http://hdl.handle.net/11320/6007 2026-06-01T07:33:00Z 2026-06-01T07:33:00Z Łapińska, Magdalena http://hdl.handle.net/11320/6022 2017-11-27T13:31:34Z 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Tytuł: Memory-dependent grief in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling Autorzy: Łapińska, Magdalena Abstrakt: The article explores grief as a memory-related emotional response to the loss of loved ones as presented in Octavia Butler’s fantasy novel Fledgling. The article deals with the inability to experience grief due to memory loss and the struggles that come with it. The reasons behind the inability of the main character to experience grief and its meaning are investigated. Two potential explanations are explored: the inability to experience grief as a result of general dissociative amnesia caused by the traumatic experience of witnessing the slaughter of one’s family and being left on the brink of death, and the possibility of the loss of affect induced by overwhelming feelings of loss. The grief over a person of whom the memories are intact is analyzed and contrasted with the lack of grief for the forgotten relatives. The idea of continuing bonds connected with the mourning process is briefly presented and illustrated using examples from Fledgling. The theory of five stages of grief formulated by the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is briefly introduced. Some of the stages of Kübler-Ross’s theory (denial, anger and acceptance) are illustrated through the analysis of the grief experienced by the main character. The distinct inability to govern or temper the emotional response to death is presented. Grief is also briefly introduced as a possible bonding instrument.

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z Sawczuk, Tomasz http://hdl.handle.net/11320/6021 2017-11-27T13:19:05Z 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Tytuł: “I’ve been crawling up so long on your stairway to heaven”: The rise of the female rock memoir Autorzy: Sawczuk, Tomasz Abstrakt: Similarly to rock music, the rock memoir has long been considered a male genre by both the general public and publishers. It might well be claimed that throughout the years there have been many seminal female rock performers, yet only a few of them gained well deserved recognition and engaged the minds of wider audiences. The history of rock had been predominantly a (his)story until 2012 and the publication of Patti Smith’s Just Kids, a female rock memoir which paved the way for many other women thus far silenced by the male-oriented genre. This paper seeks to delve into some of the female rock narratives in order to analyze the ways in which their authors construct their stories and their authorial selves. It also points to those territories of the music industry and the rock memoir which female performers strive to enrich or reclaim by the acts of writing and performing.

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z Dziok-Łazarecka, Anna http://hdl.handle.net/11320/6020 2017-11-27T13:06:51Z 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Tytuł: “I must fight, always, against forgetting” : A journey through memory and grief in Helen Macdonald’s relational autobiography H is for Hawk Autorzy: Dziok-Łazarecka, Anna Abstrakt: The article presents how Helen Macdonald, the author of H is for Hawk, undertakes the task of ordering ‘the archaeology of grief’ – uncovering strata of remembrance with past states of mind, forgotten events, emotions, and earlier perspectives. Because the book reveals the author’s strong sense of connection with nature, it is therefore classified under the heading ‘nature writing’ or ‘new nature writing’. This non-fiction autobiographical narrative is, however, primarily a personal journey where the narrator’s/author’s inner self is revealed through carefully orchestrated memories which form her as a protagonist. The narrative is a confession of how she struggled through the ordeal of mourning after her father’s death and how in order to cope with the trauma of loss she undertook the task of taming a hawk. The story shows how in the course of manning the hawk Helen begins to ‘forget’ or rather deny civilisation, social ties, her own professional duties, and how the obsession with bird taming takes her to the very edge of sanity. At the same time, however, it is the hawk that becomes a lifeline, a connection with the corporeal, the tangible, and the physical. Moreover, the narrator’s journey with the goshawk through English landscape becomes a catalyst for remembrance that belongs to public realm. And so, it evokes more lengthy reflections on environment, literary heritage, history, society, and relations between humans and nature.

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z Lorek-Jezińska, Edyta http://hdl.handle.net/11320/6017 2017-11-27T12:55:58Z 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Tytuł: Testimonies of absence: Trauma and forgetting in The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro Autorzy: Lorek-Jezińska, Edyta Abstrakt: In their Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History, Felman and Laub associate the trauma narrative with a gap or omission: “The victim’s narrative – the very process of bearing witness to massive trauma – does indeed begin with someone who testifies to an absence, to an event that has not yet come into existence, in spite of the overwhelming and compelling nature of the reality of its occurrence” (Felman and Laub, 57). The event in which the traumatic experience is located cannot be accessed directly, but, as Caruth argues, “only in and through its inherent forgetting” (Caruth, 8). The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro begins with a hiatus expressed in the main character’s (Axl’s) realisation of the missing past that has disappeared from people’s memory. Embarking on a journey that proceeds across geographical and historical space, the narrative delves into private mental topographies and the post-apocalyptic debris. By trying to make sense of the landscape troubled by “inherent forgetting” and simultaneously testifying to “massive trauma”, the narrative of Ishiguro’s novel reveals the double process of coming to terms with loss and (the perpetrator/victim’s) traumatic experience. My objective is to examine the story of The Buried Giant as an instance of trauma narrative starting with an absence and a melancholic text revealing the complexity of the mourning process. In my study I primarily draw upon the narrative theories of trauma and its latency (Felman and Laub, Caruth), as well as the psychoanalytic concepts of incorporation and introjection (Abraham and Torok) to investigate the narrative and conceptual structures of loss in the novel.

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z