Katarzyna A. Małecka

Unveristy of Social Sciences, łodź poland · English

Among multiple grief narratives published in recent decades, The Pure Lover: A Memoir of Grief (2009) by David Plante stands out in its self-reflective and nonnormative approach to grief. Focusing on same-gender partner bereavement, this qualitative study explores the following areas: (1) the cultural, supportive, and egalitarian functions of the a...

The grief memoir is a fast-developing genre that in recent decades has become a popular form of public mourning and self-therapy in many Western cultures, especially in the United States and Great Britain. We surveyed 76 helping professionals to assess if the grief memoir is a genre with which they are familiar and whether they employ such narrativ...

Most Western cultures place a great value on autonomy. American society in particular has always stressed the need to succeed via self-reliance, a characteristic which, in recent decades, has additionally manifested itself in an increasing inclination for self-examination reflected in the deluge of autobiographical writing, especially memoirs. This...

Some people live to work, others work to live, while still others prefer to live lives of leisure. Since the Puritans, American culture and literature have been dominated by individuals who have valued hard work. However, shortly after its founding, America managed to produce the leisurely Rip Van Winkle, who, over time, has been followed by kindre...

Since Blood Simple, the first film they wrote and directed together, the Coen Brothers have been working their way up in the film world and, in spite of their outside-the-mainstream taste for the noir and the surreal, have earned a number of prestigious prizes. After Fargo, one of their most critically acclaimed films, expectations were high, and w...

Known yet unknown, undiscovered yet constantly discovered and re-discovered, death has always been a gold mine providing ideas, work and wages for scientists, sociologists, philosophers, artists, literary critics, and many others who find life's provisionality in any way "uncanny". This article looks at select literary definitions of death that pre...

In The Continuity of American Poetry, Roy Harvey Pearce reminds us that Puritan verse presents “little or no problem of a specifically artistic purpose” and that “the doctrine, the event, the occasion guarantee purpose, so that the poet becomes merely a reporter, such eloquence as he can command being put to a higher than poetic use” (22). Developi...