Humanities and Social Sciences

Ruch Literacki

ISSN

ISSN 0035-9602

Publishers

Polska Akademia Nauk Oddział w Krakowie Komisja Historycznoliteracka, Uniwersytet Jagielloński Wydział Polonistyki

Redaktor naczelna

Anna Łebkowska

Sekretarz redakcji

Iwona Boruszkowska

Rada Naukowa

Maria Delaperrière, INALCO, Paryż, Francja

Halina Filipowicz, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA

David Frick, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Bożena Karwowska, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Komitet Redakcyjny

Iwona Boruszkowska Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków, Polska

Tomasz Bilczewski, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków, Polska

Andrzej Borowski, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków, Polska

Tadeusz Bujnicki, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków, Polska

Anna Czabanowska-Wróbel, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków, Polska

Anna Łebkowska, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków, Polska

Roman Mazurkiewicz, Uniwersytet Pedagogiczny, Kraków, Polska

Jan Michalik, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków, Polska

Jan Okoń, Uniwersytet Łódzki, Łódź, Polska

Magdalena Siwiec, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków, Polska

Eugenia Prokop-Janiec, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków, Polska

Wacław Walecki, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków, Polska

Polska Akademia Nauk
Oddział w Krakowie
ul. św. Jana 28
31-018 Kraków
tel. +48 12 256-23-00
fax. +48 12 256-23-80
e-mail: ruchliteracki@uj.edu.pl

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Wszystkie artykuły są publikowane na licencji Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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Content

Ruch Literacki | 2022 | No 3 (372)

1 A poetics of fungal threads: The posthuman imagination of Olga Tokarczuk

Monika Świerkosz

Ruch Literacki | 2022 | No 3 (372) | 345-367 | DOI: 10.24425/rl.2022.140973

Keywords: Polish contemporary literature posthumanism narrative imagination non-binary mycelium rhizomal structure Olga Tokarczuk (b. 1962)

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Abstract

This article analyzes the key characteristics of Olga Tokarczuk's fiction, whose structure appears to embody the epistemological metaphor of a network of fungal threads (mycelium). The article attempts to demonstrate that throughout her fictional world this non-binary principle integrates the whole and the fragment, identity politics and the politics of becoming, life and death, the personal and the impersonal, words and actions. The roots of the approach must be sought in the posthuman(ist) imagination, the influence of which in Tokarczuk's writing can be traced back to the 1990s, rather than her indebtedness to the aesthetic theories of postmodernism.

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Authors and Affiliations

Monika Świerkosz

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ORCID:

Uniwersytet Jagielloński

2 Limits of empathy in Olga Tokarczuk's fiction

Anna Łebkowska

Ruch Literacki | 2022 | No 3 (372) | 369-388 | DOI: 10.24425/rl.2022.140974

Keywords: Polish contemporary literature empathy narrative strategy Olga Tokarczuk (b. 1962)

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Abstract

This article deals with the role of empathy in the work of Olga Tokarczuk. It begins with an examination of the autocritical reflections in her essays, most notably her view of literature and its functions. This is followed by a discussion of the range of emotional involvement presented in her fiction and the role of empathy in her narrative strategy. The article argues that empathy is at the heart of her creativity and her understanding of literature.

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Authors and Affiliations

Anna Łebkowska

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Wydział Polonistyki Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego

3 Rereading Olga Tokarczuk's transgressions through James Hillman's psychology

Tomasz Mizerkiewicz

Ruch Literacki | 2022 | No 3 (372) | 389-407 | DOI: 10.24425/rl.2022.140975

Keywords: Polish contemporary literature archetypal psychology James Hillman (1926–2011) Olga Tokarczuk (b. 1962)

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Abstract

This article explores the significance of James Hillman's archetypal psychology for the autothematic reflection and the fiction of Olga Tokarczuk. An analysis of her 2020 collection of essays Czuły narrator ( The Tender Narrator), and the psychological dimension of two novels, Ostatnie historie ( Final Stories) and Bieguni ( Flights) published in 2004 and 2007 respectively, shows that she abandoned her former intellectual master Carl Gustav Jung for Jungian revisionists, most notably James Hillman. His ideas helped her to clarify her own philosophical approach, and, for her critics, they offer a useful interpretative key to the works in which she moved beyond the bounds of orthodox Jungianism.

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Authors and Affiliations

Tomasz Mizerkiewicz

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Wydział Filologii Polskiej i Klasycznej, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu

4 Naming strategies and the worlds of Olga Tokarczuk's fiction

Artur Rejter

Ruch Literacki | 2022 | No 3 (372) | 409-427 | DOI: 10.24425/rl.2022.140976

Keywords: Polish contemporary literature literary onomastics proper names weird fiction Olga Tokarczuk (b. 1962)

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Abstract

This article deals with the function of proper names in Olga Tokarczuk's novel Anna In w grobowcach świata [ Anna In in the Tombs of the World] and the short story collection Opowiadania bizarne [ Bizarre Stories]. In either case we are confronted with a stunning diversity of imaginary worlds described with erudite care and, by implication, a high level of strategic control. While drawing on a vast pool of well attested names from both Western cultural history and non-European mythologies, she also creates apellatives based on attributes highlighted in the storytelling (the stories themselves are often the product of her magical imagination). Invented or real, all proper names in Tokarczuk's narratives are handled in such a way as to display to the full their semantic, pragmatic and aesthetic qualities. Also, it seems, their placement in the text and their effect on the reader's reactions during the process of reading are carefully planned. what this article tries to demonstrate is that in Tokarczuk's art of fiction the creative transformation of proper names, their reinterpretation and contextualization functions as a complement to the imaginary worlds, rooted in bizarre, meta/genre creativity.

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Authors and Affiliations

Artur Rejter

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Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach

5 The ontological underdog: Weakness and traces of transcendence in Olga Tokarczuk's work A preliminary reading

Krzysztof Brenskott

Ruch Literacki | 2022 | No 3 (372) | 429-438 | DOI: 10.24425/rl.2022.140977

Keywords: Polish contemporary literature vulnerability traces of transcendence Zen Buddhism Gianni Vattimo (b. 1936) Olga Tokarczuk (b. 1962)

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Abstract

The article examines Olga Tokarczuk's view of weakness and the weak – with regard to her characters, identities, ontologies, and various notions of spirituality – and tries to make out the ways in which her approach to this problem is shaped by the philosophical idea of 'traces'. Tokarczuk's thought, as we find it embodied in her work, shows a remarkable similarity to the idea of 'weak thought' ( pensiero debole) and the teachings of Zen Buddhism. Instead of striving for generalizations and unification, it pursues individual uniqueness; it prefers to concentrate on the exception rather than the rule. It focuses on the ontological underdog – a weak, flawed, vulnerable human being. It is precisely because of these deficiencies, and not despite them, that the individual is more interesting than everlasting matter or the God's eternity. Moreover, transcendence, when it does manifest itself in her work, usually takes the form of a trace, faint and feeble (as, for example, in Lurianic Kabbalah). The aim of this article is to draw attention to an important dimension of Tokarczuk's fiction and to identify a handful of clues for further study.

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Authors and Affiliations

Krzysztof Brenskott

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Uniwersytet Jagielloński

6 History and conjecture in Olga Tokarczuk's Books of Jacob

Eugenia Prokop-Janiec

Ruch Literacki | 2022 | No 3 (372) | 449-469 | DOI: 10.24425/rl.2022.140978

Keywords: Polish contemporary literature fiction as conjectural history neo-historical novel Olga Tokarczuk (b. 1962)

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Abstract

This article discusses Olga Tokarczuk's idea of the historical novel formulated in her metacritical reflections. It focuses on the concept of conjecture which she herself finds crucial to her writing practice. Tokarczuk stresses the cognitive value of this method which allows her to bring in voices that have been drowned out with their stories and to recover the material, sensual experience of a bygone world. This reading of the Books of Jacob draws on her double-track definition of conjecture to analyze her writing strategy aimed at method this makes use of this double he with stories that have been left out in the past and to fill in the gaps and revise the distortions of the standard, 'written' historical narrative. The affirmation of the value of historical knowledge, tempered by the awareness of its limitations, situates Tokarczuk's fiction within the aesthetic of contemporary neo-historical novel.

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Authors and Affiliations

Eugenia Prokop-Janiec

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Uniwersytet Jagielloński

7 “A complex web of senses”: A note on Olga Tokarczuk's Opowiadania bizarne [ Bizarre Stories]

Agnieszka Nęcka-Czapska

Ruch Literacki | 2022 | No 3 (372) | 473-491 | DOI: 10.24425/rl.2022.140979

Keywords: Polish contemporary literature posthumanism anthropocentrism transgression ecocriticism postsecularism AI dystopia Olga Tokarczuk (b. 1962)

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Abstract

This article analyzes the subconscious fears and anxieties connected with loneliness, low self-esteem, all kinds of frustrations, a sense of being trapped in a bizarre reality or being pushed to transgress (i.e. to cross the border between life and death, between the human and the animal, or getting exposed to new technologies or forms of religion) in Olga Tokarczuk's Opowiadania bizarne [ Bizarre Stories]. The resulting emotional volatility gives rise to questions about one own's identity and one's place in a world beyond control. At the same time the manifold fears and anxieties impose on one a Manichean, dualistic perception of an incurably weird (bizarre) reality. So in Opowiadania bizarne we are constantly reminded of man's arrogance in his relations with the earth's ecosystem, the destructive nature of his subconscious mind, the dangers of new technologies and the corrosive effects of postsecularism.

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Authors and Affiliations

Agnieszka Nęcka-Czapska

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Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach

8 Spis treści

Ruch Literacki | 2022 | No 3 (372)

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9 Contents

Ruch Literacki | 2022 | No 3 (372)

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Instructions for authors

„Ruch Literacki” jest czasopismem polonistycznym i publikuje teksty dotyczące literatury polskiej (interpretacje), teorii literatury i komparatystyki.

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