This essay deals with, or rather attempts to explore, the problem of irony and humour (sensu largo) in the Bible. On the whole Polish theology, homiletics and academic biblical studies have hardly anything to say about it, and when they do mention it, it is done in a rather perfunctory and unsatisfactory manner. This article asks what may be reasons for this ‘exegetical retouch’ (tabooing?), i.e. why has the question of biblical irony, which is a staple of international scholarship, received so little attention in Poland? Why do contemporary Polish biblical and homiletic studies cultivate a staid and solemn tone, and steer clear of a direct and plain exposition laced with subtle irony and a touch of asteism, a sure sign of a wise sense of humour that characterizes ancient Judaism? For Gary Webster, Terri Bednarz and Yehuda Radday the recognition level of biblical humour, sophisticated wordplay or irony depends on the reader’s competence, his linguistic and cultural sensitivity, his ability to detect cognitive presuppositions, and his knowledge of relevant contexts. Yet even a thorough understanding of the biblical text and its cultural conditioning cannot rule out doubts, moot points and interpretative dilemmas that bedevil the work of every translator and hermeneutic analyst and stoke up unending debates.

Tomasz Zan was one of the leaders of the Philomatic Association, a secret student organization that existed from 1817 to 1823 at the Imperial University of Wilno (Vilnius). This article deals with his autobiographical novel made up of letters he wrote between 1815 and 1823. As the assembled letters do not follow the author’s life in chronological order, the text has be read outside the formal categories of an autobiographical record, with due attention to the poetics of the fragment. Moreover, the textual narrator is not always a representative of the author. The occasional use of a persona suggests that the letters are not underpinned by a consistent and well-defined narrative “I”. It seems that in so far as Zan’s identity inscribed in the text appears fuzzy or disparate, its accurate reconstruction would not be possible without an analysis of the tropological system of his letters.

The article is devoted to a well known book of Miłorad Pavić Khazar Dictionary. The discussed work is. unusual, as it merges literature with historical writing. As such, it presents an interesting alternative to traditionally understood historiography.

This article examines the position of Cervantes' Don Quixote in the intertextual network of Juliusz Słowacki' digressive poems, closely bound up with Schlegel's conception of Romantic irony. The article analyzes in turn direct references to Don Quixote; the use by the Polish poet, often with an ironic twist, of Cervantes' narrative strategies; the influence of Cervantes on the creation of the world of the poems (not least their central characters) and on Słowacki's extensive use of parabasis in all its varieties – from authorial commentaries and addresses to the reader, through characters who step out of their role to speak to the reader, to the foregrounding of the problems involved in the act of reading – to highlight and disrupt the illusion of fictional truth. The analysis shows that the Spanish classic was in many ways Słowacki's literary model and an aesthetic inspiration.

The article is an attempt to outline the theoretical and methodological reflection on public history in the context of some conceptual models and concrete examples of case studies. Considering discursive situations, suppositions, suggestions and interpellations on the enlightenment postulate with regard to public history (including the issues: magistra vitae, emancipatory project, affirmative history, emotive revolution, critical discourse in the public space, modus art based research) I deal with the issues: what is actually the content of public history: history or memory? Does the enlightenment postulate with regard to public history turn memory into history? Are we dealing with some project concocted by the intelligentsia and scientific elite? What are the current trends in the implementation of critical discourse in public history?

In his article titled ‘Rzut oka na ścieżkę, którą poszedłem’ [A look back at the path I have taken], published in 1832, the twenty-year old Józef Ignacy Kraszewski named a few novelists he thought worth imitating. Among them was the author of Don Quixote, “a man with an intimate knowledge of the human heart, a great investigator, and an exquisite painter”. His masterpiece was “a small collection of essays”, a treasure house of major literary forms for all European writers that came after him. Unexpectedly, however, in the last paragraph of his feuilleton Kraszewski declares he is not interested in following Cervantes because in his writing practice he makes a point of not imitating anybody. “Good or bad”, he concludes, “I am content with myself and with what I write.” I am doing my myself. Yet, if the article is put side by side with some extracts from Don Quixote shows that his demonstrative rejection of literary models does not include the legacy of Cervantes. So, in the end, it is no more than a tongue-in-cheek declaration by a young writer. After all, the novel entitled Pan Walery he is about to write, as it is announced in the article, will be a Cervantes throwback. Its unconventional form (what with interleaved, contrapuntal narrative technique, fragmentary narratives, experiment-ing with hybridity and improvisation) is in fact a literary game with Don Quixote and an ironic appendix to Cervantes' inquiry into the nature of imitatio.