Agnieszka Romanowska

Inspired by Mary Shelley's conviction that reading is a socially significant communal activity, this book presents four essays on modern interactions with literary classics. Ancient tragedy, Shakespeare, and Frankenstein are read anew in the context of challenges and dangers we are facing nowadays. The titular phrase, thinking literature, is meant to indicate reading literature of the previous epochs in a way that allows one to contemplate human condition against the background of the past and in connection with the present. The essays on Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad, Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire, Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed, and modern reactions to suicide in Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, testify to the lasting relevance of ancient Greek tragedy, Shakespeare's plays and Mary Shalley's cautionary tale. Thinking literature by revisiting canonical texts and sharing with others the experience this brings, helps us to define, understand and confront the social and political challenges of today's increasingly complex world.

This book is a collection of articles written for Professor Marta Gibinska by her colleagues and friends, from universities both in Poland and abroad. The texts presented in this volume cover a wide spectrum of topics. Part I, devoted to Shakespeare, comprises wide-ranging work from renowned specialists in the field: studies on historical background, sources, theatrical, screen and literary reception, as well as translation. Part II contains articles which deal with multiple authors, genres and perspectives, but are uniformly passionate and insightful.The title Eyes to Wonder, Tongue to Praise, a poetic phrase borrowed from Shakespeare, conveys what seems to be a defining quality of both the contributors to this volume and its recipient: namely, the ability to translate keen appreciation of literature not into speechless awe but eloquent praise, combined with the generosity to share it with others.

The essays collected in the present volume are the result of a long-term project. An international group of scholars addressed questions connected with the relation of the changing concepts of history and the status of history in Shakespearean plays in reading and in actual representation on the stage. Especially interesting aspects of the research deal with the transposition of the time and place of Shakespeare's plays to the time and place of their reception within the context of historical awareness; equally fascinating are the studies which up the perspectives of the medieval and Renaissance contexts. Memory and how in operates (or how we operate it) turns out to be an indispensable complement to the research on the literary and dramatic representation of history. The variety of problems and aspects tackled here opens up interesting insights into the diversity of experience of and reflection on history and representation of history in Shakespeare's plays.