Andrzej Wicher - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Andrzej Wicher

Romanica Silesiana, 2021

There appear to be quite a few parallels between Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Boethius’s T... more There appear to be quite a few parallels between Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy (Consolatio Philosophiae), and they seem to concern particularly, though not only, the character drawing in Tolkien’s book. Those parallels are preeminently connected with the fact that both Boethius and Tolkien like to think of the most extreme situations that can befall a human. And both are attached to the idea of not giving in to despair, and of finding a source of hope in seemingly desperate straits. The idea that there is some link between Boethius and Tolkien is naturally not new. T.A. Shippey talks about it in his The Road to Middle Earth, but he concentrates on the Boethian conception of good and evil, which is also of course an important matter, but surely not the only one that links Tolkien and Boethius. On the other hand, it is not my intention to claim that there is something in Tolkien’s book of which it can be said that it would have been absol...

JEGP, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 2013

C. stephen jaeger, ed., Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics: Art, Architecture, L... more C. stephen jaeger, ed., Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics: Art, Architecture, Literature, Music. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. pp. 320; 40 illustrations. isbn: 978-0-230-61898-5. $90This collection, which includes an introduction and eleven essays, developed from a 2008 conference on the medieval aesthetics of grandeur. It explores how and where concepts of the magnificent and sublime operated in the Middle Ages, and puts them into conversation with more widely known treatments by writers like Longinus, Immanuel Kant, and Theodor Adorno. In doing so, the volume challenges earlier assessments of the medieval sublime, particularly those by E.R. Curtius and Erich Auerbach, as well as an 'overarching conception of medieval culture' that C. Stephen Jaeger calls 'the diminutive Middle Ages (DMA).' Although the DMA may be a bit of a straw man-or at least may be a stronger paradigm in some disciplines than others-the contributors effectively undercut any idea that 'the Middle Ages is a period of small, quaint things and people' (p. 5).The arrangement of the essays highlights their variety, but several clusters also emerge. Readers who are most interested in the ontological categories at stake might begin with Jaeger's introduction and 'Richard of St. Victor and the Medieval Sublime,' which argues for defining the sublime through its effects rather than any specific qualities and takes Richard of St. Victor's description of 'ecstatic contemplative experience' as the central case study (p. 163). In 'How Magnificent Was Medieval Art?,' Beth Williamson suggests that medieval and modern ideas of the magnificent and sublime have some general similarities but that medieval art encouraged the reader to connect with God rather than to remain disinterested, as required by the Kantian sublime.Architecture and art lend themselves perhaps most naturally to considerations of grandeur, and several essays explore those connections from different angles. Areli Marina's 'Magnificent Architecture in Late Medieval Italy' examines both buildings and texts to demonstrate that 'the sophisticated visual architectural language of magnificence was well-defined and clearly understood' much earlier than previously recognized (p. 194). In 'Reflections on the "Wonderful Height and Size" of Gothic Great Churches and the Medieval Sublime,' Paul Binski considers how structures might inspire wonder at their colossal size or complex variety. Adam S. Cohen's 'Magnificence in Miniature: The Case of Early Medieval Manuscripts' persuasively demonstrates that books, despite their smaller size, could evoke similar responses; they depicted their patrons as magnificent in addition to functioning as magnificent objects in their own right. …

C. David Benson says that: “Perhaps the most extreme disjunction of teller and tale is the contra... more C. David Benson says that: “Perhaps the most extreme disjunction of teller and tale is the contrast between the rough, murderous Shipman of the General Prologue and the cool, sophisticated art of the Shipman’s Tale.” The author of the present article hopes to be able to show that there is a link between the character of the Shipman and the nature of the tale told by him, and that this link is provided by, among other things, the medieval understanding of cosmopolitanism. The problem of cosmopolitanism was no doubt important for Chaucer, who himself may be thought of as embodying this social phenomenon, being a well-traveled man, like several of the pilgrims he shows in The Canterbury Tales, and being a man who was deeply influenced by at least three foreign cultures and languages, while showing little interest in his native English tradition. Naturally, I do not intend to subscribe to the view that Chaucer was a typical, rootless cosmopolitan. On the other hand, the matter of the so...

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 2021

The article deals the possibility of applying Vladimir Propp’s, basically anthropological idea of... more The article deals the possibility of applying Vladimir Propp’s, basically anthropological idea of “the inverted ritual” to the interpretation of certain plays by William Shakespeare, particularly Hamlet. The said inversion concerns three rituals: the sacrificial ritual, where the passive and obedient victim suddenly rebels, or at least becomes difficult to control (which is the case, for example, of Ophelia in Hamlet); of the initiatory ritual, where the apparently benevolent master of the characters initiation is shown as a monster (which can be exemplified by Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle); and of the matrimonial ritual, where the theoretically loving husband (more rarely wife), or lover, is revealed as a highly malicious and unpredictable creature, an example of which can be Hamlet himself. The article makes use of the work of such critics as G.K. Wilson, Harold Bloom, Vladimir Propp, René Girard, and Mircea Eliade.

Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica, 2020

The aim of the article is to investigate some of the possible sources of inspiration for Orwell’s... more The aim of the article is to investigate some of the possible sources of inspiration for Orwell’s concept of the artificial language called Newspeak, which, in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is shown as an effective tool of enslavement and thought control in the hands of a totalitarian state. The author discusses, in this context, the putative links between Newspeak and really existing artificial languages, first of all Esperanto, and also between Orwell’s notion of “doublethink”, which is an important feature of the totalitarian mentality, and Czesław Miłosz’s notion of “ketman”, developed in his book The Captive Mind. But the main emphasis is on the connection between Orwell’s book and the slightly earlier novel by C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength. It is well known that Orwell knew Lewis’s book and expressed his mixed feelings about it. There are many specific, though far from obvious, similarities between the two books, but what seems to have been particularly inspiring for Orw...

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia International Review of English Studies, 2001

In Chaucer's description of the hail of Fame, we notice a series of figures representing famo... more In Chaucer's description of the hail of Fame, we notice a series of figures representing famous ancient authors, most of them writing in Latin. They are shown as titanic, Atlas-like figures standing on columns, and bearing on their shoulders the great weight of the subject matter which they deal with in their work. For example the "Ebrayke Josephus", that is Josephus Flavius, the author of the History of the Jewish War, is shown standing on a pillar made of lead and iron and he bears on his shoulders "the fame of the Jewrye", i.e. the fame of the Jewish people. This burden, however, is so heavy that he needs seven other, unidentified figures to help him cope with it. The fame of the ancient city of Troy is supported by five figures besides "the great Homer", namely Dares and Dictys, Guido delle Colonne, Lollius, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, with Homer being considered, in spite of his "greatness", rather inadequate because he, allegedly, sided too much with the Greeks in the portrayal of their conflict with the Trojans, and indulged in literary fiction instead of reporting. They all are standing apparently on one pillar made of iron, whereas Ovid, "the clerk of Venus", is standing on a copper column, copper being the metal of Venus. The Latin poet Statius is shown, as the author of the poems Thebaid and Achilleid, to carry on his shoulders the fame of Thebes, and also that of the "cruelle Achilles" (cf. Phillips - Havely 1997: 184-187). The passage described above seems to be a good illustration of the medieval concept of authorship. We should first mention here the tendency to see the medieval authors as essentially anonymous. As has been put by J.A. Burrow (1982: 36): Many of the writings are formally anonymous, in the simplest sense - the name of the author has been lost ... and even where the name of the author is known, we may think of his work as anonymous in a deeper sense. The authors of this period, we believe, rarely talk about themselves, and their works are most often unmarked by any distinctive personality. Their subjects are traditional, their styles conventional. Like medieval sculpture and architecture, in fact, medieval literature is supposed to be public, impersonal, monumental. We seem to have to do here with a stereotype that contrasts the collective, impersonal, and traditional nature of the Middle Ages with the individualistic, often egocentric, or even egomaniac, experimental and, at least ostensibly, innovative character of the modem, or modernist writing. The post-modernist literature would, interestingly enough, with its explicitly eclectic nature, and its programmatic distrust towards the grand project of revolutionising culture, veer more towards the supposedly medieval anonymity. This collectivist stereotype of medieval authorship has actually been questioned by E.R. Curtius, who claims that in the Middle Ages we often have to do with the opposite phenomenon, namely the writer's "unadulterated pride of authorship" (Curtius 1990: 517). The "collectivist" vision of the Middle Ages is clearly a myth that, even though it has some real foundation, led to many misunderstandings and anachronistic interpretations, for instance, G.G. Coulton in his Medieval panorama claims that it was the study of medieval architecture that led William Morris to embrace the ideas of socialism (1976: 571). We should distinguish now between the situation of the writer's talking, or choosing to be silent, on the subject of his own authorship, and the writer's dealing with somebody else's authorship. In the latter case we can encounter a great variety of attitudes, ranging from a complete neglect of the author's person to a veritable cult of the author. The whole matter seems to be neatly summarised in the following passage from St Bonaventure, who talks about the four modi faciendi librum ('ways of making a book'): There are four ways of making a book. Sometimes a man writes others' words, adding nothing and changing nothing; and is simply called a scribe [scriptor]. …

Text Matters - A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, 2013

Two of the tales mentioned in the title are in many ways typical of the great collections of stor... more Two of the tales mentioned in the title are in many ways typical of the great collections of stories (The Canterbury Tales and Il Decamerone) to which they belong. What makes them conspicuous is no doubt the intensity of the erotic desire presented as the ultimate law which justifies even the most outrageous actions. The cult of eroticism is combined there with a cult of youth, which means disaster for the protagonists, who try to combine eroticism with advanced age. And yet the stories in question have roots in a very different tradition in which overt eroticism is punished and can only reassert itself in a chastened form, its transformation being due to sacrifices made by the lover to become reunited with the object of his love. A medieval example of the latter tradition is here the Middle English romance, Sir Orfeo. All of the three narratives are conspicuously connected by the motif of the enchanted tree. The Middle Ages are associated with a tendency to moralize ancient literat...

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2009

This book, published in 2007, has already gained wide recognition and praise coming from such lum... more This book, published in 2007, has already gained wide recognition and praise coming from such luminaries of American literary criticism as Harold Bloom and Stephen Greenblatt. It is the result of the editor's, that is Scott L. Newstok's, work consisting in bringing together and editing Kenneth Burke's numerous and important contributions to Shakespeare criticism. Burke wanted apparently to produce a volume of this kind himself, but died without achieving this purpose. Thus the book may be thought of as a fulfillment of Kenneth Burke's intention, and a volume that all students of Burke's thought will have to take into account because Shakespeare criticism is an important part of the legacy he has left behind. Kenneth Duva Burke (1897-1993) 1 was an important American philosopher and critic much influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Siegmund Freud, and Karl Marx, but, at the same time, very original. The book in question contains all of the Shakespeare criticism by Kenneth Burke, both published and previously unpublished, together with even short notes and passing remarks, and provides all this material with carefully formulated and very useful notes, comments, and cross-references. Burke's life and ideas, particularly those relating to Shakespeare, are lucidly exposed in the very handy and informative "Editor's introduction". Altogether, we shall find here

The European Legacy, 1997

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2009

The present article tries to answer the question whether it is possible to think of William Shake... more The present article tries to answer the question whether it is possible to think of William Shakespeare's Hamlet as a dream vision in which the Ghost plays the role analogous to the Dreamer's supernatural guide, which is the situation we meet with in medieval dream visions, such as Chaucer's The book of the Duchess, or The Pearl. It seems that such an interpretation is possible, even though it should be approached cautiously because medieval ghosts and dead souls, and other supernatural phenomena, not only in dream visions, usually function as a means to solve, or at least alleviate, a crisis, whereas in Hamlet the Ghost comes rather to exacerbate it, and make it more tragical. To prove this point, the author makes comparisons not only between Hamlet and dream visions, but also some medieval ghost stories, and the thirteenth century romance Havelok the Dane, which is based on a narrative pattern not very different from that of Hamlet. Another problem examined in this article is that of the extent to which we can talk of the motif of reduplication and monstrous double as a leitmotif in Hamlet, and also in some of its analogues. Some comments and ideas by Frank Kermode and Harold Bloom are made use of in this context. The topic of the present paper is a little paradoxical. Strictly speaking, Shakespeare's Hamlet is clearly not a dream vision, nor are there any dream visions inside it. And yet the motif of sleep and dream figures in it very prominently, the play is permeated with it, we might even say. It all starts with Bernardo's words, at the beginning of Act 1, scene 1: "get thee to bed, Francisco" (I.1.7), goes through Hamlet's dreamlike seeing his father in his "mind's eye" (I.2.185), and ends with the famous words of Horatio, from Act 5, scene 2, addressed to Hamlet just after the latter's death: "Good night, sweet prince; and flights of

ifa.amu.edu.pl

... The father complains: That cortaysé is to fre of dede, Yyf hyt be soth that thou cones saye. ... more ... The father complains: That cortaysé is to fre of dede, Yyf hyt be soth that thou cones saye. Thou lyfed not two yer in oure thede; Thou cowthes never God nauther plese ne pray, Ne never nawther Pater ne Crede - And quen mad on the fyrst day! ...

Acta Oto-Laryngologica, 1998

Background: Young adults experience some type of recreational noise exposure on a daily basis; th... more Background: Young adults experience some type of recreational noise exposure on a daily basis; this includes using personal music (PM) systems with earphones. In most cases, this exposure is intermittent and the short-term effects of this exposure on the auditory system are becoming better understood. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of one hour of music exposure using a PM system on distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) absolute levels and generator and charac teristic frequency (CF) component levels. Study Samples: Young adults (n = 101) between 18-30 years with normal hearing participated listened to one hour of music through earphones. A second group of young adults (n = 21) served as controls and did not listen to music, but sat in the sound-treated room for one hour. Data Collection and Analysis: Otoscopy, tympanometry, and a hearing screening (<20 dB HL at 0.5,1, 2, and 4 kHz) were completed in a randomly determined test ear. Preferred listening level, in dBA, was obtained and DPOAEs (2f,-f2) were measured between 1 and 6 kHz with stimulus levels fixed at L1,L2 = 55,40 dB SPL. Absolute DPOAE levels, along with generator and CF components levels were measured before and after each participant listened to one hour of music at their preferred level in a quiet setting. For data analyses, absolute DPOAE and generator and CF component levels were collapsed into 1/3rd octave bands centered around 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, and 6 kHz. Results: Mean preferred listening level was 57.8 dBA, with males having a higher mean level of 61.1 dBA compared with females who had a mean level of 55.7 dBA. Females and males had negligible mean changes in absolute DPOAE levels at 1,1.5, and 2 kHz, but males had 0.4-1 dB mean decreases after music at 3,4, and 6 kHz compared to females, although not statistically significant. For DPOAE generator component data, females had small mean decreases for the two lower frequencies whereas males had mean decreases of 0.4-0.8 dB at 3, 4, and 6 kHz. Because of missing data, analyses of the CF com ponent were limited, although females had small mean decreases at four frequencies while males had small mean decreases at two frequencies. There was no effect of listening to music on changes in DPOAEs but control participants had strong reliability (i.e., little or no change) after sitting in quiet for one hour. Conclusions: Young adults listened to music well below what would be considered hazardous. Because of the lower listening levels, DPOAEs showed very little change after music. Although there were no significant short-term changes in DPOAEs after music, the cumulative effect of this noise exposure is still unknown.

The aim of the essay is to consider the ramifications of abandoning Latin as the lingua franca of... more The aim of the essay is to consider the ramifications of abandoning Latin as the lingua franca of Europe (with primary emphasis on Poland) and embracing English as a new international standard of communication. In Poland the use of foreign languages has always been fraught with political and class implications. At the same time certain foreign languages (e.g. Latin, French) have been used to bestow distinction on the speaker/writer and identify her/him as a superior citizen. In Sienkiewicz’s novellas and short stories, characters resort to various foreign languages to convey their attitudes to particular nations and emphasize their social positions.

Romanica Silesiana, 2021

There appear to be quite a few parallels between Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Boethius’s T... more There appear to be quite a few parallels between Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy (Consolatio Philosophiae), and they seem to concern particularly, though not only, the character drawing in Tolkien’s book. Those parallels are preeminently connected with the fact that both Boethius and Tolkien like to think of the most extreme situations that can befall a human. And both are attached to the idea of not giving in to despair, and of finding a source of hope in seemingly desperate straits. The idea that there is some link between Boethius and Tolkien is naturally not new. T.A. Shippey talks about it in his The Road to Middle Earth, but he concentrates on the Boethian conception of good and evil, which is also of course an important matter, but surely not the only one that links Tolkien and Boethius. On the other hand, it is not my intention to claim that there is something in Tolkien’s book of which it can be said that it would have been absol...

JEGP, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 2013

C. stephen jaeger, ed., Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics: Art, Architecture, L... more C. stephen jaeger, ed., Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics: Art, Architecture, Literature, Music. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. pp. 320; 40 illustrations. isbn: 978-0-230-61898-5. $90This collection, which includes an introduction and eleven essays, developed from a 2008 conference on the medieval aesthetics of grandeur. It explores how and where concepts of the magnificent and sublime operated in the Middle Ages, and puts them into conversation with more widely known treatments by writers like Longinus, Immanuel Kant, and Theodor Adorno. In doing so, the volume challenges earlier assessments of the medieval sublime, particularly those by E.R. Curtius and Erich Auerbach, as well as an 'overarching conception of medieval culture' that C. Stephen Jaeger calls 'the diminutive Middle Ages (DMA).' Although the DMA may be a bit of a straw man-or at least may be a stronger paradigm in some disciplines than others-the contributors effectively undercut any idea that 'the Middle Ages is a period of small, quaint things and people' (p. 5).The arrangement of the essays highlights their variety, but several clusters also emerge. Readers who are most interested in the ontological categories at stake might begin with Jaeger's introduction and 'Richard of St. Victor and the Medieval Sublime,' which argues for defining the sublime through its effects rather than any specific qualities and takes Richard of St. Victor's description of 'ecstatic contemplative experience' as the central case study (p. 163). In 'How Magnificent Was Medieval Art?,' Beth Williamson suggests that medieval and modern ideas of the magnificent and sublime have some general similarities but that medieval art encouraged the reader to connect with God rather than to remain disinterested, as required by the Kantian sublime.Architecture and art lend themselves perhaps most naturally to considerations of grandeur, and several essays explore those connections from different angles. Areli Marina's 'Magnificent Architecture in Late Medieval Italy' examines both buildings and texts to demonstrate that 'the sophisticated visual architectural language of magnificence was well-defined and clearly understood' much earlier than previously recognized (p. 194). In 'Reflections on the "Wonderful Height and Size" of Gothic Great Churches and the Medieval Sublime,' Paul Binski considers how structures might inspire wonder at their colossal size or complex variety. Adam S. Cohen's 'Magnificence in Miniature: The Case of Early Medieval Manuscripts' persuasively demonstrates that books, despite their smaller size, could evoke similar responses; they depicted their patrons as magnificent in addition to functioning as magnificent objects in their own right. …

C. David Benson says that: “Perhaps the most extreme disjunction of teller and tale is the contra... more C. David Benson says that: “Perhaps the most extreme disjunction of teller and tale is the contrast between the rough, murderous Shipman of the General Prologue and the cool, sophisticated art of the Shipman’s Tale.” The author of the present article hopes to be able to show that there is a link between the character of the Shipman and the nature of the tale told by him, and that this link is provided by, among other things, the medieval understanding of cosmopolitanism. The problem of cosmopolitanism was no doubt important for Chaucer, who himself may be thought of as embodying this social phenomenon, being a well-traveled man, like several of the pilgrims he shows in The Canterbury Tales, and being a man who was deeply influenced by at least three foreign cultures and languages, while showing little interest in his native English tradition. Naturally, I do not intend to subscribe to the view that Chaucer was a typical, rootless cosmopolitan. On the other hand, the matter of the so...

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 2021

The article deals the possibility of applying Vladimir Propp’s, basically anthropological idea of... more The article deals the possibility of applying Vladimir Propp’s, basically anthropological idea of “the inverted ritual” to the interpretation of certain plays by William Shakespeare, particularly Hamlet. The said inversion concerns three rituals: the sacrificial ritual, where the passive and obedient victim suddenly rebels, or at least becomes difficult to control (which is the case, for example, of Ophelia in Hamlet); of the initiatory ritual, where the apparently benevolent master of the characters initiation is shown as a monster (which can be exemplified by Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle); and of the matrimonial ritual, where the theoretically loving husband (more rarely wife), or lover, is revealed as a highly malicious and unpredictable creature, an example of which can be Hamlet himself. The article makes use of the work of such critics as G.K. Wilson, Harold Bloom, Vladimir Propp, René Girard, and Mircea Eliade.

Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica, 2020

The aim of the article is to investigate some of the possible sources of inspiration for Orwell’s... more The aim of the article is to investigate some of the possible sources of inspiration for Orwell’s concept of the artificial language called Newspeak, which, in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is shown as an effective tool of enslavement and thought control in the hands of a totalitarian state. The author discusses, in this context, the putative links between Newspeak and really existing artificial languages, first of all Esperanto, and also between Orwell’s notion of “doublethink”, which is an important feature of the totalitarian mentality, and Czesław Miłosz’s notion of “ketman”, developed in his book The Captive Mind. But the main emphasis is on the connection between Orwell’s book and the slightly earlier novel by C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength. It is well known that Orwell knew Lewis’s book and expressed his mixed feelings about it. There are many specific, though far from obvious, similarities between the two books, but what seems to have been particularly inspiring for Orw...

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia International Review of English Studies, 2001

In Chaucer's description of the hail of Fame, we notice a series of figures representing famo... more In Chaucer's description of the hail of Fame, we notice a series of figures representing famous ancient authors, most of them writing in Latin. They are shown as titanic, Atlas-like figures standing on columns, and bearing on their shoulders the great weight of the subject matter which they deal with in their work. For example the "Ebrayke Josephus", that is Josephus Flavius, the author of the History of the Jewish War, is shown standing on a pillar made of lead and iron and he bears on his shoulders "the fame of the Jewrye", i.e. the fame of the Jewish people. This burden, however, is so heavy that he needs seven other, unidentified figures to help him cope with it. The fame of the ancient city of Troy is supported by five figures besides "the great Homer", namely Dares and Dictys, Guido delle Colonne, Lollius, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, with Homer being considered, in spite of his "greatness", rather inadequate because he, allegedly, sided too much with the Greeks in the portrayal of their conflict with the Trojans, and indulged in literary fiction instead of reporting. They all are standing apparently on one pillar made of iron, whereas Ovid, "the clerk of Venus", is standing on a copper column, copper being the metal of Venus. The Latin poet Statius is shown, as the author of the poems Thebaid and Achilleid, to carry on his shoulders the fame of Thebes, and also that of the "cruelle Achilles" (cf. Phillips - Havely 1997: 184-187). The passage described above seems to be a good illustration of the medieval concept of authorship. We should first mention here the tendency to see the medieval authors as essentially anonymous. As has been put by J.A. Burrow (1982: 36): Many of the writings are formally anonymous, in the simplest sense - the name of the author has been lost ... and even where the name of the author is known, we may think of his work as anonymous in a deeper sense. The authors of this period, we believe, rarely talk about themselves, and their works are most often unmarked by any distinctive personality. Their subjects are traditional, their styles conventional. Like medieval sculpture and architecture, in fact, medieval literature is supposed to be public, impersonal, monumental. We seem to have to do here with a stereotype that contrasts the collective, impersonal, and traditional nature of the Middle Ages with the individualistic, often egocentric, or even egomaniac, experimental and, at least ostensibly, innovative character of the modem, or modernist writing. The post-modernist literature would, interestingly enough, with its explicitly eclectic nature, and its programmatic distrust towards the grand project of revolutionising culture, veer more towards the supposedly medieval anonymity. This collectivist stereotype of medieval authorship has actually been questioned by E.R. Curtius, who claims that in the Middle Ages we often have to do with the opposite phenomenon, namely the writer's "unadulterated pride of authorship" (Curtius 1990: 517). The "collectivist" vision of the Middle Ages is clearly a myth that, even though it has some real foundation, led to many misunderstandings and anachronistic interpretations, for instance, G.G. Coulton in his Medieval panorama claims that it was the study of medieval architecture that led William Morris to embrace the ideas of socialism (1976: 571). We should distinguish now between the situation of the writer's talking, or choosing to be silent, on the subject of his own authorship, and the writer's dealing with somebody else's authorship. In the latter case we can encounter a great variety of attitudes, ranging from a complete neglect of the author's person to a veritable cult of the author. The whole matter seems to be neatly summarised in the following passage from St Bonaventure, who talks about the four modi faciendi librum ('ways of making a book'): There are four ways of making a book. Sometimes a man writes others' words, adding nothing and changing nothing; and is simply called a scribe [scriptor]. …

Text Matters - A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, 2013

Two of the tales mentioned in the title are in many ways typical of the great collections of stor... more Two of the tales mentioned in the title are in many ways typical of the great collections of stories (The Canterbury Tales and Il Decamerone) to which they belong. What makes them conspicuous is no doubt the intensity of the erotic desire presented as the ultimate law which justifies even the most outrageous actions. The cult of eroticism is combined there with a cult of youth, which means disaster for the protagonists, who try to combine eroticism with advanced age. And yet the stories in question have roots in a very different tradition in which overt eroticism is punished and can only reassert itself in a chastened form, its transformation being due to sacrifices made by the lover to become reunited with the object of his love. A medieval example of the latter tradition is here the Middle English romance, Sir Orfeo. All of the three narratives are conspicuously connected by the motif of the enchanted tree. The Middle Ages are associated with a tendency to moralize ancient literat...

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2009

This book, published in 2007, has already gained wide recognition and praise coming from such lum... more This book, published in 2007, has already gained wide recognition and praise coming from such luminaries of American literary criticism as Harold Bloom and Stephen Greenblatt. It is the result of the editor's, that is Scott L. Newstok's, work consisting in bringing together and editing Kenneth Burke's numerous and important contributions to Shakespeare criticism. Burke wanted apparently to produce a volume of this kind himself, but died without achieving this purpose. Thus the book may be thought of as a fulfillment of Kenneth Burke's intention, and a volume that all students of Burke's thought will have to take into account because Shakespeare criticism is an important part of the legacy he has left behind. Kenneth Duva Burke (1897-1993) 1 was an important American philosopher and critic much influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Siegmund Freud, and Karl Marx, but, at the same time, very original. The book in question contains all of the Shakespeare criticism by Kenneth Burke, both published and previously unpublished, together with even short notes and passing remarks, and provides all this material with carefully formulated and very useful notes, comments, and cross-references. Burke's life and ideas, particularly those relating to Shakespeare, are lucidly exposed in the very handy and informative "Editor's introduction". Altogether, we shall find here

The European Legacy, 1997

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2009

The present article tries to answer the question whether it is possible to think of William Shake... more The present article tries to answer the question whether it is possible to think of William Shakespeare's Hamlet as a dream vision in which the Ghost plays the role analogous to the Dreamer's supernatural guide, which is the situation we meet with in medieval dream visions, such as Chaucer's The book of the Duchess, or The Pearl. It seems that such an interpretation is possible, even though it should be approached cautiously because medieval ghosts and dead souls, and other supernatural phenomena, not only in dream visions, usually function as a means to solve, or at least alleviate, a crisis, whereas in Hamlet the Ghost comes rather to exacerbate it, and make it more tragical. To prove this point, the author makes comparisons not only between Hamlet and dream visions, but also some medieval ghost stories, and the thirteenth century romance Havelok the Dane, which is based on a narrative pattern not very different from that of Hamlet. Another problem examined in this article is that of the extent to which we can talk of the motif of reduplication and monstrous double as a leitmotif in Hamlet, and also in some of its analogues. Some comments and ideas by Frank Kermode and Harold Bloom are made use of in this context. The topic of the present paper is a little paradoxical. Strictly speaking, Shakespeare's Hamlet is clearly not a dream vision, nor are there any dream visions inside it. And yet the motif of sleep and dream figures in it very prominently, the play is permeated with it, we might even say. It all starts with Bernardo's words, at the beginning of Act 1, scene 1: "get thee to bed, Francisco" (I.1.7), goes through Hamlet's dreamlike seeing his father in his "mind's eye" (I.2.185), and ends with the famous words of Horatio, from Act 5, scene 2, addressed to Hamlet just after the latter's death: "Good night, sweet prince; and flights of

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... The father complains: That cortaysé is to fre of dede, Yyf hyt be soth that thou cones saye. ... more ... The father complains: That cortaysé is to fre of dede, Yyf hyt be soth that thou cones saye. Thou lyfed not two yer in oure thede; Thou cowthes never God nauther plese ne pray, Ne never nawther Pater ne Crede - And quen mad on the fyrst day! ...

Acta Oto-Laryngologica, 1998

Background: Young adults experience some type of recreational noise exposure on a daily basis; th... more Background: Young adults experience some type of recreational noise exposure on a daily basis; this includes using personal music (PM) systems with earphones. In most cases, this exposure is intermittent and the short-term effects of this exposure on the auditory system are becoming better understood. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of one hour of music exposure using a PM system on distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) absolute levels and generator and charac teristic frequency (CF) component levels. Study Samples: Young adults (n = 101) between 18-30 years with normal hearing participated listened to one hour of music through earphones. A second group of young adults (n = 21) served as controls and did not listen to music, but sat in the sound-treated room for one hour. Data Collection and Analysis: Otoscopy, tympanometry, and a hearing screening (<20 dB HL at 0.5,1, 2, and 4 kHz) were completed in a randomly determined test ear. Preferred listening level, in dBA, was obtained and DPOAEs (2f,-f2) were measured between 1 and 6 kHz with stimulus levels fixed at L1,L2 = 55,40 dB SPL. Absolute DPOAE levels, along with generator and CF components levels were measured before and after each participant listened to one hour of music at their preferred level in a quiet setting. For data analyses, absolute DPOAE and generator and CF component levels were collapsed into 1/3rd octave bands centered around 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, and 6 kHz. Results: Mean preferred listening level was 57.8 dBA, with males having a higher mean level of 61.1 dBA compared with females who had a mean level of 55.7 dBA. Females and males had negligible mean changes in absolute DPOAE levels at 1,1.5, and 2 kHz, but males had 0.4-1 dB mean decreases after music at 3,4, and 6 kHz compared to females, although not statistically significant. For DPOAE generator component data, females had small mean decreases for the two lower frequencies whereas males had mean decreases of 0.4-0.8 dB at 3, 4, and 6 kHz. Because of missing data, analyses of the CF com ponent were limited, although females had small mean decreases at four frequencies while males had small mean decreases at two frequencies. There was no effect of listening to music on changes in DPOAEs but control participants had strong reliability (i.e., little or no change) after sitting in quiet for one hour. Conclusions: Young adults listened to music well below what would be considered hazardous. Because of the lower listening levels, DPOAEs showed very little change after music. Although there were no significant short-term changes in DPOAEs after music, the cumulative effect of this noise exposure is still unknown.

The aim of the essay is to consider the ramifications of abandoning Latin as the lingua franca of... more The aim of the essay is to consider the ramifications of abandoning Latin as the lingua franca of Europe (with primary emphasis on Poland) and embracing English as a new international standard of communication. In Poland the use of foreign languages has always been fraught with political and class implications. At the same time certain foreign languages (e.g. Latin, French) have been used to bestow distinction on the speaker/writer and identify her/him as a superior citizen. In Sienkiewicz’s novellas and short stories, characters resort to various foreign languages to convey their attitudes to particular nations and emphasize their social positions.