http://hdl.handle.net/11320/5994 2026-06-01T17:17:33Z 2026-06-01T17:17:33Z Więckowska, Katarzyna http://hdl.handle.net/11320/6003 2017-11-27T10:57:09Z 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Tytuł: Ways of forgetting: Memory and identity in Alzheimer’s fiction Autorzy: Więckowska, Katarzyna Abstrakt: Alzheimer’s is a disease that poses a challenge to the established ways of thinking about the relation between memory, identity and narrative. In this article, I offer a reading of Lisa Genova’s Still Alice (2007), Stefan Merrill Block’s The Story of Forgetting (2008), and Matthew Thomas’s We Are Not Ourselves (2014) to examine the ways in which the increasingly popular literature of Alzheimer’s represents, and possibly reconfigures, the prevalent notions of identity and memory, as well as the relation between literature and science. A number of critics have noted a shift in contemporary literature demonstrated by the growing focus on neurological conditions. Accordingly, the analysis of Alzheimer’s novels refers to selected critical descriptions of this shift, including the discussions of syndrome literature and the neuronovel.

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z Kamińska, Aleksandra http://hdl.handle.net/11320/6002 2017-11-27T10:56:12Z 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Tytuł: The witness of the unspoken experience: Postmemory in Bernice Eisenstein’s I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors Autorzy: Kamińska, Aleksandra Abstrakt: In the graphic memoir I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors (2006) Bernice Eisenstein examines her identity as a second generation survivor, tells stories about her parents, and depicts the community of survivors in Toronto. Eisenstein’s memoir is most often described as a graphic novel. However, the book is a specific combination of words and drawings, and can be hard to categorize. In my paper I focus on Eisenstein’s complex relationship with her father presented in the novel, and argue that the way she writes about him and draws him is anchored in his unsaid Holocaust experience. I read Eisenstein’s portrayal of her father in reference to the concept of postmemory, and suggest that Eisenstein was heavily affected by her father’s experience of being a Holocaust survivor. Her deep connection to the past is demonstrated in I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors through drawings, selected memories, and references to numerous works of culture. I discuss how Eisenstein draws her father and how she commemorates him in images – not as a victim, but as extremely strong personas: movie star, gangster or sheriff. I analyze the role of shtetl culture in the memoir as another way of linking present with past. I suggest that the books and movies about the Holocaust which Eisenstein references in the memoir create a basis for changing the confusing, or even unexpressed traumas, into an understandable story.

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z Kubiak, Stefan http://hdl.handle.net/11320/6001 2017-11-27T10:55:21Z 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Tytuł: Childhood memories in three novels by Philip Roth: Portnoy’s Complaint, The Plot Against America, and American Pastoral as pivotal components of the protagonists’ identities Autorzy: Kubiak, Stefan Abstrakt: The objective of the paper is to discuss Philip Roth’s approach to the Jewish community in Newark, where he spent his childhood and where he chose to set several of his novels. Roth’s narrations referring to his hometown are written in the first person singular and often take the form of childhood memories. The persistent return to the settings of the Jewish quarter of Newark in the past seems an attempt at understanding the reality of a relatively closed community, yet far from isolation, which provided him with all the elements determining his complex sense of identity. Despite the various grades of fictitiousness of the characters and settings, the narrating protagonist of a number of Roth’s novels is usually a Jewish schoolboy born and brought up in Newark. The paper includes short analyses of “Jewish memories” in three novels by Philip Roth: The Plot Against America, where the narrator is called Philip Roth but the circumstances are elements of pure political/historical fiction, American Pastoral, where the speaker is Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s frequent alter ego, and Portnoy’s Complaint, narrated by the fictitious Alexander Portnoy. Being both American and Jewish has considerable implications, which include, for example, the characters’ sexuality. The image of the childhood and adolescence of Roth’s protagonists seems not only an obsessive theme to be found in so many of his texts, but also the core of the intellectual construct which may be recognized as his sense of identity.

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z Kaptur, Paweł http://hdl.handle.net/11320/6000 2017-11-27T10:54:03Z 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Tytuł: Oblivion and vengeance: Charles II Stuart’s policy towards the republicans at the Restoration of 1660 Autorzy: Kaptur, Paweł Abstrakt: The Restoration of Charles II Stuart in 1660 was reckoned in post-revolutionary England both in terms of a long-awaited relief and an inevitable menace. The return of the exiled prince, whose father’s disgraceful decapitation in the name of law eleven years earlier marked the end of the British monarchy, must have been looked forward to by those who expected rewards for their loyalty, inflexibility and royal affiliation in the turbulent times of the Interregnum. It must have been, however, feared by those who directly contributed to issuing the death warrant on the legally ruling king and to violating the irrefutable divine right of kings. Even though Charles II’s mercy was widely known, hardly anyone expected that the restored monarch’s inborn mildness would win over his well-grounded will to revenge his father’s death and the collapse of the British monarchy. It seems that Charles II was not exceptionally vindictive and was eager to show mercy and oblivion understood as an act of amnesty to those who sided with Cromwell and Parliament but did not contribute directly to the executioner raising his axe over the royal neck. On the other hand, the country’s unstable situation and the King’s newly-built reputation required some firm-handed actions taken by the sovereign in order to prevent further rebellions or plots in the future, and to strengthen the position of the monarchy so shattered by the Civil War and the Interregnum.

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z