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We are delighted to introduce the new (eighth) issue of Explorations. A Journal of Language and Literature. It is wholly devoted to literary matters, mostly contemporary and focused on the area of English Studies. We hope that the few essays and reviews proposed here will provide you with some fresh insights and will give rise to unexpected encounters with new authors and ideas. After all, this is what literature is about...

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British Jews |third-generation trauma |stereotypes

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A missing parent is an element that is often found in contemporary British-Jewish novels. These are mainly texts written by granddaughters of those who lived through World War II. The novels analyzed herein tend to be very similar in their depiction of parent figures, who appear to represent the remaining presence of post-trauma from the World War II era. The concept of survival during the Shoah may include various experiences but is mostly associated with those who directly experienced the Holocaust. Yet, British Jews are often those who fled the Jewish extermination before it happened and, as a result, are frequently excluded from the discussion of World War II survivorship.

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violence |Lou Reed |Frank Wedekind |Metallica |pornography |shock |transgression

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The article analyses the literary and cultural layers of Lulu, the album published by Lou Reed in collaboration with Metallica, based on Frank Wedekind’s two modernist dramas: Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora’s Box (1904). In Reed’s reinterpretation, the two plays become his means through which he enters the area of disturbing perversion and graphic pornography. Consequently, Reeds seems to follow Susan Sontag’s diagnosis according to which the goal of pornographic literature is to disorient and to disturb mental balance. In the case of Lulu, it demonstrates Reed’s strategies of crossing the borders between what is commonly accepted and what is rejected because of its non-normative quality. It results in multilayered kinkiness that outreaches the literary frames of the project and makes it possible to view Lulu as a piece of art that is both uncompromising and visionary.

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empowerment |omnibus |Victorian urban space |gazing |inside |outside

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Introduced into the streets of first Paris and then London in the late 1820s, the omnibus quickly became a popular and convenient means of urban transport. But as many historians of culture note, the omnibus connecting different points in the metropolitan space, was a space in its own right, with a range of complications and complexities. Its interior constituted a peculiar enclave within a larger communal space and thus made its passengers experience - and negotiate between - freedom and constraint, convenience and discomfort as well as anonymity and intimacy. Using omnibus scenes in the works of such writers as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, George Augustus Sala, or Amy Levy, I shall examine some of the above-mentioned aspects of the conveyance. Most specifically, I shall look into the complexities of the visual interactions between the omnibus passengers as well as those between the passengers and the urban environment outside the vehicle.

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body |gender performativeness |witch archetype |tampon |eating disorders

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The study locates an asymmetrical dialectic of oppression in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions. It reveals Nyasha, Tambu, Lucia, Maiguru, and Ma’Shingayi’s experiences with racist-sexist dimensions in the context of a typical Shona society in colonial Rhodesia and England. The study locates cultural and political inscriptions on women’s body and sexuality and the mutually-constitutive intersections which socio-culturally and politically regulate women characters’ beliefs and body. Nyasha goes against existing political dynamics and exhibits subversive body performativeness to claim/redefine her identity and sexuality. It bespeaks of an act of political warfare. She deliberately dismantles the barriers that prohibit entrance to domains reserved for specific gender and race. As such, Nyasha’s relation with her society and the hierarchical structure of race and gender in which her identity is embedded unequivocally signify political implications. This is because Nyasha’s race, gender, and sexuality constitute her social and political identities.

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John Masefield |Harker novels |Medievalism |colonial literature |children’s literature

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During the interwar years, John Masefield wrote three novels featuring a male protagonist with the surname “Harker” struggling against an adversary called Abner Brown. The first of these novels was written for an adult audience, the remaining two for children. The chronological sequence of these three novels and the relationship between their characters is far from clear, although the recurrence of names and places gives the impression that they should be read in connection with one another. In the present study, I will argue that the trilogy, whose settings correspond to specific periods of the author’s own life, can be read as a tripartite reflection on childhood, loss and the redeeming power of art.

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Bible |Margaret Atwood |God’s Gardeners |blending |ecology |vegetarianism

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The article presents a study of selected sermons and hymns created by a fictional eco-religious cult called God’s Gardeners, which appear in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Year of the Flood. These texts are analyzed by means of Fauconnier and Turner’s theory of blending (conceptual integration). They are a mixture of different areas: the Bible and Christianity, on the one hand, and current environmental issues and science, on the other. The application of blending theory demonstrates how new interpretations of the Bible can be constructed as a result of blending two or more different input spaces to form a new story.