Browsing by Author "Czarnowus, Anna"
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Item “A foreign language in a familiar country”, or Language, Genealogy, and the City in Marianne Ackerman’s Jump(Polskie Towarzystwo Badań Kanadyjskich, 2013) Czarnowus, AnnaLe roman de Marianne Ackerman intitulé Jump appartient sans doute à ce que Deleuze et Guattari appelaient « une littérature mineure », « celle qu’une minorité fait dans une langue majeure » et dans « la langue [qui] est affectée d’un fort coefficient de déterritorialisation » (1977: 16). Le roman dépeint les conflits et les interdépendances entre les Francophones au Québec et les Anglo-Québécois. Les relations entre deux groupes sont présentées par ce qui est arrivé à Myra Grant, journaliste d’âge mûr. Bien que linguistiquement « anglo », elle traite son irlandicité et son habitation à Montréal comme deux centres de son identité. Comme c’est dans bien d’autres cas de littératures mineures, la généalogie importe sur le fait de parler l’anglais. Pour Myra l’anglais, ainsi que la ville de Montréal, constituent plus une patrie que tout le Canada, perçu ici comme une notion abstraite, peu pertinente pour l’expérience du Québec. Cette province se présente comme un lieu d’une grande qualité artistique, « une nation de muses » (Jump 82) où « l’art compte » (Jump 82). En tant que concepts alternatifs de nation, outre la question de la langue maternelle, s’offre une solution aux dilemmes identitaires de la fin du vingtième siècle, qui se poursuit au vingt-et-unième siècle.Item Chaucer’s Clergeon, or towards holiness in "The Prioress’s Tale"(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2007) Czarnowus, AnnaA narrative aestheticized in Pre-Raphaelite visual arts and a politically charged issue in contemporary criticism, Chaucer’s Prioress’s tale focuses on the figure of an “enigmatic child”, whose body is severed by the Jews. The boy’s uncanniness and holiness are constructed in stages, while the ethnic identity of his persecutors may not be as important as some critics once thought, since the Jews function as yet another group of “infidels” in Chaucer. The clergeon symbolizes otherness through his deformity, which makes him similar to the Jews as embodiments of difference. However, only the contrast between the child and the Jews is emphasized. Middle English dramatizations of the Slaughter of the Innocents could be read as yet another source influencing Chaucer. A parallelism between the clergeon’s suffering and the persecution of Christ typified by the slaughter can be traced in the two tales. At the end of The Prioress’s tale the boy achieves holiness, while violence is directed against ethnic others. The highly aesthetic Victorian representation merely continues to show this narrative of violence as primarily a work about Marian devotion.Item John Lydgate’s "Guy of Warwick" and fifteenth-century emotions(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2021) Czarnowus, AnnaThe article argues that John Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick is an innovative version of the Guy of Warwick legend as it emphasizes the feelings of its characters. Furthermore, it also openly intends to evoke emotions in its audience. The poem requires to be read in light of the newly emerged field of the history of medieval emotions since the social context of Lydgate’s Guy is more visible from this perspective. The poem offers an admixture of religious and secular feelings. As a result, the final scenes of bidding farewell to Guy by Felice and by the community have to be seen as related both to Guy as a hero and as a saint.Item “My cours, that hath so wyde for to turne,/ Hath moore power than woot any man”: The children of Saturn in Chaucer’s "Monk’s Tale"(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2004) Czarnowus, AnnaItem “Stille as ston”: Oriental deformity in "The King of Tars"(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2008) Czarnowus, AnnaThe article discusses the monstrous birth in the context of the father’s conversion in the thirteenth- century King of Tars. Miscegenation has to be diagnosed as the source of the child’s shapelessness, while the topic of false accusations of monstrosity in what Margaret Schlauch termed the “accused queens” narratives, i.e. the Constance-Group, cannot be disregarded, either. In the Middle English romance bestial, and specifically mostly canine metaphors dominate in the portrayal of the sultan; yet, they turn out to be inadequate once he is baptized and undergoes magic beautification, similarly to his offspring, now endowed with a form. The work’s didactic design consists in preaching the necessity of conversion to Christianity, while the threat posed by Islam materializes in the monstrous offspring of oriental origin.Item The holy and the unholy in Chaucer’s "Squire’s Tale"(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2012) Czarnowus, AnnaAs Richard Kieckhefer once noticed, “the holy” and “the unholy” were interlocking phenomena in the medieval culture. Such a perspective on religion and magic may, indeed, be seen in possible sources of Chaucer’s Squire’s tale, John Carpini’s Historia Mongalorum and in Historia Tartarorum, attributed either to Benedict the Pole, a member of the 1245 papal mission to Mongols, or to the scribe, “C. de Bridia”. Perhaps Carpini and Benedict projected their Christian perception of magic as connected with religion onto the Tartar world they experienced. The Mongol beliefs they related may have been the very convictions mentioned by Chaucer in the discussion of Cambuskyan’s “secte”. The tale then proceeds to a discussion of magic, but the magic there is no longer “unholy”, as opposed to “the holy”, but technological, manmade, and unnatural. The texts portray two stages in a medieval approach to magic, which were followed by the Renaissance condemnation of magic as heretical. In Squire’s tale magic leads to the experience of wonder, which unites the community.