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Books by Agnieszka Łowczanin
This volume not only examines Gothic peregrinations from a geographical perspective (Albanian, C... more This volume not only examines Gothic peregrinations from a geographical perspective (Albanian, Czech, Polish Gothic) but also investigates how the genre has been at odds with strict demarcation of generic boundaries. Analyzing texts which come from outside the Gothic canon, yet prove to be deeply indebted to it, like bereavement memoirs, stories produced by and about factory girls of Massachusetts, and the Mattel Monster High franchise, this volume illuminates the previously unexplored fields in Gothic studies. The chapters in this volume reveal the truly transnational expansion of the Gothic and the importance of exchange – exchange now seen not only as crucial to the genre’s gestation, or vital to the processes of globalization, but also to legitimizing Gothic studies in the global world.
This book fills the gap in research of the early stages of literary Gothicism and examines its tr... more This book fills the gap in research of the early stages of literary Gothicism and examines its transfer from England, via French, to Poland-Lithuania in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The focus is on the oeuvre of Anna Mostowska, the first professional female writer of the Gothic in the region, and the extent to which it was shaped both by local literary tradition and political circumstances, and by Gothic fiction of Ann Radcliffe. This volume aims to redraw the maps of early Gothic by providing new insights into our understanding of the routes and meaning of its cross-cultural dissemination.
Papers by Agnieszka Łowczanin
The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia, 2021
This chapter analyses two short stories from Olga Tokarczuk’s latest collection, Opowiadania biza... more This chapter analyses two short stories from Olga Tokarczuk’s latest collection, Opowiadania bizarne (Stories of the Bizarre) published in 2018. Their subtle dystopian qualities are understood in the light of Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” and Staying with the Trouble. Both Haraway and Tokarczuk grapple with our place in the ecosystems we share with other species, attempting to redefine our ontological position in relation to the advancing technology and to adopt the right diction to express our subjectivity towards the environment. I link Haraway’s Chthulucene, the epoch in which the human and non-human could be inextricably linked in “tentacular” practices, with Tokarczuk’s idea of tenderness related to her concept of the tender narrator.
Women's Writing, 2021
This article examines the ghost stories by Anna Mostowska (c.1762–c.1811) – probably the first pr... more This article examines the ghost stories by Anna Mostowska (c.1762–c.1811) – probably the first professional female writer in Polish – from the point of view of their relation to Female and post/colonial Gothic traditions to test how these categories lend themselves to describing the Gothic produced outside of Britain and the British Empire. Firstly, writing in the politically challenging post-partition period, Mostowska turned to the past to revive the times of Polish-Lithuanian political prominence and idealised the power relations in this once vast commonwealth of nations. Secondly, she used the Gothic to express the traumas of pre-Christian populations during the Northern Crusades and Gothicised the memories of the brutalities which lingered in the cultural memory of their ancestors for centuries. Thirdly, social and political circumstances made her promote in her writing a model of self-reliant and strong femininity, while the short form of a ghost story gave her entry to a literary scene which at her time was dominated by men.
Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self: Literature and Culture Studies, 2017
Many literary historians nowadays stress the importance of cultural exchanges between England and... more Many literary historians nowadays stress the importance of cultural exchanges between England and the Continent in the process of the creation of Gothic fiction in the last decades of the eighteenth century (Hale, 2002; Cornwell, 2012; Wright, 2013). Despite political tensions between England and France at that time, “the import of terror,” as Wright has put it, was a two-way, fast-flowing literary traffic, which impacted on the shape of what is nowadays known as literary Gothic. French romances helped shape Gothic fiction, which was then translated into French and, with French being the lingua franca of the erudite elites, its radiation stretched from the Atlantic to the eastern reaches of the Continent. In Poland, during the reign of the last King, Stanisław August, literary activity, translation included, was encouraged and supported by the monarch as part of the reformative educational scheme to improve the nation. This paper looks more closely at these multicultural and multilingual exchanges, with the aim of reading early Gothic fiction’s predilection for the foreign as a consequence of the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Enlightenment, which fostered interest in foreign literatures, made possible by mushrooming translations.
Diversity and Homogeneity, eds. Joanna Kruczkowska and Paulina Mirowska (University of Łódź), 2016
Gothic Matters. ISSUE EDITOR: Agnieszka Sołtysik-Monnet (University of Lausanne), 2016
https://digijournals.uni.lodz.pl/textmatters/vol1/iss6/2/
The Enchantress of Words, Sounds and Images, eds. Jakub Lipski, Jacek Mydla, 2015
Re-visioning Ricoeur and Kristeva, ISSUE EDITOR Pamela Sue Anderson (University of Oxford, UK), 2014
http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.hdl\_11089\_8522
Studies in English Drama and Poetry. vol. 3. Reading Subversion and Transgression. Volume editors: Joanna Kazik and Paulina Mirowska , 2013
Against and Beyond: Subversion and Transgression in Mass Media, Popular Culture and Performance, 2012
The Language of Sense, Common-Sense and Nonsense, 2012
Women and Authority. Volume 1, 2011
https://digijournals.uni.lodz.pl/textmatters/vol1/iss1/4/
This volume not only examines Gothic peregrinations from a geographical perspective (Albanian, C... more This volume not only examines Gothic peregrinations from a geographical perspective (Albanian, Czech, Polish Gothic) but also investigates how the genre has been at odds with strict demarcation of generic boundaries. Analyzing texts which come from outside the Gothic canon, yet prove to be deeply indebted to it, like bereavement memoirs, stories produced by and about factory girls of Massachusetts, and the Mattel Monster High franchise, this volume illuminates the previously unexplored fields in Gothic studies. The chapters in this volume reveal the truly transnational expansion of the Gothic and the importance of exchange – exchange now seen not only as crucial to the genre’s gestation, or vital to the processes of globalization, but also to legitimizing Gothic studies in the global world.
This book fills the gap in research of the early stages of literary Gothicism and examines its tr... more This book fills the gap in research of the early stages of literary Gothicism and examines its transfer from England, via French, to Poland-Lithuania in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The focus is on the oeuvre of Anna Mostowska, the first professional female writer of the Gothic in the region, and the extent to which it was shaped both by local literary tradition and political circumstances, and by Gothic fiction of Ann Radcliffe. This volume aims to redraw the maps of early Gothic by providing new insights into our understanding of the routes and meaning of its cross-cultural dissemination.
The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia, 2021
This chapter analyses two short stories from Olga Tokarczuk’s latest collection, Opowiadania biza... more This chapter analyses two short stories from Olga Tokarczuk’s latest collection, Opowiadania bizarne (Stories of the Bizarre) published in 2018. Their subtle dystopian qualities are understood in the light of Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” and Staying with the Trouble. Both Haraway and Tokarczuk grapple with our place in the ecosystems we share with other species, attempting to redefine our ontological position in relation to the advancing technology and to adopt the right diction to express our subjectivity towards the environment. I link Haraway’s Chthulucene, the epoch in which the human and non-human could be inextricably linked in “tentacular” practices, with Tokarczuk’s idea of tenderness related to her concept of the tender narrator.
Women's Writing, 2021
This article examines the ghost stories by Anna Mostowska (c.1762–c.1811) – probably the first pr... more This article examines the ghost stories by Anna Mostowska (c.1762–c.1811) – probably the first professional female writer in Polish – from the point of view of their relation to Female and post/colonial Gothic traditions to test how these categories lend themselves to describing the Gothic produced outside of Britain and the British Empire. Firstly, writing in the politically challenging post-partition period, Mostowska turned to the past to revive the times of Polish-Lithuanian political prominence and idealised the power relations in this once vast commonwealth of nations. Secondly, she used the Gothic to express the traumas of pre-Christian populations during the Northern Crusades and Gothicised the memories of the brutalities which lingered in the cultural memory of their ancestors for centuries. Thirdly, social and political circumstances made her promote in her writing a model of self-reliant and strong femininity, while the short form of a ghost story gave her entry to a literary scene which at her time was dominated by men.
Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self: Literature and Culture Studies, 2017
Many literary historians nowadays stress the importance of cultural exchanges between England and... more Many literary historians nowadays stress the importance of cultural exchanges between England and the Continent in the process of the creation of Gothic fiction in the last decades of the eighteenth century (Hale, 2002; Cornwell, 2012; Wright, 2013). Despite political tensions between England and France at that time, “the import of terror,” as Wright has put it, was a two-way, fast-flowing literary traffic, which impacted on the shape of what is nowadays known as literary Gothic. French romances helped shape Gothic fiction, which was then translated into French and, with French being the lingua franca of the erudite elites, its radiation stretched from the Atlantic to the eastern reaches of the Continent. In Poland, during the reign of the last King, Stanisław August, literary activity, translation included, was encouraged and supported by the monarch as part of the reformative educational scheme to improve the nation. This paper looks more closely at these multicultural and multilingual exchanges, with the aim of reading early Gothic fiction’s predilection for the foreign as a consequence of the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Enlightenment, which fostered interest in foreign literatures, made possible by mushrooming translations.
Diversity and Homogeneity, eds. Joanna Kruczkowska and Paulina Mirowska (University of Łódź), 2016
Gothic Matters. ISSUE EDITOR: Agnieszka Sołtysik-Monnet (University of Lausanne), 2016
https://digijournals.uni.lodz.pl/textmatters/vol1/iss6/2/
The Enchantress of Words, Sounds and Images, eds. Jakub Lipski, Jacek Mydla, 2015
Re-visioning Ricoeur and Kristeva, ISSUE EDITOR Pamela Sue Anderson (University of Oxford, UK), 2014
http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.hdl\_11089\_8522
Studies in English Drama and Poetry. vol. 3. Reading Subversion and Transgression. Volume editors: Joanna Kazik and Paulina Mirowska , 2013
Against and Beyond: Subversion and Transgression in Mass Media, Popular Culture and Performance, 2012
The Language of Sense, Common-Sense and Nonsense, 2012
Women and Authority. Volume 1, 2011