Deleuz and Félix Guattari, and especially from the perspective of their notions: sign, representation, becoming, animal, encounter, coincidence, ...and many others, this article focuses on the modern Polish novel Prowadz swój plug przez kosci umarlych (Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead). It examines the thematization of non-anthropocentric orientation, clearly visible in the novel, and the fact that William Blake's compositive art is the main intertextual element of the novel. In this regard, it explores the surprising common points and literary thematization of the intersections between Blake's world and artistic views and the philosophical thinking of Deleuze and Guattari.
This article analyzes the magical realist mode of writing in two novels by Polish author Olga Tokarczuk: Primeval and Other Times (1996) and House of Day, House of Night (1998). While Tokarczuk ...herself rejects the label “magical realism,” her novels exhibit such key magical realist characteristics as disruption of rationally ordered time and space, the rejection of dominant historical and cultural narratives, an exploration of alternate epistemological forms of inquiry, and literalization of language, metaphor, and imagination. In Primeval, Tokarczuk presents a world that exists at the intersection between cyclical (mythical) and linear times; in House the novel asserts historical order through the dominance of space over time. In both novels, Tokarczuk’s poetics of the Word (Logos) becomes key to establishing a sense of magical realism in the texts. By using these and other magical realist narrative techniques, Tokarczuk deftly questions dominant discourses of Polish history and culture, such as that of the “Recovered Territories” or the power of religious faith. The presence of the magical realist mode in Tokarczuk’s work has important implications for the study of magical realism in general and Polish literary studies in particular.
In the centre of the system of values of the National Right Wing which revived after 1989 there are still nation, family and religion. The nation as community of culture is in opinion of the said ...parties exposed to dangers. The main risks are in their opinion as follows: cosmopolitism, Communist ideology, individualism, liberalism; secularization.In Poland, such ideas are, in the opinion of the National Right Wing, propagated by the liberal and post-communist circles. In the beginning they demanded that the communist activists are brought to justice. Some columnists refer to antisemitism. They perceive also the fall of the literary output. They assess critically the novels of Czesław Miłosz, Stanisław Barańczak or Olga Tokarczuk. Similar assessments regard the works of Polish historians. As preventive measures the following is mentioned: appropriate educational activity, statutory protection of national heritage, broadening of Catholicism, promotion of national culture. They attach great importance to the national branding. Its components are history, language, political regime, architecture, literature, art, religion, icons landscape, music. They would probably accept the opinion of Michael Porter: “Many contemporary discussions of international competition stress global homogenization and a diminished role for nations. But, in truth, national differences are at the heart of competitive success.”
Praca ta stanowi propozycję lektury fragmentu książki Olgi Tokarczuk w perspektywie doświadczenia melancholicznego i ma celu ukazanie rysu melancholicznego wybranego bohatera Biegunów. Autorka, ...posługując się narzędziami interpretacyjnymi z zakresu literaturoznawstwa, tworzy swoiste case study: analizuje tekst literacki i wskazuje na tropy melancholijne, które pojawiają się w całej twórczości autorki Ksiąg Jakubowych. Postać flandryjskiego naukowca Filipa Verheyena badana jest w aspekcie natury ludzkiej oraz ciała, które „odpowiada” na cierpienie psychiczne.
Fitz, Fitz, let's go Testard, Jacques
TLS, the Times Literary Supplement,
10/2019
6081
Trade Publication Article
Testard talks about writer Olga Tokarczuk. Tokarczuk has an incredible range as a writer--Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is, on the surface, a much more conventional novel but turns out ...to be a sly subversion of noir and a discreetly political book about animal rights. It is hugely gratifying to see such a brilliant author rewarded by the Nobel prize which, for all its faults, remains the most important prize in literature and the highest accolade. But the most exciting thing is that we have so much to come in English--of her nine novels, only four have been published to date. And she's writing a new one.
In her paper "Patriarchy in Post-1989 Poland and Tokarczuk's Dom Dzienny, Dom Nocny (The Day House, the Night House)" Justyna Sempruch analyzes Tokarczuk's 1998 narrative in the context of the ...post-communist revival of patriarchy in Poland as well as the parallel Western feminist impact on women's writing in Poland. These two distinct socio-cultural developments, as reflected in Tokarczuk's novel, expand the concept of a subversive household into a transnational dis/order that abolishes borders between domestic (national) and foreign structures: an increasing masculinization of the power structures (political arena and "scientific" practices) impacts the management of the social and the most private aspects of women's lives in post-1989 Poland while the growing popularity of "intellectual" feminism, borrowed from U.S. and French second-wave feminist positions, encourages a local "digging into" a collective "feminist" past. Tokarczuk's narrative belongs to a category which draws on Irigaray's theories and displays preoccupations with the failure of the sexual revolution. Sempruch argues that Tokarczuk's narrative reflects on the Western feminist formulations of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis as a discourse normalising patriarchy, as well as on re-evaluations of hysteria as the unheard voice of the woman whose language is reduced to psychosomatic symptoms.
Word without God Ready, Anna
TLS, the Times Literary Supplement,
06/2015
5854
Journal Article, Book Review
Anna Ready reviews "Ksiegi Jakubowe," ("The Books of Jacob") a novel by Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, who is interested in exploring a world that begins with "the word," but that world has ...experienced G-d's withdrawal from the world, with its concomitant human solitude and sense of loss.
This article consists of excerpts from two chapters of Margreta Grigorova’s monograph entitled Joseph Conrad – the Creator as Seafarer. The titles of the chapters are: “The Captain and the Sea” and ...“Locating Heart of Darkness. A Journey to the Centre of Africa. The Belgian Congo in Conrad’s Works.” These chapters focus on the figure of the captain in Conrad’s works and on one of its particular manifestations in Heart of Darkness. The figure of the captain provides crucial insights into Conrad’s work. It shapes his narratives biographically and is at the core of their creative design. Conrad’s dream of captainship dominates both his real-life and creative quests. It is related both to the romantic heroism of sailing and to the sober responsibility and art of ship navigation. The triumph of this dream represents one of the force lines that draw Conrad’s readers to his works. The “heart” of “darkness” represents one of the emblematic topoi in his work. Confronting the empirical manifestations of “darkness” and its metaphysical significance is a salient feature of Conrad’s fiction, but it acquires its innermost and universal meaning in the eponymous novella, which demonstrates the culmination of his creative eloquence. It is a work that invites the critical reader to undergo a remarkable hermeneutic journey into a world which is under the gravity force of powerful insights and word gestures
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