Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, No. 10 (2020)

Dorota Filipczak

Issue 10 (2020), entitled "Literature Goes Pop" and edited by the journal's editor-in-chief, Dorota Filipczak, revolves around the encounters between literary intertexts/conventions/genres and the visual/digital modes. Although the volume opens with a critical essay on Pamela Sue Anderson's philosophy, the next sixteen scholarly texts explore a wide range of topics demonstrating close ties between literature and widely understood pop culture: film, music videos, the blogosphere, biographies of iconic poets, the realm of cyberpunk, video games, and even memes, as demonstrated by the article on online humor responding to the global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The next section, playfully named "Literar(t)y Matters," deals with the following subjects: sensorial aesthetics in modernist fiction, Hart Crane's and Yvor Winters's interactions with Emily Dickinson's poetic legacy, the cosmic sublime in Tracy K. Smith's Life on Mars, the depiction of racial issues in contemporary US in Claudia Rankine's Citizen. An American Lyric, the portrayal of 19th-century America in Frances Wright's works, Wallace Stevens's ties to philosophy, a morphogenetic perspective on intertextuality, Thomas William Robertson's well-made plays, and wartime propaganda and gender in Ahmad Mahmoud's The Scorched Earth.

Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, No. 1 (2011)

Dorota Filipczak

The first issue of Text Matters, published in 2011 and supervised by its editor-in-chief, Professor Dorota Filipczak, consists of two main sections. The first one, entitled "Women and Authority," contains thirteen texts exploring, in its editor's words, "the relationship between women and authority, vested in literary and philosophical texts." The authors come from different backgrounds: philosophy, theology, literature, while their articles concern the works of authors as varied as Michele Le Doeuff, Jane Urquhart, Laurence Sterne, Michele Roberts, Iris Murdoch, Virginia Woolf, Ian McEwan, Muriel Spark, Denise Levertov, Mary Dorcey, Carol Shields, Sylvia Plath, and Janet Frame. One of the analyses is devoted to the male/female relations in selected late medieval and early modern English texts. In the second section, named "Word/Image/Sound," there are six scholarly articles that cover the following topics: the oeuvre of Rudy Wiebe, close connections between artistry and religion, the postcolonial aspects of Michael Haneke's Hidden, the use of Ulster dialects in the poetry of Tom Paulin and Michael Longley, the role of dance in Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney, and, finally, the depiction of ambiguity and paradox in Ian McEwan's Saturday. Additionally, the volume includes an overview of book tributes to Professor Andrzej Kopcewicz, a look at the current state of American newspapers, a review of The Body (edited by Ilona Dobosiewicz and Jacek Gutorow), as well as two conversations: between Jared Thomas and Teresa Podemska-Abt, and Pamela Sue Anderson and Alison Jasper.

Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, No. 2 (2012)

Dorota Filipczak

The theme of issue 2 (2012) is "Marginalia/Marginalities" explored across literature, theatre, film, and cultural theory. It opens with a conversation between Dorota Filipczak and film director Krzysztof Zanussi, addressing cultural exchange and the challenges faced by European cinema. The section "Marginal Matters in Theatre and Film" examines how actors and marginalized spaces have been historically portrayed. Its contributors discuss 18th-century biographies that reframe actors as cultural agents, Samuel Beckett's self-translation of Waiting for Godot, nature as a marginal force in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, and the rise of The Big Lebowski from cult obscurity to cultural significance. The authors in the "Margins in Fiction, Poetry and Literary Theory" section write about revisiting the Gothic genre, linking marginality to terror and the fantastic in fin de siecle fiction, Bruno Schulz's ex-libris art, J. H. Prynne's poetry, Edward Said's oeuvre, the Polish reception of Thomas Keneally, and the role of false quotations in Jim Crace's Arcadia. The final section, "Marginalized Identities," focuses on individuals in conflict with dominant cultural or social norms. Topics include Ira Daniel Aldridge's biography, gay masculinities in "Brokeback Mountain," female marginalization in dystopian fiction, and intercultural identity in works by Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich, Daniel Chacon, Michel Tournier, Monica Ali, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Aravind Adiga. The issue concludes with three reviews (of The Making of London: London in Contemporary Literature by Sebastian Groes; Simon Glendinning's Derrida; and Native Authenticity: Transnational Perspectives on Native American Literary Studies, edited by Deborah L. Madsen), as well as two interviews: between Fadia Faqir and Maria Assif, and Norman Ravvin and Krzysztof Majer.