Aleksander Bednarski | John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (original) (raw)
Papers by Aleksander Bednarski
Rocznik Komparatystyczny, 2022
Black Apples of Gower (2015) 1 is a topographical non-fiction work illustrated with photographs a... more Black Apples of Gower (2015) 1 is a topographical non-fiction work illustrated with photographs and artwork, exploring the (pre)historical and literary connections between the Gower peninsula in South Wales, English-language Welsh poets (Vernon Watkins, Dylan Thomas), and artists. One of the recurrent themes in Sinclair's book is the apple featured in the cycle of paintings Afal Du Brogŵyr (Black Apple of Gower) by Ceri Richards. 2 In the artworks, as well throughout Sinclair's text, the fruit is charged with alchemical symbolism and associated with nigredo-the "blackening," the first stage of the transformation of metal into gold, the elixir of life or the philosopher's stone (Biedermann: 41). Although it is not stated in Sinclair's book, the apple in the Welsh context is also linked with the figure of Myrddin, later recast as Merlin
Roczniki Humanistyczne, Sep 22, 2017
The article provides a brief outline of cultural and linguistic aspects of the Welsh settlement i... more The article provides a brief outline of cultural and linguistic aspects of the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, Argentina. Established in 1865, for several decades the Colony (Y Wladfa) remained an economically thriving, Welsh-speaking community, which other Welsh emigration projects had failed to achieve. At the turn of the 20 th century the growing pressure from the Argentinian government to integrate the Colony into the state’s administrative system and to introduce education in Spanish resulted in a rapid hispanisation of the Welsh population. Nevertheless, Y Wladfa has managed to preserve its distinct national and cultural identity. The Welsh language is spoken by several thousand people and many Welsh traditions such as the festivals of literature, music and performance (‘eisteddfodau’) are still held annually in Trelew, Gaiman and Trefelin. The current revival of Welsh language and culture in Chubut Province is supported by organisations and institutions in Wales and stimulated by the lively contacts between the Colony and the mother country and official funding from Wales.
Rocznik Komparatystyczny
This paper explores the connections between Iain Sinclair’s 2015 travelogue Black Apples of Gower... more This paper explores the connections between Iain Sinclair’s 2015 travelogue Black Apples of Gower and the Merlin legend. Despite the fact that, on the surface, Sinclair does not refer to the early Welsh merlinistic tradition, on closer inspection both share what M. Wynn Thomas has described as “hidden attachments” – cross cultural connections and experiences between the two literatures of modern Wales. The archaic bedrock of the Merlin legend and the alchemical imagery in Sinclair’s book are both rooted in the mythico-ritualistic complex of symbolic regeneration based on the repetition of the act of original creation. Both Merlin and the alchemical process involve an ontological transformation which is mirrored in Black Apples of Gower by the transcendence of textual and medial boundaries: a complex network of intertextual allusions and word-image relationships (ekphrases, reproductions and illustrations). By exploring these relationships, along with the merlinistic and alchemical i...
Rocznik Komparatystyczny https://wnus.usz.edu.pl/rk/pl/issue/1293/article/20371/, 2022
This paper explores the connections between Iain Sinclair’s 2015 travelogue Black Apples of Gower... more This paper explores the connections between Iain Sinclair’s 2015 travelogue Black Apples of Gower and the Merlin legend. Despite the fact that, on the surface, Sinclair does not refer to the early Welsh merlinistic tradition, on closer inspection both share what M. Wynn Thomas has described as “hidden attachments” – cross cultural connections and experiences between the two literatures of modern Wales. The archaic bedrock of the Merlin legend and the alchemical imagery in Sinclair’s book are both rooted in the mythico-ritualistic complex of symbolic regeneration based on the repetition of the act of original creation. Both Merlin and the alchemical process involve an ontological transformation which is mirrored in Black Apples of Gower by the transcendence of textual and medial boundaries: a complex network of intertextual allusions and word-image relationships (ekphrases, reproductions and illustrations). By exploring these relationships, along with the merlinistic and alchemical imagery present in the text, I argue that the work employs the strategy of what I call textual nigredo – a process of intertextual and intermedial transformation. The affinities identified between the Merlin legend and Sinclair’s travelogue provide an argument for seeing Iain Sinclair as a Welsh writer and shed new light on the links between the Welsh-language literary tradition and English-language Welsh writing which may be pursued further in the future.
https://wnus.usz.edu.pl/rk/pl/issue/1293/article/20371/
Orbis Litterarum
Christopher Meredith's novel Shifts (1988) is firmly established in the canon of English-... more Christopher Meredith's novel Shifts (1988) is firmly established in the canon of English-language Welsh literature as one of the most accomplished representatives of (post-) industrial fiction, a genre this small country has produced in quality and amount ‘out of all proportion to its size or population’ (Knight, 2004). The aim of this paper is to explore the role of the medieval Mappa Mundi which two characters see in Hereford Cathedral in the context of the novel's circular structure and a rich network of other visual insets. Looking at the map from a variety of perspectives, including Murray Krieger's concept of ekphrasis as the superimposition of spatial relationships on a text by a visual work of art, I propose to read the fictional continuum of the novel as a mirror image of the medieval orbis terrarum on several planes: compositional, visual-optical and symbolic. This reading is embedded within the broader context of the characteristics of the Welsh industrial novel discussed by Raymond Williams in his essay ‘The Welsh industrial novel’ (1979).
Orbis Litterarum, 2023
Christopher Meredith's novel Shifts (1988) is firmly established in the canon of English-language... more Christopher Meredith's novel Shifts (1988) is firmly established in the canon of English-language Welsh literature as one of the most accomplished representatives of (post-) industrial fiction, a genre this small country has produced in quality and amount ‘out of all proportion to its size or population’ (Knight, 2004). The aim of this paper is to explore
the role of the medieval Mappa Mundi which two characters see in Hereford Cathedral in the context of the novel's circular structure and a rich network of other visual insets. Looking at the map from a variety of perspectives, including Murray Krieger's concept of ekphrasis as the superimposition of spatial relationships on a text by a visual work of art, I propose to read the fictional continuum of the novel as a mirror image of the medieval orbis terrarum on several planes: compositional, visual-optical and symbolic. This reading is embedded within the broader context of the characteristics of the Welsh industrial novel discussed by Raymond Williams in his essay ‘The Welsh industrial novel’ (1979).
Kobieta w literaturze, sztuce i muzyce – ujęcie interdyscyplinarne, t. 3. Red. Ewelina Chodźko i Paulina Pomajda, Lublin Wydawnictwo Naukowe Tygiel, Lublin, 2022. 7-27. https://bc.wydawnictwo-tygiel.pl/publikacja/39CE0711-0BEF-C661-8ABF-77AC21D2014F, 2022
Celem niniejszego opracowania jest analiza przedstawienia Blodeuwedd („Kobiety z Kwiatów”) w dwóc... more Celem niniejszego opracowania jest analiza przedstawienia Blodeuwedd („Kobiety z Kwiatów”) w dwóch powieściach walijskich: „Y Dylluan Wen” („Płomykówce”) Angharad Jones i „The Meat Tree” („Mięsnym Drzewie”) Gwyneth Lewis w kontekście tzw. intermedialności ukrytej. Blodeuwedd jest postacią wystę-pującą w ostatniej historii z cyklu „Cztery Gałęzie Mabinogi” (datowanego na okres XI-XII wieku), który stanowi część większego zbioru pt. „Mabinogion”, obejmującego też późniejsze legendy i adaptacje literatury francuskiej. „Czwarta Gałąź Mabinogi”, „Math syn Mathonwy”, charakteryzuje się dużym nasyceniem wątków magicznych i mitologicznych, czego sztandarowym przykładem jest stworzenie przez czarodzieja Gwydiona kobiety z kwiatów dla Llew Llaw Gyffesa. „Cztery Gałęzie”, a szczególnie postać Blodeuwedd, stanowią częste źródło inspiracji dla współczesnej kultury walijskiej. Postać Blodeuwedd w „Płomykówce” i „Mięsnym drzewie” jest poddana analizie z perspektywy użycia tzw. ukrytych aspektów intermedialnych, przybierających głównie formę ekfrazy i ikonicznej projekcji (termin Hansa Lunda). Taki aparat badawczy, uwzględniający polisemiotyczność zawartych w obu powieściach elementów (obrazy, teatr, wirtualna rze-czywistość, naśladowanie ruchu kamery, obramowanie postaci, czy wreszcie forma scenariusza teatralnego/ filmowego), pozwala na naświetlenie paraleli między Blodeuwedd – postacią o radykalnie hybrydycznym charakterze, łączącym aspekt roślinny, ludzki i zwierzęcy – a technikami włączania do tekstu literackiego elementów innych systemów semiotycznych. Te ostatnie, mimo iż podlegają mediacji przez język, wpływają na niejednorodność przekazu i są czynnikiem ułatwiającym lub nawet generującym zjawisko niestabilności lub oscylacji między poziomami ontologicznymi, co koresponduje z mechanizmami wpisanymi niejako w naturę „Kobiety z Kwiatów”. Analiza Blodeuwedd pod tym kątem pokazuje, że jest ona poddawana mechanizmowi wzmocnionej fikcjonalizacji oraz że jej paradoksalność i hybrydowość są komunikowane i uwydatniane za pomocą zabiegów reprezentujących intermedialność „ukrytą”.
https://bc.wydawnictwo-tygiel.pl/publikacja/39CE0711-0BEF-C661-8ABF-77AC21D2014F
Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2020
Tekstualne metamorfozy: intermedialność w Peredurze Synu Efrawga i Bird, Blood, Snow Cynana Jones... more Tekstualne metamorfozy: intermedialność w Peredurze Synu Efrawga i Bird, Blood, Snow Cynana Jonesa Niniejszy artukuł jest analizą powieści Cynana Jonesa Bird, Blood, Snow w kontekście pisanego prozą średniowiecznego walijskiego romansu dworskiego Peredur syn Efrawga, który wchodzi w skład zbioru opowieści znanego jako Mabinogion. Proweniencja średniowiecznej opowieści jest przedmiotem ożywionej debaty: różniące się od siebie wersje zachowały się w czterech rękopisach, wykazują związki z literaturą francuską, w szczególności z poematem Chrétiena de Troyes Perceval, a jednocześnie pozostają mocno osadzone w walijskiej tradycji ustnej. Analizie poddane są elementy wizualne obecne zarówno w tekście średniowiecznym, jak i w powieści Jonesa, co pozwala na potwierdzenie sformułowanej we wstępie tezy, iż warstwa kompozycyjna powieści, oparta w dużej mierze na oscylacji pomiędzy słowem a obrazem, odzwierciedla nie tylko bogatą sieć powiązań intertekstualnych, w jakie uwikłany jest Peredur, a...
Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2018
Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature, 2020
Compared with Anglophone literatures, Welsh-language fiction has to date received little attentio... more Compared with Anglophone literatures, Welsh-language fiction has to date received little attention in the context of the rapidly developing intermedial and interart studies. The purpose of the article is to provide a preliminary mapping of pictorial insets in Welsh-language fiction in the period 1992-2016. The novels considered in the article include some of the milestones in the development of Welsh fiction and provide a representative sample of the literary production from the period in question. The article identifies and lists the sources of ekphrastic insets scattered throughout the texts, grouping them into descriptive ekphrases, references, pictorial models and spatio-contextual ekphrases.
The article offers an intermedial reading of Lloyd Jones’s novel See How They Run, part of the se... more The article offers an intermedial reading of Lloyd Jones’s novel See How They Run, part of the series that comprises novels retelling eleven tales from the earliest extant British collection of prose fiction known as the Mabinogion. In the article I explore verbally transmitted explicit and implicit references to the visual medium which, as I demonstrate, are used to repackage some of the most archaic aspects of the original text. By employing a theoretical framework developed by Boris Uspensky in his A Poetics of Composition. The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form, I argue that the novel’s pictorial dimension mirrors perspectival systems of Renaissance and pre-Renaissance painting. I conclude that the transfer from the former to the latter, together with other visual elements, constitutes a significant component in Jones’s strategy to transcribe the mythological and religious substratum of the medieval original.
The article provides a brief outline of cultural and linguistic aspects of the Welsh settlement i... more The article provides a brief outline of cultural and linguistic aspects of the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, Argentina. Established in 1865, for several decades the Colony (Y Wladfa) remained an economically thriving, Welsh-speaking community, which other Welsh emigration projects had failed to achieve. At the turn of the 20 th century the growing pressure from the Argentinian government to integrate the Colony into the state’s administrative system and to introduce education in Spanish resulted in a rapid hispanisation of the Welsh population. Nevertheless, Y Wladfa has managed to preserve its distinct national and cultural identity. The Welsh language is spoken by several thousand people and many Welsh traditions such as the festivals of literature, music and performance (‘eisteddfodau’) are still held annually in Trelew, Gaiman and Trefelin. The current revival of Welsh language and culture in Chubut Province is supported by organisations and institutions in Wales and stimulated...
This volume provides accounts of well-established themes of general Celtic inquiry from new theor... more This volume provides accounts of well-established themes of general Celtic inquiry from new theoretical perspectives, in addition to addressing new areas of research that have remained largely unexplored. The collection includes contributions by both established and young scholars on diverse aspects of culture, literature and linguistics, reflecting the multidisciplinary character of current trends in Celtology. The linguistic section of the book includes chapters dealing with Welsh phonology and possible areas of influence of the Brittonic language on English, as well as with the issues of translating culture-specific aspects of medieval Welsh texts and the problems of standardising Irish orthography and font. The second part of the volume is devoted to literature and considers neglected, and heretofore unexplored, aspects of Welsh-language poetry, fiction and children’s literature, the work of John Cowper Powys, and Scottish film in the theoretical context of post-humanism. Approa...
This volume provides accounts of well-established themes of general Celtic inquiry from new theor... more This volume provides accounts of well-established themes of general Celtic inquiry from new theoretical perspectives, in addition to addressing new areas of research that have remained largely unexplored. The collection includes contributions by both established and young scholars on diverse aspects of culture, literature and linguistics, reflecting the multidisciplinary character of current trends in Celtology. The linguistic section of the book includes chapters dealing with Welsh phonology and possible areas of influence of the Brittonic language on English, as well as with the issues of translating culture-specific aspects of medieval Welsh texts and the problems of standardising Irish orthography and font. The second part of the volume is devoted to literature and considers neglected, and heretofore unexplored, aspects of Welsh-language poetry, fiction and children’s literature, the work of John Cowper Powys, and Scottish film in the theoretical context of post-humanism. Approa...
Roczniki Humanistyczne/Annals of Arts Vol 68 No 11, pp 21-36, 2020
The paper examines Cynan Jones’s novel Bird, Blood, Snow in the context of the medieval Welsh pro... more The paper examines Cynan Jones’s novel Bird, Blood, Snow in the context of the medieval Welsh prose romance “Peredur Son of Efrog”, part of the collection of medieval Welsh tales called the Mabinogion. The provenance of the original tale has been widely debated as it survives in four versions and has parallels both with French literature (most notably Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval) and native Welsh storytelling tradition. This article focuses on the visual insets present in the medieval tale and Jones’s text, and demonstrates that the complex network of intertextual relationships between the multiple versions of “Peredur”, along with the trends in the academic debate centred around it, is reflected in Jones’s novel by means of the compositional devices characterised by the oscillation between the verbal and the visual.
Full text: https://ojs.tnkul.pl/index.php/rh/article/view/14529
Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature: Formal Intersections between Narrative Fiction and Other Media, 2020
Compared with Anglophone literatures, Welsh-language fiction has to date received little attentio... more Compared with Anglophone literatures, Welsh-language fiction has to date received little attention in the context of the rapidly developing intermedial and interart studies. The purpose of this article is to provide a preliminary mapping of pictorial insets in Welsh-language fiction in the period 1992-2016. The novels considered in this article include some of the milestones in the development of Welsh fiction and provide a representative sample of the literary production from the period in question. This article identifies and lists the sources of ekphrastic insets scattered throughout the texts, grouping them into descriptive ekphrases, references, pictorial models and spatio-contextual ekphrases.
Full text: https://journals.umcs.pl/lsmll/issue/view/604/showToc
Roczniki Humanistyczne (Annals of Arts), 2018
The article examines the visual aspect of the novel The Life of Rebecca Jones by the contemporary... more The article examines the visual aspect of the novel The Life of Rebecca Jones by the contemporary Welsh writer Angharad Price. The book is an imaginary autobiography of the eponymous Rebecca Jones, Price’s distant relative, who died of diphtheria in 1916, aged 11. Apart from Rebecca’s family photographs reproduced in the text, ekphrastic descriptions of a photograph, a painting (by a blind artist) and the video recording of a television programme, the novel problematises the dichotomy between seeing and blindness. The aim of this essay is to demonstrate how these elements in Price’s novel contribute to the production of meaning by generating tension between two different modes of discourse: verbal and visual. Price’s novel is read as an ‘imagetext’ which, by adopting photographic/visual features, creates an illusion of ‘photographic’ verisimilitude (described as a trompe l’oeil effect). This mechanism is interpreted as the manifestation of the narrator’s struggle to assert her authority as a perceiving subject and the text itself as a site where the memory of place and family history can be preserved.
PDF: http://czasopisma.tnkul.pl/index.php/rh/article/view/10486/10465
Rocznik Komparatystyczny, 2022
Black Apples of Gower (2015) 1 is a topographical non-fiction work illustrated with photographs a... more Black Apples of Gower (2015) 1 is a topographical non-fiction work illustrated with photographs and artwork, exploring the (pre)historical and literary connections between the Gower peninsula in South Wales, English-language Welsh poets (Vernon Watkins, Dylan Thomas), and artists. One of the recurrent themes in Sinclair's book is the apple featured in the cycle of paintings Afal Du Brogŵyr (Black Apple of Gower) by Ceri Richards. 2 In the artworks, as well throughout Sinclair's text, the fruit is charged with alchemical symbolism and associated with nigredo-the "blackening," the first stage of the transformation of metal into gold, the elixir of life or the philosopher's stone (Biedermann: 41). Although it is not stated in Sinclair's book, the apple in the Welsh context is also linked with the figure of Myrddin, later recast as Merlin
Roczniki Humanistyczne, Sep 22, 2017
The article provides a brief outline of cultural and linguistic aspects of the Welsh settlement i... more The article provides a brief outline of cultural and linguistic aspects of the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, Argentina. Established in 1865, for several decades the Colony (Y Wladfa) remained an economically thriving, Welsh-speaking community, which other Welsh emigration projects had failed to achieve. At the turn of the 20 th century the growing pressure from the Argentinian government to integrate the Colony into the state’s administrative system and to introduce education in Spanish resulted in a rapid hispanisation of the Welsh population. Nevertheless, Y Wladfa has managed to preserve its distinct national and cultural identity. The Welsh language is spoken by several thousand people and many Welsh traditions such as the festivals of literature, music and performance (‘eisteddfodau’) are still held annually in Trelew, Gaiman and Trefelin. The current revival of Welsh language and culture in Chubut Province is supported by organisations and institutions in Wales and stimulated by the lively contacts between the Colony and the mother country and official funding from Wales.
Rocznik Komparatystyczny
This paper explores the connections between Iain Sinclair’s 2015 travelogue Black Apples of Gower... more This paper explores the connections between Iain Sinclair’s 2015 travelogue Black Apples of Gower and the Merlin legend. Despite the fact that, on the surface, Sinclair does not refer to the early Welsh merlinistic tradition, on closer inspection both share what M. Wynn Thomas has described as “hidden attachments” – cross cultural connections and experiences between the two literatures of modern Wales. The archaic bedrock of the Merlin legend and the alchemical imagery in Sinclair’s book are both rooted in the mythico-ritualistic complex of symbolic regeneration based on the repetition of the act of original creation. Both Merlin and the alchemical process involve an ontological transformation which is mirrored in Black Apples of Gower by the transcendence of textual and medial boundaries: a complex network of intertextual allusions and word-image relationships (ekphrases, reproductions and illustrations). By exploring these relationships, along with the merlinistic and alchemical i...
Rocznik Komparatystyczny https://wnus.usz.edu.pl/rk/pl/issue/1293/article/20371/, 2022
This paper explores the connections between Iain Sinclair’s 2015 travelogue Black Apples of Gower... more This paper explores the connections between Iain Sinclair’s 2015 travelogue Black Apples of Gower and the Merlin legend. Despite the fact that, on the surface, Sinclair does not refer to the early Welsh merlinistic tradition, on closer inspection both share what M. Wynn Thomas has described as “hidden attachments” – cross cultural connections and experiences between the two literatures of modern Wales. The archaic bedrock of the Merlin legend and the alchemical imagery in Sinclair’s book are both rooted in the mythico-ritualistic complex of symbolic regeneration based on the repetition of the act of original creation. Both Merlin and the alchemical process involve an ontological transformation which is mirrored in Black Apples of Gower by the transcendence of textual and medial boundaries: a complex network of intertextual allusions and word-image relationships (ekphrases, reproductions and illustrations). By exploring these relationships, along with the merlinistic and alchemical imagery present in the text, I argue that the work employs the strategy of what I call textual nigredo – a process of intertextual and intermedial transformation. The affinities identified between the Merlin legend and Sinclair’s travelogue provide an argument for seeing Iain Sinclair as a Welsh writer and shed new light on the links between the Welsh-language literary tradition and English-language Welsh writing which may be pursued further in the future.
https://wnus.usz.edu.pl/rk/pl/issue/1293/article/20371/
Orbis Litterarum
Christopher Meredith's novel Shifts (1988) is firmly established in the canon of English-... more Christopher Meredith's novel Shifts (1988) is firmly established in the canon of English-language Welsh literature as one of the most accomplished representatives of (post-) industrial fiction, a genre this small country has produced in quality and amount ‘out of all proportion to its size or population’ (Knight, 2004). The aim of this paper is to explore the role of the medieval Mappa Mundi which two characters see in Hereford Cathedral in the context of the novel's circular structure and a rich network of other visual insets. Looking at the map from a variety of perspectives, including Murray Krieger's concept of ekphrasis as the superimposition of spatial relationships on a text by a visual work of art, I propose to read the fictional continuum of the novel as a mirror image of the medieval orbis terrarum on several planes: compositional, visual-optical and symbolic. This reading is embedded within the broader context of the characteristics of the Welsh industrial novel discussed by Raymond Williams in his essay ‘The Welsh industrial novel’ (1979).
Orbis Litterarum, 2023
Christopher Meredith's novel Shifts (1988) is firmly established in the canon of English-language... more Christopher Meredith's novel Shifts (1988) is firmly established in the canon of English-language Welsh literature as one of the most accomplished representatives of (post-) industrial fiction, a genre this small country has produced in quality and amount ‘out of all proportion to its size or population’ (Knight, 2004). The aim of this paper is to explore
the role of the medieval Mappa Mundi which two characters see in Hereford Cathedral in the context of the novel's circular structure and a rich network of other visual insets. Looking at the map from a variety of perspectives, including Murray Krieger's concept of ekphrasis as the superimposition of spatial relationships on a text by a visual work of art, I propose to read the fictional continuum of the novel as a mirror image of the medieval orbis terrarum on several planes: compositional, visual-optical and symbolic. This reading is embedded within the broader context of the characteristics of the Welsh industrial novel discussed by Raymond Williams in his essay ‘The Welsh industrial novel’ (1979).
Kobieta w literaturze, sztuce i muzyce – ujęcie interdyscyplinarne, t. 3. Red. Ewelina Chodźko i Paulina Pomajda, Lublin Wydawnictwo Naukowe Tygiel, Lublin, 2022. 7-27. https://bc.wydawnictwo-tygiel.pl/publikacja/39CE0711-0BEF-C661-8ABF-77AC21D2014F, 2022
Celem niniejszego opracowania jest analiza przedstawienia Blodeuwedd („Kobiety z Kwiatów”) w dwóc... more Celem niniejszego opracowania jest analiza przedstawienia Blodeuwedd („Kobiety z Kwiatów”) w dwóch powieściach walijskich: „Y Dylluan Wen” („Płomykówce”) Angharad Jones i „The Meat Tree” („Mięsnym Drzewie”) Gwyneth Lewis w kontekście tzw. intermedialności ukrytej. Blodeuwedd jest postacią wystę-pującą w ostatniej historii z cyklu „Cztery Gałęzie Mabinogi” (datowanego na okres XI-XII wieku), który stanowi część większego zbioru pt. „Mabinogion”, obejmującego też późniejsze legendy i adaptacje literatury francuskiej. „Czwarta Gałąź Mabinogi”, „Math syn Mathonwy”, charakteryzuje się dużym nasyceniem wątków magicznych i mitologicznych, czego sztandarowym przykładem jest stworzenie przez czarodzieja Gwydiona kobiety z kwiatów dla Llew Llaw Gyffesa. „Cztery Gałęzie”, a szczególnie postać Blodeuwedd, stanowią częste źródło inspiracji dla współczesnej kultury walijskiej. Postać Blodeuwedd w „Płomykówce” i „Mięsnym drzewie” jest poddana analizie z perspektywy użycia tzw. ukrytych aspektów intermedialnych, przybierających głównie formę ekfrazy i ikonicznej projekcji (termin Hansa Lunda). Taki aparat badawczy, uwzględniający polisemiotyczność zawartych w obu powieściach elementów (obrazy, teatr, wirtualna rze-czywistość, naśladowanie ruchu kamery, obramowanie postaci, czy wreszcie forma scenariusza teatralnego/ filmowego), pozwala na naświetlenie paraleli między Blodeuwedd – postacią o radykalnie hybrydycznym charakterze, łączącym aspekt roślinny, ludzki i zwierzęcy – a technikami włączania do tekstu literackiego elementów innych systemów semiotycznych. Te ostatnie, mimo iż podlegają mediacji przez język, wpływają na niejednorodność przekazu i są czynnikiem ułatwiającym lub nawet generującym zjawisko niestabilności lub oscylacji między poziomami ontologicznymi, co koresponduje z mechanizmami wpisanymi niejako w naturę „Kobiety z Kwiatów”. Analiza Blodeuwedd pod tym kątem pokazuje, że jest ona poddawana mechanizmowi wzmocnionej fikcjonalizacji oraz że jej paradoksalność i hybrydowość są komunikowane i uwydatniane za pomocą zabiegów reprezentujących intermedialność „ukrytą”.
https://bc.wydawnictwo-tygiel.pl/publikacja/39CE0711-0BEF-C661-8ABF-77AC21D2014F
Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2020
Tekstualne metamorfozy: intermedialność w Peredurze Synu Efrawga i Bird, Blood, Snow Cynana Jones... more Tekstualne metamorfozy: intermedialność w Peredurze Synu Efrawga i Bird, Blood, Snow Cynana Jonesa Niniejszy artukuł jest analizą powieści Cynana Jonesa Bird, Blood, Snow w kontekście pisanego prozą średniowiecznego walijskiego romansu dworskiego Peredur syn Efrawga, który wchodzi w skład zbioru opowieści znanego jako Mabinogion. Proweniencja średniowiecznej opowieści jest przedmiotem ożywionej debaty: różniące się od siebie wersje zachowały się w czterech rękopisach, wykazują związki z literaturą francuską, w szczególności z poematem Chrétiena de Troyes Perceval, a jednocześnie pozostają mocno osadzone w walijskiej tradycji ustnej. Analizie poddane są elementy wizualne obecne zarówno w tekście średniowiecznym, jak i w powieści Jonesa, co pozwala na potwierdzenie sformułowanej we wstępie tezy, iż warstwa kompozycyjna powieści, oparta w dużej mierze na oscylacji pomiędzy słowem a obrazem, odzwierciedla nie tylko bogatą sieć powiązań intertekstualnych, w jakie uwikłany jest Peredur, a...
Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2018
Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature, 2020
Compared with Anglophone literatures, Welsh-language fiction has to date received little attentio... more Compared with Anglophone literatures, Welsh-language fiction has to date received little attention in the context of the rapidly developing intermedial and interart studies. The purpose of the article is to provide a preliminary mapping of pictorial insets in Welsh-language fiction in the period 1992-2016. The novels considered in the article include some of the milestones in the development of Welsh fiction and provide a representative sample of the literary production from the period in question. The article identifies and lists the sources of ekphrastic insets scattered throughout the texts, grouping them into descriptive ekphrases, references, pictorial models and spatio-contextual ekphrases.
The article offers an intermedial reading of Lloyd Jones’s novel See How They Run, part of the se... more The article offers an intermedial reading of Lloyd Jones’s novel See How They Run, part of the series that comprises novels retelling eleven tales from the earliest extant British collection of prose fiction known as the Mabinogion. In the article I explore verbally transmitted explicit and implicit references to the visual medium which, as I demonstrate, are used to repackage some of the most archaic aspects of the original text. By employing a theoretical framework developed by Boris Uspensky in his A Poetics of Composition. The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form, I argue that the novel’s pictorial dimension mirrors perspectival systems of Renaissance and pre-Renaissance painting. I conclude that the transfer from the former to the latter, together with other visual elements, constitutes a significant component in Jones’s strategy to transcribe the mythological and religious substratum of the medieval original.
The article provides a brief outline of cultural and linguistic aspects of the Welsh settlement i... more The article provides a brief outline of cultural and linguistic aspects of the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, Argentina. Established in 1865, for several decades the Colony (Y Wladfa) remained an economically thriving, Welsh-speaking community, which other Welsh emigration projects had failed to achieve. At the turn of the 20 th century the growing pressure from the Argentinian government to integrate the Colony into the state’s administrative system and to introduce education in Spanish resulted in a rapid hispanisation of the Welsh population. Nevertheless, Y Wladfa has managed to preserve its distinct national and cultural identity. The Welsh language is spoken by several thousand people and many Welsh traditions such as the festivals of literature, music and performance (‘eisteddfodau’) are still held annually in Trelew, Gaiman and Trefelin. The current revival of Welsh language and culture in Chubut Province is supported by organisations and institutions in Wales and stimulated...
This volume provides accounts of well-established themes of general Celtic inquiry from new theor... more This volume provides accounts of well-established themes of general Celtic inquiry from new theoretical perspectives, in addition to addressing new areas of research that have remained largely unexplored. The collection includes contributions by both established and young scholars on diverse aspects of culture, literature and linguistics, reflecting the multidisciplinary character of current trends in Celtology. The linguistic section of the book includes chapters dealing with Welsh phonology and possible areas of influence of the Brittonic language on English, as well as with the issues of translating culture-specific aspects of medieval Welsh texts and the problems of standardising Irish orthography and font. The second part of the volume is devoted to literature and considers neglected, and heretofore unexplored, aspects of Welsh-language poetry, fiction and children’s literature, the work of John Cowper Powys, and Scottish film in the theoretical context of post-humanism. Approa...
This volume provides accounts of well-established themes of general Celtic inquiry from new theor... more This volume provides accounts of well-established themes of general Celtic inquiry from new theoretical perspectives, in addition to addressing new areas of research that have remained largely unexplored. The collection includes contributions by both established and young scholars on diverse aspects of culture, literature and linguistics, reflecting the multidisciplinary character of current trends in Celtology. The linguistic section of the book includes chapters dealing with Welsh phonology and possible areas of influence of the Brittonic language on English, as well as with the issues of translating culture-specific aspects of medieval Welsh texts and the problems of standardising Irish orthography and font. The second part of the volume is devoted to literature and considers neglected, and heretofore unexplored, aspects of Welsh-language poetry, fiction and children’s literature, the work of John Cowper Powys, and Scottish film in the theoretical context of post-humanism. Approa...
Roczniki Humanistyczne/Annals of Arts Vol 68 No 11, pp 21-36, 2020
The paper examines Cynan Jones’s novel Bird, Blood, Snow in the context of the medieval Welsh pro... more The paper examines Cynan Jones’s novel Bird, Blood, Snow in the context of the medieval Welsh prose romance “Peredur Son of Efrog”, part of the collection of medieval Welsh tales called the Mabinogion. The provenance of the original tale has been widely debated as it survives in four versions and has parallels both with French literature (most notably Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval) and native Welsh storytelling tradition. This article focuses on the visual insets present in the medieval tale and Jones’s text, and demonstrates that the complex network of intertextual relationships between the multiple versions of “Peredur”, along with the trends in the academic debate centred around it, is reflected in Jones’s novel by means of the compositional devices characterised by the oscillation between the verbal and the visual.
Full text: https://ojs.tnkul.pl/index.php/rh/article/view/14529
Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature: Formal Intersections between Narrative Fiction and Other Media, 2020
Compared with Anglophone literatures, Welsh-language fiction has to date received little attentio... more Compared with Anglophone literatures, Welsh-language fiction has to date received little attention in the context of the rapidly developing intermedial and interart studies. The purpose of this article is to provide a preliminary mapping of pictorial insets in Welsh-language fiction in the period 1992-2016. The novels considered in this article include some of the milestones in the development of Welsh fiction and provide a representative sample of the literary production from the period in question. This article identifies and lists the sources of ekphrastic insets scattered throughout the texts, grouping them into descriptive ekphrases, references, pictorial models and spatio-contextual ekphrases.
Full text: https://journals.umcs.pl/lsmll/issue/view/604/showToc
Roczniki Humanistyczne (Annals of Arts), 2018
The article examines the visual aspect of the novel The Life of Rebecca Jones by the contemporary... more The article examines the visual aspect of the novel The Life of Rebecca Jones by the contemporary Welsh writer Angharad Price. The book is an imaginary autobiography of the eponymous Rebecca Jones, Price’s distant relative, who died of diphtheria in 1916, aged 11. Apart from Rebecca’s family photographs reproduced in the text, ekphrastic descriptions of a photograph, a painting (by a blind artist) and the video recording of a television programme, the novel problematises the dichotomy between seeing and blindness. The aim of this essay is to demonstrate how these elements in Price’s novel contribute to the production of meaning by generating tension between two different modes of discourse: verbal and visual. Price’s novel is read as an ‘imagetext’ which, by adopting photographic/visual features, creates an illusion of ‘photographic’ verisimilitude (described as a trompe l’oeil effect). This mechanism is interpreted as the manifestation of the narrator’s struggle to assert her authority as a perceiving subject and the text itself as a site where the memory of place and family history can be preserved.
PDF: http://czasopisma.tnkul.pl/index.php/rh/article/view/10486/10465
Redefining the Fringes in Celtic Studies: Essays in Literature and Culture, 2019
The selection of articles collected in this volume is based on an assumption that the fringes of ... more The selection of articles collected in this volume is based on an assumption that the fringes of Celtic Studies still represent a challenge and that established areas are worth revisiting. Peripheries and borderlands are always an exciting object of study: with their blank spots and unexplored territories they capture the attention of researchers. The chapters in this collection, by both established and young scholars, deal with a wide range of phenomena connected with the language, literature and history of the broadly speaking Celtic world, ranging widely over time, space and subject matter. One thing that the analyses share, however, is their focus on uncharted or little explored waters, which confirms that Celtic Studies, especially in their literary and cultural aspect, are an exciting and expanding discipline. The contributors’ expeditions to remote or undiscovered areas include the design of autobiographies in the early years of the Irish republic, an overview of the controversy over a sex scene in a Welsh-language novel by John Rowlands, the poetry of the somewhat neglected Irish poet Francis
Ledwidge, Irish-language science-fiction and comics, a cognitive ethological perspective on Niall Griffiths’s novel Sheepshagger, and possible Polish origins of Irish-language modernist fiction. Other chapters offer a periodisation of medieval Welsh law, insightful analyses of Pádraig Ó Cíobháin’s landmark novel The Brightness Out There and the work of Seán Ó Ríordáin – a poet little known outside the Irish-language world – as well as contemporary Irish-language poetry in
the context of language loss. (from the Introduction)