Studia Anglica Posnaniensia Feed

Review: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Readings of the Medieval Orient: Other Encounters. By Liliana Sikorska. Walter de Gruyter, 2021. Pp. xxviii, 235.

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Review: The Lexical Domain of Beauty and its Metaphors in the Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Style. By Francisco Javier Minaya Gómes. Peter Lang, 2021.

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Review: The hidden history of coined words. By Ralph Keyes. Oxford University Press 2021. Pp. xvi, 375.

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Review: Shooting Terror. Terrorism in Hindi Films. By Meenakshi Bharat. Routledge, 2020. Pp. 187.

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Review: A history of English. By Míša Hejná & George Walkden. Language Science Press, 2022. Pp. xvi, 439.

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction: “A Way With Words”

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ethics as Language in the Book of the Knight of the Tower

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In The Book of the Knight of the Tower, the father-narrator teaches his daughters how to recognize cleverly disguised deceivers who speak both truly and falsely. In the course of the Knight’s conduct manual for girls, it becomes clear that the words are divided into good and evil, depending on the speaker’s intention, while the responsibility for discerning a true word from a false one lies with the respondent, most frequently a young lady. In my paper I will examine the writer’s engagement with female speech against a socio-historical context, on the one hand, and against St. Thomas Aquinas’s typology of sins presented in Summa Theologica, on the other. My aim is to show that the moral lessons imparted from parent to child, especially lessons on the use of speech, should be understood in terms of practical ethics in that they move beyond a concern for the individual’s moral conscience and have wider implications for the family’s good name within the community and indeed for society in general.

Potentiality of Poetic Thought: J. H. Prynne’s Sub Songs

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The present article explores J. H. Prynne’s 2010 collection Sub Songs and its employment of what Prynne terms poetic thought, a capacity of language to contest its own reification in the process of permanent contradiction within lexis. Setting Sub Songs against the context of Prynne’s other writings, both poetical and critical, the essay argues that the poems in the volume set out to challenge received modes of thinking about truth and freedom. This is done through what is here termed directed potentiality, understood as these poetic texts’ evocation of shifting constellations of possible meanings, whose openness, however, is directed at critically evoking certain problematic aspects of the world through such means as the repetition of lexical items as well as intertextual and sonic allusiveness. It is by using this technique that Sub Songs critiques mendacious linguistic practices, which inform the crises of interpersonal commitment and intellectual stupor that the world as evoked in Sub Songs is fraught with.

T. S. Eliot: Love in a World Without Objects

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

T. S. Eliot’s early triumphs as a poet are inseparable from his sensuous apprehension of everyday objects from the streets and drawing rooms of the cities in which he spent his youth. His graduate work in philosophy at Oxford includes a theoretical analysis of objects, and his early literary criticism includes several discussions of the importance of balancing subjects and objects, notably the formulation of the “objective correlative” in a 1919 essay on Hamlet. In 1926, in a series of eight lectures at Cambridge University (the Clark Lectures), he addressed the breakdown of objectivity associated with Descartes and, using the poetry of Dante and Donne, explored the deleterious effect of the Cartesian moment on the poetry of love. My aim in this paper is to demonstrate the essential continuity between art and ideas – that is, between Eliot’s poetry and his early work in philosophy.2

Contexts for Reading the Reader: Why the Private Library of a Twentieth-Century Canadian Woman Is Important

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

An article on a library collected in the twentieth century by a Canadian woman may seem of little relevance to a topic called “A way with words”. Still, one of the many contexts in which we read books is their existence as objects in various kinds of libraries. This article’s subject is a library of over seventeen hundred books accumulated in the twentieth century in a modest house on a modest street in the mid-sized city of Brantford, Ontario, by a woman who had graduated from high school, but who would now be considered to have had a modest education. As well as gathering these books, she read them. In most she signed her name; in many she recorded such information as the date of their acquisition; and, although she did not usually mark them up, she sometimes left objects in them. Over the years she also listed them in notebooks. When she died, her nephew boxed the books in no particular order. Since then, they have been moved several times, and more than half have disappeared. Over six hundred of the books, however, have survived and are now deposited in the MacOdrum Library at Carleton University, Ottawa. While I had these books in my house, I prepared lists of them in alphabetical order according to author, and I arranged them alphabetically in bankers’ boxes. As I reorganised this library, I was impressed with what it revealed about not only Bibliography and Textual Studies, including the History of the Book, particularly as these subjects concern Canada, but also about such topics as Canadian culture and the influence of books and reading on the shaping of images of women in the twentieth century. My article demonstrates the importance of this private library’s “way with words”.

Imaginative Parallels. Re-Reading the Tropes of Marriage and Voluntary Enclosure in Dorothea of Montau’s Vitae

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Medieval women, escaping the restrictions of marriage, frequently opted for an inner life dedicated to God. Rendered through the trope of the spiritual union to Christ, the mystical marriage underscored the medieval discrepancy between the mundane and the ideal. This divergence reverberates in Johann von Marienwerder’s hagiographic narrative of the life of an anchoress, Dorothea of Montau.2 Married at an early age to an abusive older man, Dorothea found solace in secretly dedicating herself to the divine while following the rules of the Church and living in utter submission to her husband. Dorothea suffered as a battered wife, but, once widowed, excelled as an immured recluse. Relinquishing physical freedom, Dorothea gained spiritual emancipation. In Canon Johann’s Vitae, her earthly matrimony, even though a necessary ordeal for the future saint, is presented through the metaphors of imprisonment, and the anchoress’s cell, however claustrophobic, through the imagery of her liberating spiritual union with the divine. Such a representation, which is in accord with Lakoff & Johnson’s (2003: 5) straightforward definition of the essence of metaphor denoting “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another”, will be the subject matter of the present paper. Warranting the imaginative parallels, what follows is an analysis of the earthly and unworldly matrimonies in Dorothea of Montau’s life in the historical context of the late fourteenth-century Prussia.

Nadine Gordimer’s Late Style: An Analysis of Selected Stories from Loot and Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nadine Gordimer frequently emphasized that style is closely connected to subject matter, which, in her case, derived in large part from national and global politics. Her late short stories are only a partial testimony to this truth insofar as their style is shaped both by Gordimer’s political views and by her approach to deeply personal topics, including love, desire, loss, mourning, and death. While the literary criticism of Gordimer’s works tends to concentrate on the political dimension of her writing, the aim of this discussion is to explore late style in the context of personal topics recurrent in Gordimer’s late short fiction, especially the topics that have been mentioned above. The article begins with a brief discussion of Gordimer’s views on literary style and goes on to examine theoretical perspectives on the phenomenon of late style, including the works of Theodor Adorno, Edward Said, Linda and Michael Hutcheon, J.M. Coetzee, and Graham Riach. The main aim of the theoretical part of the article is to draw a clear distinction between Spätstil and Altersstil, and, in this way, to lay the foundation for the analysis of Altersstil (defined as a characteristic individual style that comes with advancing age) in Gordimer’s stories. The analytical part of the article, devoted equally to Gordimer’s late style and to the thematic preoccupations of her late short fiction, concentrates on six stories selected from Gordimer’s last two volumes: Loot and Other Stories (2003) and Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black and Other Stories (2007). In both these collections, Gordimer’s style is characterized by her experimentation with narrative perspectives, as well as the adoption of the autobiographical and confessional modes. Gordimer’s late writing is also distinguished by intertextuality, self-reflexivity, and its interest in the workings of memory.

Exeter Book Riddles 48 and 59: Trautmann’s “Inscribed Ring”

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Moritz Trautmann, in his 1915 edition of the Exeter Book Riddles, proposed the solution: “Inscribed Ring” to both Riddles 48 and 59; but his arguments have been largely ignored by subsequent editors and commentators, most of whom prefer the older solution: “Chalice” (alternatively “Pyx” or “Paten” for Riddle 48) suggested by Franz Dietrich in an influential article published in 1865. I argue here that Trautmann’s commentary has been partly misread and his case undervalued, and that “Chalice”, or similar Eucharistical objects, were suggested to Dietrich by his own emendation of the metrically deficient verse 11a (dryhtdolg) in Riddle 59 – an emendation that produced a spurious reference to the wounds Christ suffered at the crucifixion. Archaeological evidence in the shape of inscribed precious-metal rings of Anglo-Saxon manufacture supports Trautmann’s solution to both Riddles, which are consequently to be regarded as examples of the same riddling conception of writing as “silent speech” as is shown by the poets of several other Riddles (42 “Cock and Hen”, 47 “Bookmoth”, and 60 “Reed Pen”) in the Exeter Book collection. The idea of an “Inscribed Ring” is, however, indicated too explicitly in both Riddles 48 and 59 to be accepted as the actual solution to either. Comparison with Riddle 47 “Bookmoth”, Riddle 48’s neighbour in the manuscript, suggests that the true solution of all three of these Riddles is the underlying concept of “the written word”.

Everything is Connected: David Jones’s Ecopoetry in the Anathemata and ‘the Sleeping Lord’

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

David Jones (1895–1974) is best known for his works on the Great War and the Catholic religion. However, this article explores Jones’s two environmentally focused works and posits that they complement each other, as examples of ecopoetry. Although the term ‘ecopoetry’ did not exist in Jones’s time, he wove ecological issues into his literary works. In his long poem The Anathemata (1952), and in a shorter work entitled ‘The Sleeping Lord’ (1974), Jones explores the idea of a complex microorganism of nature, where environment and culture are two elements indistinguishable from each other. In both texts, the environment is described as a macrostructure on which human civilisation depends. The Anathemata presents the development of the Earth through different geological epochs but focused on the Anthropocene, the human presence, and the impact of civilisation on the planet. This poem emphasises the integration of culture and science into two different but complementary categories. It draws on Aristotelian thought and advocates breaking the artificial division between nature and culture. The Anathemata presents human civilisation as the latest stage of natural development, rather than as a self-contained system. In contrast, ‘The Sleeping Lord’ explores the human impact on the environment, both animate and inanimate, and calls for change to stop detrimental processes triggered by the development of civilisation. Despite the flourishing interest in the modernist explorations of human connections with nature, David Jones remains in the shadow of other modernists. This article aims to draw attention to the ecocritical aspect of his writing.

Jatinder Verma’s Binglishing the British Stage. Tradaptation of Tartuffe as a Case in Point

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Scholars in the field of translation studies have underscored that the nature of drama translation is contingent upon the type of theatre for which it is intended. A notable example is found in intercultural theatre, where the objective of translation is not merely to acquaint the audience with a foreign text, but rather to tailor the source text to suit the cultural context of the target audience. This essay aims to scrutinise Jatinder Verma’s tradaptation of Tartuffe, performed for the intercultural Asian theatrical company Tara Arts in London. Verma adopted the term “tradaptation” (a fusion of “translation” and “adaptation”) from the French Canadian director Robert Lepage, signifying the integration of old texts into new cultural frameworks. The play Tartuffe is transposed to the seventeenth-century Indies under French colonisation, illustrating the enduring influence of religion and deceit on individuals. Verma’s selection of dramatic texts for performance was deliberate, consistently opting for plays that resonated with the contemporary socio-political landscape in Britain. This article delineates the rationale behind choosing Tartuffe and delves into the strategies employed to assimilate a foreign text, using it as a commentary on the prevailing political climate in Great Britain.

Finding Eva Hoffman in Lost in Translation

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In her 1989 Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language, Eva Hoffman graphs so articulately the asymptotic narrative that brings her younger self into alignment with the retrospective self who writes the book, that there seems little for the literary interpreter to do but restate the author’s lucid insights. Still, appreciative criticism may yet illuminate the artistry with which this work, written by a gifted intellectual who was also a talented amateur musician, is composed: major movements at the macro-level, scrupulous performance by the page and the phrase. Hoffman not only declares here and there what her “life in a new language” means, but also manifests that meaning as an intention unfolding through the design and sequence of its leading episodes. Furthermore, her self-conscious handling of English, including its seasoning by vestigial and not-quite-translated words from Polish and other tongues, lets the verbal medium strike at times a deeply textured chord resisting the forward linearity of narrative. Thus Hoffman rehearses in the reader’s company – solicits, indeed, the construing reader’s intimate collusion in – those temporal knots of throwback and anticipation which inform her book’s most moving passages.

Natural Philosophy in Gulliver’s Travels: An Epistemological Critique

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift challenges the epistemological authority of the experimental scientific models promoted by the Royal Society. Gulliver functions as an imaginative, literary embodiment of epistemological claims, a living thought experiment, that exposes the weaknesses of the Society’s assumptions. Swift’s satire thus offers a sceptical epistemological critique to some of the most important scientific claims of the eighteenth century. This paper argues that Swift challenges the Royal Society’s methods of knowledge-making: first, Gulliver’s troubled observations bely his representation as Boyle’s ideal, modest observer; second, the Professor and his students in the Academy of Lagado undercut the social construction of facts and scientific knowledge as promoted by the Royal Society’s public experiments and written reports. Swift’s satire thus operates as a serious discursive move within the larger conversation about the truth claims of the new philosophy, and Swift situates himself not as an acolyte but as an intellectual partner in the dance between the story of science and satire.2

Perception of Success and Failure in EFL Learning: Investigating Students’ Attributional Beliefs

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Research into attributional beliefs in English as a foreign language (EFL) learning has helped determine what factors contribute to learners’ academic success and failure, providing useful information for both teachers and students. Consequently, the former were prompted to find adequate instructional settings and make effective interventions in the classroom, whereas the latter – to take control of their own learning. By assigning causes of learning outcomes to external, changeable variables, within the individual’s control, such as students’ actions, scholars encouraged students to face their failures head-on, claiming they are essential to progress and fundamental to long-term success. Such an assumption was supposed to help develop a feeling of potency and agency in students, and build up self-esteem, ramping up their academic achievement. This article reports on an interview study carried out in the Polish educational context in the 2019/20 school year with a pool of 37 high school students, diversified by their language levels, age, gender, duration of learning and school grade, and aimed at investigating students’ perceived level of success and failure in learning English and its causal attributions. The research sought to examine how participants conceptualized the notion of success and self-assessed their linguistic aptitude and personal progress, and how those factors impacted self-perception as un/successful and in/competent. The analysis of students’ narratives, both positive and negative experiences with learning English allowed the author to identify a range of attributions.

Linguistic Heterogeneity as a Means to Communicate War Experience in Philip Caputo’s A Rumor Of War

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War is a fictionalised autobiographical story that presents war from the perspective of one of its participants. In order to suffuse his text with verisimilitude, Caputo introduces various languages and their varieties, ranging from dialectal variations of American English and the professional jargon of the US marines to inclusion of other languages, such as French and Vietnamese, as well as Japanese and American pidgin English. This linguistic heterogeneity, quite different from Bakhtin’s polyphony, as the different languages do not have the same status in the memoir, serves to authenticate the story, to reflect the realities of this particular war, and to personalise characters, indicating their social and ethnic backgrounds. It also affects the reception of the text depending on the experience of the readers (the knowing and unknowing audience). Language in this case creates a bond of war experience with some readers (those who are/were familiar with the realities of Vietnam) while, paradoxically, generating some emotional distance for others. Additionally, the author provides each chapter with an epigraph, mostly quotes from English-language literature, and in particular the Great War poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, thus further diversifying the linguistic landscape of the text and universalising war. The purpose of this analysis is to explore linguistic heterogeneity (understood as the employment of different languages and their varieties) in Caputo’s memoir to pinpoint the aforementioned functions. Methodologically, the analysis is primarily based on the close reading of selected passages that include linguistic varieties to indicate their effects. It looks at how Caputo operationalises language varieties to achieve specific outcomes in his work treated as a linguistically heterogenous text, whereby the employment of particular varieties does not equal the empowerment of characters or minority groups they represent and does not necessarily provide their perspectives on that war.

Cookies vs Ciasteczka, Engine vs Silnik: The Coexistence of English Lexical and Semantic Loans in the Polish Language of Computer Science

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Polish is under the continuous influence of English these days. In the past, this influence was generally restricted to overt borrowings, i.e., lexical loans, such as P. komputer ‘computer’ < E. computer. Nowadays, other types of loans are also evident, viz. covert borrowings, e.g., semantic loans, such as P. mysz ‘mouse’ used in the sense of ‘a device attached to a computer’. The usual scenario is that a given concept taken from English is rendered either by a lexical or semantic loan. In some cases, however, both lexical and semantic loans are used with identical meanings, e.g., P. cookies ‘small files’ < E. cookies coexisting with P. ciasteczka ‘cookies’ and P. engine ‘part of a programming code upon which a program, game, etc., is based’ < E. engine coexisting with P. silnik ‘engine’. The study is based on a corpus devised and compiled by the present author. The corpus consists of short informal texts (entries) taken from 32 selected Internet forums. The study shows that the coexistence of lexical and semantic loans (used with the same meanings) is not in doubt, but the phenomenon itself is not very frequent, viz. 29 such pairs have been identified. The coexistence is rarely equal, i.e., one term is usually clearly preferred and used more frequently than the other. This paper aims to analyse this type of “lexical loan – semantic loan” doublets and to specify the linguistic criteria that may be responsible for the preference for a lexical or semantic loan. The list of possible criteria discussed in the paper includes the criterion of length, morphological adaptation and potential for new derivatives, adaptation at the level of spelling, semantic transparency, frequency of exposure, international character, and time aspect.