Thinking Literature: Essays on Reading Literary Classics Today

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.

Anna Kwiatek received a master’s degree in Shakespeare Studies from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, and the bachelor’s degree in English Philology from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her interests include Shakespeare on page and stage, history of emotions as well as suicide and mental illness in the works of Renaissance authors.

Marcelina Polczyńska graduated with a BA in English Language and Literature from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and an MA in Literary Translation from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her academic interests pertain primarily to historical and political counter-narrativity in 20th and 21st century English-language literature, memory studies and posthumanism.

Agnieszka Romanowska teaches history of English literature at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her research interests include literary and theatrical reception of Shakespeare, literary translation, and adaptation of literature. She has published books and articles on the theatrical potential of Shakespeare’s dramatic text, Polish poet-translators and the history of Shakespeare’s reception in Poland. She is member of the European Shakespeare Research Association.

Wiktoria Wawrzyńczyk is English Studies graduate and student of psychology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her hobbies include role-playing original characters, dancing, creative introspection, reading and discussing literature.