Borders and Beyond: Orient-Occident Crossings in Literature

Adam Bednarczyk · Magdalena Kubarek · Maciej Szatkowski

Jan 2019 · Vernon Press

About this ebook

The work presents articles discussing various subjects relating to literary, cultural borders and borderlands as well as their crossings with the Orient and the Occident. A broad, multifaceted scope of the volume draws the attention of readers to the problem of liminal spaces between cultures, genres, codes and languages of literary and artistic communication. The perspective of borderness proposed by orientalists, literary specialists, culture experts provide insights into multi-dimensional and heterogenic subjects and methods of consideration. The authors referring to, inter alia, comparative studies, theory of reception, intertextuality, transculturality of the East and West works touch upon themes such as coexistence, exclusion, crossing or the instability of borders. Also by taking into account identity issues, the interpenetration of various influences between different literatures, poetics and languages, the readers gain a broader context of intercultural dialogue between the Orient and Occident, what allow them to transgress barriers of a purely artistic, literary reception of the book contents. The volume – due to the abundance of proposed topics, its heterogeneous representations and manifold approaches used in analysis, discussion and (re)interpretations – is a debate’s record or a result of an academic reflection rather than a comprehensive monograph. 

About the author

Adam BEDNARCZYK – MA in Oriental philology, specialization Japanology at the Jagiellonian University, Institute of Oriental Philology (2006); PhD in the Humanities (Japanese language and culture) from Osaka University, Japan (2010). Since 2010 Assistant Professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Department of Japanese Studies, and senior lecturer at the Department of Japanese Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in 2011–2014. His research fields are medieval Japanese prose, influences of Chinese literature and culture on medieval Japanese literature, text-image interrelations in pre-modern Japanese culture, and traditional ludic culture in Japan. Major work: Kinsei no eawase (Toruń 2013).

Magdalena KUBAREK – PhD in Arab philology, literary translator, Assistant Professor at the Department of Arabic Language and Culture of Nicolas Copernicus University in Torun and lector in School of Eastern Languages of Warsaw University. Her research fields are contemporary Arabic literature and intercultural interferences. Major works: Mirages and Oasis, Suad as-Sabah and other Women Poets of Kuwait, (Warszawa 2006), The Death Motif in the Works of Contemporary Arab Women Poets (Łódź 2009). Polish translations from Arabic: Abd ar-Rahman Munif, Cities of Salt (Sopot 2010) and Khalil Gibran, The Broken Wings (Warszawa 2012).

Maciej SZATKOWSKI – graduated from the Adam Mickiewicz University (MA in Sinology), head of the Center for Chinese Language and Culture at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. In 2016, he received PhD in the Humanities with the dissertation on Meng Jinghui’s works at Warsaw University. Lecturer and translator of Chinese. Member of Polish Orient Society and Polish Society of Theater Studies. Major research fields: postmodern drama, contemporary Chinese literature and culture.