Wojciech Kalaga - Böcker

The author treats, in historical and philosophical terms, the contributions of the traditionally marginalized genre of detective fiction to epistemology: how detective fiction not only traces the progression of knowledge and its discovery, as has been the traditional model for understanding this genre, but, in fact, constructs it through narrative. Particular focus is on Colin Dexter, creator of the Inspector Morse character and series. This work also links detective fiction to more legitimate, accepted realms of literature and criticism: semiotics (the reading of clues, with the body as a major one); epistolary fiction, long hailed as an early form of the modern novel; and heteroglossia, an important aspect of Marxist theory, here linked to the power struggles and imbalances produced by the pursuit and construction of knowledge.

The book addresses and interrogates discursive and cultural practices that are (or can be seen as) related to the well-established if elusive phenomenon known as Political Correctness or PC. The individual contributors look into PC-related cases within the humanities, literature, and the media. Accordingly, the publication is divided into three sections: Part I, «Revisiting the Issue: History, Theory, Language», examines PC in the contexts of three types of discourse: historical, theoretical and ideological, and linguistic. Part II, «Literary Case Studies», offers examinations of chosen literary works and authors. Part III, «The Media», looks at manifestations of PC-related issues in film and the popular magazine. Altogether the publication shows a variety of approaches to the PC phenomenon. The assumption of the editors is that while PC has indubitably penetrated contemporary culture, it continues to stir controversy. This scholarly debate is a response to what may be described as PC’s universal reign.

Embodying Pragmatism is the first monograph in English devoted to Richard Shusterman, an internationally renowned philosopher and one of today’s most innovative thinkers in pragmatism and aesthetics. The book presents a comprehensive account of Shusterman’s principal philosophical ideas concerning pragmatism, aesthetics, and literary theory (including such themes as interpretation, aesthetic experience, popular art, and human embodiment – culminating in his proposal of a new discipline called «somaesthetics»). As Shusterman’s philosophical writings involve a dialogue with both analytic and continental traditions, this monograph not only offers a critical vision of contemporary pragmatist thought but also situates Shusterman and pragmatism within the current state of theory.

This book debunks the myth of Polish Modernist literature as rooted in rash, immediate expression. The author compares programmatic statements on language by turn-of-the-century writers such as Wacław Berent, Bolesław Leśmian, Stanisław Brzozowski or Karol Irzykowski with notions deduced from their literary works. He demonstrates that these writers’ linguistic self-consciousness informs their implicitly self-reflexive texts and sheds light on their values and characteristic qualities. The author treats Modernist literature itself as a sort of «language» – a distinct entity that emerged through systematic differentiation within the general literary discourse. The book enhances the understanding of the transformations behind this important philosophical and artistic movement.

This book represents an attempt to capture different links between modern literature and music. The author examines strict intertextual correlations, the phenomena of musicality and musicality of literary works, the musical structure in literature, so-called musical literary texts. He focuses on the novel Le Cœur absolu by Philippe Sollers, the poem Todesfuge by Paul Celan, the Preludio e Fughe by Umberto Saba and the drama Judasz z Kariothu [Judas Iscariot] by Karol Hubert Rostworowski. The analysis also includes Stanisław Barańczak’s cycle of poems Podróż zimowa: Wiersze do muzyki Franza Schuberta [Winter Journey: Poems to the Music of Franz Schubert] and a fragment of Scène from Hérodiade by Stéphane Mallarmé in Paul Hindemith’s composition «Hérodiade» de Stéphane Mallarmé.

This book consists of nine chapters devoted to representations of melancholia in 19th-century art and literature. A noteworthy feature of the book is its use of concepts from later works by Sigmund Freud, Jean Clair, Jean Starobinski, Julia Kristeva and others. Those concepts elucidate further contexts of the notion of melancholia, which are presented not in isolation but juxtaposed with the philosophical background of the concept (starting from Hippocrates and Aristotle). Thus, the book not only provides a survey of images and modes of behaviour of 19th-century individuals, but also discusses the meanings of melancholia as they appeared in European culture over time.