Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2016 vol. 51.4

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/handle/10593/19185

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    The absurd as a representation: Towards a hermeneutics of the inexplicable (the problematic case of Godot)
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2016) Rybińska, Krystyna
    This article attempts to re-signify the already extensively discussed conception of the absurd attributed to the aesthetic phenomenon presented by the so-called theatre of the absurd by critically reconsidering its paradigmatic work Waiting for Godot in relation to philosophical hermeneutics (Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur). The fact that Beckett’s artistic method invalidates the transparency of the mirror-like relation between reality and art is known, and yet the potential theoretical consequences of such a literary revolution do not seem to have been exhausted – particularly in respect to the category of the absurd. Hence, the presented inquiry aims to view the phenomenon quite against its common conceptualizations derived from existentialist philosophy in order to indicate a possible route of exploring it from a hermeneutic perspective and thereby challenging, to some extent, Simon Critchley’s (2004: 165) famous assertion that Beckett’s oeuvre seems “uniquely resistant to philosophical interpretation”.
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    Heteroglossia and fragmentariness in "The Absent Therapist" by Will Eaves
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2016) Drąg, Wojciech
    In “Discourse in the Novel” Mikhail Bakhtin argues that heteroglossia – a diversity of voices or languages – is one of the essential properties of the novel. The distinct languages spoken by individual characters (referred to as “character speech”), he maintains, inevitably affect “authorial speech”. In experimental fiction, where “authorial speech” is often eliminated altogether, one can speak of the most radical instance of novelistic polyphony. Whereas in The Sound and the Fury, The Waves and B.S. Johnson’s House Mother Normal in place of the narrator the reader is presented with several parallel voices which offer an alternative version of some of the same incidents, Will Eaves’s The Absent Therapist (2014) comprises 150 one- or two-page monologues, each of which is delivered by a different nameless speaker. The book, described by reviewers as an “experimental novella”, a “miniature novel”, and an “anti-novel”, is devoid of any frame that would account for the coexistence of so many stories. The only interpretive clues are provided in the paratext: the title and the dedication from 1 Corinthians (“There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification”). They appear to invite the reading of the entire text as an amalgam of disparate (but also, in large part, desperate) voices united by their addressee – the figure of the therapist who is not there. The aim of the article is to examine Eaves’s assemblage of voices and outline the tenuous relationship between the sections. The analysis of common themes and motifs that provide a degree of qualified unity to the book’s multiple monologues is situated in the context of fragmentary writing (as practised, among others, by Burroughs and Barthes) and its postmodernist aesthetics of the collage.
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    Repetition as trapped emotion in Tennessee Williams’s "The Glass Menagerie"
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2016) Kusovac, Olivera; Pralas, Jelena
    Repetition as a linguistic and stylistic device extensively used in Tennessee Williams’s plays has been noticed by many. At the same time, more psychologically-inclined scholars have frequently drawn parallels between Williams’s plays and his own experiences and emotional conflicts. In an attempt to combine the two perspectives, this article will explore the function of repetitions as indicators of trapped emotions in Williams’s celebrated and award-winning play The Glass Menagerie. Starting from the stylistic theoretical background, but at the same time taking into account the psychological insights into the link between Williams’s life and work through some basic concepts of Freud and Lacan, an attempt will be made to demonstrate that in this play linguistic repetition appears as an obsessive expression of the characters’ emotions as well as those of the dramatist himself, making him repeat and relive both his experiences and his emotions. The authors will first introduce the concept and functions of repetition as a linguistic and stylistic device and then explore its representative instances in individual characters and their meanings, ending with the parallels which can be drawn between the characters’ and the dramatist’s own experiences and emotions expressed or intensified through repetitions.
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    The representation of Francoist Spain by two British women travel writers
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2016) Mulligan, Maureen
    This article offers a discussion of two books by British women which describe travels in Spain during the post-war period, that is, during the dictatorship of General Franco. The aim is to analyse how Spanish culture and society are represented in these texts, and to what extent the authors engage with questions of the ethics of travelling to Spain in this period. Two different forms of travel – by car, and by horse – also influence the way the travellers can connect with local people; and the individual’s interest in Spain as a historical site, or as a timeless escape from industrial northern Europe, similarly affect the focus of the accounts. The global politics of travel writing, and the distinction between colonial and cosmopolitan travel writers, are important elements in our understanding of the way a foreign culture is articulated for the home market. Women’s travel writing also has its own discursive history which we consider briefly. In conclusion, texts involve common discursive and linguistic strategies which have to negotiate the specificity of an individual’s travels in a particular time and place. The authors and books referred to are Rose Macaulay’s Fabled Shore: From the Pyrenees to Portugal (1949) and Penelope Chetwode’s Two Middle-Aged Ladies in Andalusia (1963).