Browsing Text Matters: a journal of literature, theory and culture by Title
Now showing items 11-30 of 195
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“Being Human”: Edward Bond’s Theories of Drama
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2017-10-25)The terms of Bond’s theory are Manichean (innocent-corrupt, autonomous-ideologized etc.). His arguments are based in the assumption that there is a fundamental “humanity” that exists prior to socialization. In fact, the ... -
Beyond the Garden: On the Erotic in the Vision of the Middle English Pearl
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2013-11-01)The Middle English Pearl is known for its mixture of genres, moods and various discourses. The textual journey the readers of the poem embark on is a long and demanding one, leading from elegiac lamentations and the erotic ... -
Beyond the Margins: Identity Fragmentation in Visual Representation in Michel Tournier’s La Goutte d’or
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2012-12-04)In Tournier’s novel, the goutte d’or also corresponds to a symbolic object: a Berber jewel. It is the jewel that Idriss brings with him, but which he also subsequently loses upon his arrival in Marseille. From the very ... -
Bianca Looks from above the Book: Readings on the Margin of Bruno Schulz’s Ex-Libris for Stanisław Weingarten
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2012-12-04)The essay traces correspondences between the elements of the 1919 Pierrot ex-libris and the books from Weingarten’s collection which, with time, included and gave privileged position to the works of Bruno Schulz. Among the ... -
Blindness in the Beckettland of Malfunctioning
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2018-10-29)Many of Beckett characters suffer from different kinds of disabilities and impairments, this being one of the ways of punishing them for “the eternal sin of having been born.” The article discusses blindness in Waiting for ... -
Body, Sensuousness, Eros and the New Aesthetic Order from Schiller to Rushdie
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2013-11-01)In the present article, I look into the culture-building power of Eros from Schiller’s ideas of “the aesthetic state of mind” in Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, through the Pre-Raphaelites’ eroticism to the ... -
Boundaries and Otherness in Science Fiction: We Cannot Escape the Human Condition
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2018-10-29)The article explores the construction of boundaries, alterity and otherness in modern science-fiction (SF) films. Boundaries, understood as real state borders, territoriality and sovereignty, as well as the construction ... -
Boy Melodrama: Genre Negotiations and Gender-Bending in the Supernatural Series
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2016-11-23)For years Supernatural (CW, 2005–) has gained the status of a cult series as well as one of the most passionate and devoted fandoms that has ever emerged. Even though the main concept of the series indicates that Supernatural ... -
“But what a place / to put a piano”: Nostalgic Objects in Robert Minhinnick’s "Diary of the Last Man"
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)In 2003, Martin Rees referred to the present as “mankind’s final century.” A few years later, Slavoj Žižek wrote that humankind is heading towards “apocalyptic zero-point,” when the ecological crisis will most probably ... -
Cabeza de Vaca, Estebanico, and the Language of Diversity in Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2018-10-29)Published in 1542, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s La relación is a chronicle of the Pánfilo de Narváez’s 1527 expedition to the New World in which Cabeza de Vaca was one of the four survivors. His account has received ... -
Caryl Churchill’s Artificial and Orificial Bodies: Between Subjective and Non-Subjective Nobody’s Emotion or Affect
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2017-10-25)This article analyzes the shift from emotion to affect in Caryl Churchill’s writing for the theatre, a process which becomes prominent in the later seventies and culminates in the production of A Mouthful of Birds, a project ... -
The Catch of the Hyperreal: Yossarian and the Ideological Vicissitudes of Hyperreality
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2018-10-29)Hyperreality is a key term in Jean Baudrillard’s cultural theory, designating a phase in the development of image where it “masks the absence of a profound reality.” The ambiance of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) closely ... -
Change and the Poetics of Plenitude in Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2015-11-17)The essay attends to a paradox found in some crucial poetic efforts by Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery. In some of their most important poetic works Stevens and Ashbery take on the task of positioning the poem toward the ... -
Changing Notes in the Voices beyond the Rooster Coop: A Neo-Capitalist Coup in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2012-12-04)Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger encapsulates the complexities of identity formation in a milieu effected by neo-capitalism. The novel, for many, is about a new identity made available to the hitherto marginalized in ... -
Charles Willson Peale’s The Exhumation of the Mastodon and the Great Chain of Being: The Interaction of Religion, Science, and Art in Early-Federal America
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2015-11-17)In this paper, I explore Peale’s monumental painting, a work that is many things, a self-portrait and history painting among others. Indeed, in this painting, Peale was responding to science, religion, and their shifting ... -
The Conflicting Traditions of Portraying the Jewish People in the Chester Mystery Cycle
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2018-10-29)The article seeks to analyze the portrayal of the Jews in two plays from the Chester mystery cycle: “Trial and Flagellation” and “The Passion.” The analysis acknowledges that the cycle is a mixture of, and a dialogue ... -
“Consider Yourself One of Us”: The Dickens Musical on Stage and Screen
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2017-10-25)Charles Dickens’s work has been taken and adapted for many different ends. Quite a lot of attention has been given to film and television versions of the novels, many of which are very distinguished. The stage and screen ... -
The Continuing Story of the Yiddish Language: The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2015-11-17)The focus of my article is a unique place, the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, which connects Yiddish culture with the American one, the experience of the Holocaust with the descendants of the survivors, and ... -
Convention, Repetition and Abjection: The Way of the Gothic
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2014-11-25)This paper employs Deleuze and Kristeva in an examination of certain Gothic conventions. It argues that repetition of these conventions- which endows Gothicism with formulaic coherence and consistence but might also lead ... -
Crossing the Borders of Language and Culture: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2012-12-04)The aim of the paper is to compare four versions of the text of Waitingfor Godot: the French original, Beckett’s own translation into English and two Polish renderings done by Julian Rogoziński and Antoni Libera. The article ...