MAPPING LITERARY SPACES: MEMORY, PLACE, LOCALITY.

KALAGA, Wojciech, Jacek Mydla (Edits).

ISBN 10: 8322618360 / ISBN 13: 9788322618363

Published by Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego,, Katowice,, 2009

First Paperback Edition. 8vo. pp 199. Large format paperback. Contributors include: Anna Pochmara, Liza Potvin, Dorota Guzowska, Ewelina Banka, Katarzyna Nowak, Anna Pochmara. ISBN: 9788322618363 Fine. Seller Inventory # C10845

Synopsis:

Recently space has moved to the forefront of interdisciplinarily conceived humanities. After centuries of explorations of outer space, the eye of the scholar has fixed back on the mundane parameters of human existence, on the space that lies before the naked eye, at our fingertips, in the too-too-solid vicinity. With such groundbreaking ideas to lead the way as Heidegger?s conception of being-in-the world, scholars have acquired a new boldness, which alone is needed to confront the nearest, the inner-worldly, rather than the Cartesian abstract extension. But then they soon realized that explorations of the close-at-hand has been conducted for ages, and have found their way into literary works. This realization has in turn led to another one, namely that the inner-worldly space is soaked with signification; that rather than being an unknown and hostile terrain, it lies there, soaked with identities - personal, national, ethnic - and with living memory; thus turning those literary works which have taken up the task of charting this territory, into living records of the lived time and space, of the lived chronotope. It is studies of such ?abstract and brief chronicles of the time? that we offer the Readers for their kind perusal.
This volume is a post-conference collection of essays, and as such brings a yield of an effort of English-language scholars in, chiefly, Poland?s literary departments determined mentally to wrestle with the many problems of human spaces as they have been wrought into the fine tissue of literary texts.
Due to the crisscrossing and overlapping thematic concerns and theoretical positions, we have decided not to use the usual division of a collection of essays into problem-sections. On the other hand, it has seemed advisable to give suggestions to the Readers as to what problems the individual texts have tackled. Hence, steering clear of both the Scylla of pigeonholing and the Charybdis of indeterminacy, we have decided to complement the author-and-title list of contents with a descriptive-topical one, hoping that the bearings given will enable the Readers to come up with an itinerary of their own for their voyage across the pages of this volume. Hoping, further, that this voyage will not turn into sea-sick crossing and begging pardon with the Authors for taking these liberties with their names, which was only done for the joint sakes of utility and perspicacity, we bid this volume go forth into the world and prosper.

Wojciech Kalaga, Jacek Mydla

List of contents:

Problem List of Contents 5

Preface (Wojciech Kalaga, Jacek Mydla) 9

Ewelina Bańka Sherman Alexie's Report from American Indian "UrbaNation" 11

Teresa Bruś Tourist in His Own Country. Louis MacNeice and Ireland 21

Sonia Front "Written on the body is a secret code" - Body as Palimpsest in Jeanette Winterson 32

Dorota Guzowska People on the Move: the Experience of Travelling in Seventeenth-Century England 44

Magdalena Hebda Rootedness and Appropriation of Space in Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer 62

Aleksandra Kania Trapped by the Ghost of a Typewriter: David Basckin's "The Rosined Areola of Mrs. Mtetwa by Bucks Campbell" 71

Bożena Kucała Mapping the Limits of Civilisation: J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians 82

Małgorzata Nitka "Rust and must and cobwebs." Of Accumulation and Circulation in Dickens's Bleak House 91

Katarzyna Nowak In the Name of the Father: Identity, Disruption, Difference. A Study of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake 106

Anna Pochmara Defying Time, Celebrating Space - The Construction of Male Bonds in the Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper 117

Anna Popiel "I saw new Worlds beneath the Water ly": The Gnostic Idea of Spiritual Displacement in the Poetry of Thomas Traherne 125

Liza Potvin Remembering It in Our Bones: Marie Clements' Burning Vision 136

Małgorzata Rutkowska "American history is parking lots." Place and Memory in Contemporary American Travel Writing 143

Magdalena Słonka Images of the Hermetic Room in the Novels of Paul Auster 153

Katarzyna Smyczyńska A City Girl at Heart: Constructions of Gendered Space in Chick-Lit Fictions 162

George Volceanov Mapping Shakespeare's Catholicism: Spatial Clues Indicating the Bard's "True" Faith 176

Ryszard W. Wolny In Search of Emptiness: A Voyage into the Heart of Terra Nullius in Patrick White's Voss 189

Bibliographic Details

Title: MAPPING LITERARY SPACES: MEMORY, PLACE, ...
Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego,, Katowice,
Publication Date: 2009
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Fine
Edition: 1st Edition