(in Polish) Seminarium doktoranckie - Średniowiecze, mediewalizm, dyskursy teraźniejszości i przeszłości w literaturze angielskiej

obligatory courses
Ph. D. seminars

The seminar focuses on selected texts and topics from the field of medieval English literature as well as modern literature, especially from Romanticism to the present. The sphere of exploration includes references to distant past, ways of representing and imagining past ages, significance of the past for the present, intersections of cultural and literary discourses of various epochs, in particular the phenomenon of medievalism, which encompasses various ways and purposes of enlivening the Middle Ages in modern texts, as well as exploitation of pre-medieval histories and traditions in modern texts.

The seminar focuses on selected texts and topics from the field of medieval English literature as well as modern literature, especially from Romanticism to the present. The sphere of exploration includes references to distant past, ways of representing and imagining past ages, significance of the past for the present, intersections of cultural and literary discourses of various epochs, in particular the phenomenon of medievalism, which encompasses various ways and purposes of enlivening the Middle Ages in modern texts, as well as exploitation of pre-medieval histories and traditions in modern texts.

Class meetings are organized, on the one hand, around issues connected with participants’ current research, which includes e. g. the discourse of law in Middle English drama, ways of representing the enemy in Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman historical writing, such as the poem The Battle of Maldon, representations of Saracens in Middle English literature, images and symbolism of trees in British medieval literatures and cultural traditions, Anglo-Saxon subjectivity viewed from the perspective of Louis Althusser’s theory, the epic dimension of the work of Robert E. Howard, or reflections of Plato’s philosophy in Iris Murdoch’s narrative style. On the other hand, some of the classes are devoted to general and theoretical problems, such as defining epic, Plato’s Socratic dialogues and theorizing dialogue, the concept of time and literary temporalities, the Other in modern theory and philosophy, defining fantasy, art vs. nature, theories of the self. Discussed texts of general interest include: Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, J.R.R. Tolkien’s On Fairy-stories, John Ruskin’s The Nature of Gothic, M. Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination, Saint Augustine’s Confessions and City of God, E. Said’s Orientalism, H. White’s The Tropics of Discourse and Theories of History, W. Ong’s Orality and Literacy, A. Davenport’s An Introduction to Medieval Narrative.

Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, J.R.R. Tolkien’s On Fairy-stories, John Ruskin’s The Nature of Gothic, M. Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination, Saint Augustine’s Confessions and City of God, E. Said’s Orientalism, H. White’s The Tropics of Discourse and Theories of History, W. Ong’s Orality and Literacy, A. Davenport’s An Introduction to Medieval Narrative.