Justyna Galant – författare

The book outlines the semiotic universe of Jacobean drama, examining both canonical tragedies by Thomas Middleton, John Webster and less known dramas such as Anonymous Lust’s Dominion, Markham and Sampson’s Herod and Antipater or Thierry and Theodoret by Beaumont and Fletcher.

Collected under the theme of Visions and Revisions, the papers included in this volume examine different aspects of literature and culture of the Anglophone world. The first part gathers articles dealing with poetry of such epochs as the seventeenth century, the Victorian era and the modern times. Part two focuses on prose works representing such conventions and modes as the romance, the Gothic novel, the condition of England novel, Victorian and neo-Victorian fiction, the science fiction novel and gay fiction. Part three concerns various aspects of British and American culture, including the new media, drama and journalism, and advertising. In its diversity the volume reflects the dynamics of change in literature and culture, enabling the readers to investigate the multifaceted canon.

The volume demonstrates the scope of utopian thinking and the enduring significance of past utopian fictions and historical events as potentially contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the contemporary reality. The essays examine the concept of utopia in a variety of contexts, such as philosophy, translation, music, social and political issues, like workers’ movements and ideology, exploring global utopian fiction from medieval Persian poetry, through late 19th- and early 20th-century narratives, to contemporary Russian and British dystopian novels. Taken together, the texts attest to the lasting allure of the hopeful utopian visions as well as to the pertinence of the dystopian warnings contained in the darker fictive scenarios and social speculations.

The volume shows the efforts of the Kashubians to preserve their linguistic and cultural heritage as well as the development of Kashubian literature. The contributors offer information about the Kashubian region and culture and present in-depth knowledge about the Kashubian language, contemporary Kashubian literature and the teaching of the Kashubian language and culture in three parts. Part I deals with the standardization of spelling in contemporary editions of older works, with the activities of the Council for the Preservation of Kashubian Language and Culture, with the translation of the Gdansk legends from Polish into Kashubian and with word formation in Kashubian, in particular with the formation of women's names. Part II deals with the representation of the Kashubian region in the Polish-language works of R. Ostrowska and the developments in contemporary Kashubian fantasy literature. Part III contains a proposal for the inclusion of Kashubian culture in Polish language teaching for foreigners and summarizes the results of 30 years of Kashubian language teaching in Polish schools.