The essay argues that Paul Kingsnorth’s novel The Wake is written in the spirit of the eighteenth-century pastoral tradition. The medievalist trope of primitivism is used in reference to the Anglo-Saxon culture and language. What characterizes the medievalism of the novel is presentism. Buccmaster represents both the Wild Man and the Noble Savage type. In the pastoral manner, Kingsnorth writes in the spirit of anthropocentrism and focuses on the social classes in the early medieval world that he “greens” in the novel.

In 2020 the Kórnik Library’s collections were supplemented with new documents connected with the beginnings of the Protestant parish in Bnin. The present article presents the time of formation and the first years of functioning of evangelical community in Bnin, which was one of the biggest communities in Greater Poland (excluding Poznań) for more over 150 years. After a brief introduction, the following part describes upon mentioned sources the establishing of community and construction of the first Lutheran church in Bnin with its buildings. Finally, the annex contains biographies of the first five pastors in Bnin and source edition of these documents.

A previously unexplored 20,000 km2 area comprising the Daryalyk Takyr desert and the lacustrine landscapes of Telikol and Aschykol at the confluence of the Chu, Sarysu and Syr Darya rivers is presented here as object of a threefold geological, archaeological and ethnographic analysis assessing its historical importance. According to paleohydrological reconstructions, synchronous fluvial activity of the three rivers occurred during the Late Pleistocene. In the Holocene, the right branches of the Syr Darya delta were separated from the Chu-Sarysu confluence by alluvial sediments, becoming active only intermittently during undated flood events apparently strong enough to establish an ephemeral lake in the region. Geoarchaeological surveys analyzing surface finds indicate the densest occupation during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age. From medieval to modern times, historical sources attest to the seasonal use of the Telikol region as a pastoral transit between the Syr Darya banks and the steppes of Central Kazakhstan. They are confirmed by ethnographic data about Telikol during its last phase of occupation (1870–1910) illustrating that land use in this area (and, probably, in all semi-desert regions in Kazakhstan) was not governed by property rights but by tribal political compromises between residential and transitory herders, occasionally exposing it to overgrazing.

The topic of Polish diaspora in Japan, a community with which Poles in Japan identify as Poles, recognize Polish heritage and connection to what it means to be Polish is one of important, but practically unresearched issues in Poland-Japan relations. From the 1970s a growth in Polish population in Japan can be observed. They began to organize meetings, establish formal and less official groups and have helped and maintained connections to Poland. This paper will focus on the post-war history of Polish diaspora in Japanese islands.

The collections of the Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences include a set of printed textes by Jan Seklucjan with a handwritten dedication to Albrecht Frederick, Duke of Prussia (†1618). Their binding is decorated with plaquettes with portraits of Albrecht von Brandenburg- Ansbach, Duke of Prussia (†1568) and his first wife Dorothea (†1547). The article analyses both compositions, providing the following conclusions: they were made in the Konigsberg circles of the so-called Formschneider between the end of the 1530s and the first half of the 1540s. Between the period in question and 1565, wooden plaquettes (blocks) with these portraits were kept by the Duke’s court bookbinder, Kaspar Angler. After his death they probably belonged to the workshop equipment of his pupil Wolff Artzt, although it is also possible that they were used by a local religious writer, bookseller and possibly also bookbinder – Jan Seklucjan. Both works are examples of adaptation in Konigsberg of a specific formula of Renaissance book binding decoration, being at the same time a bookplate, based on a rectangular portrait plaquette presented in the centre of the cover. Compositions of such works most often depended on the painted portraits – mainly from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder. Both Konigsberg portraits, however, are marked by prolonged proportions, a landscape background, and the display of coats of arms at the bottom. This fact should be explained by the painting models that were probably related to paintings in Albrecht’s Konigsberg residence. It is impossible to decide definitely whether they were made by a painter employed at his court (e.g. Crispin Herrant), or imported. Nevertheless, they are an indirect testimony to the existence of a gallery of portraits in the Konigsberg Castle, which was created on a long-term basis and with passion by the Duke of Prussia.