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A reader of the epyllion by Dracontius, the elegy by Maximianus, and the epigram by Luxorius should not expect that these works—and these new embodiments of the 'old' genres—will be wholly identical with their 'archetypes'. Were it so, it would mean that we read but second-rate versifiers, indeed.

We may expect rather that thanks to the reading of Dracontius's epyllion, Maximianus's elegy, and Luxorius's epigram our understanding of these very genres may become fuller and deeper than if it was narrowed only to the study of the 'classical phase' of the Roman literature.

Therefore, I have decided to employ in the title of my book the expression genres rediscovered. I have found it fair to emphasize that the poets whose works have been studied here merit appreciation for their creativity, and indeed courage, in reusing and reinterpreting the classical—and truly classic—literary heritage. In addition, I have found it similarly fair to stress that for the students of Latin literature the borderline between the 'classical' and the 'post-classical' is, and should be, flexible. It is not my intention of course to imply that aesthetic and poetological differences should be ignored or blurred. Quite the reverse, these differences are profound and multidimensional and as such must be properly understood and explained. The main issue is the fact that studies of Latin literature—or rather of literature in general – and especially generic studies require a proper, i.e. diachronic, perspective. A description of a certain genre based merely on its most important or generally known representative/representatives will always risk becoming incomplete and limited. In genology, one must be utterly prudent in defining the 'main' and the 'marginal', the 'relevant' and the 'negligible'. In this sense, an insight into a few genres practiced by some 'classical'—and classic—Roman poets from the perspective of their 'post-classical' followers may be, also for a genologist, an intriguing rediscovery.

The volume offers a valuable result of a joint intercultural project between two universities from the neighbouring countries of Poland and Ukraine. Among the mass of books on intercultural communication, the proposed volume distinguishes itself by three features: unusual format combining the work of both scholars and students, the focus on the intracultural approach, and practical designation. It also stresses the increasing awareness in the modern world that teaching/learning English serves the purpose of developing general intercultural competence and not building the knowledge about the English speaking world.

The choice of topics indicates an interesting cultural difference - Ukrainiar inclination to focus on the characteristic and attractive aspects of their own culture and Polish on the problematic and the difficult.

This publication is a collection of selected papers presented at an international conference organized by the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland in May 2010. All texts included in this book have been written at that time and although two years have already passed, the essays should still be regarded as an important commentary on contemporary events, also from a more recent perspective.

The book contains a number of papers providing a thorough analysis of the processes that occurred in the United States in the initial period of the Barack Obama's administration. The first part of the publication is focused on the issues of U.S. foreign policy concerning such areas as Africa, Japan, Iran, Germany, Central and Eastern Europe. The second part refers to the political process and political institutions exampled by the Vice Presidency of Joe Biden and the relationship between the American president and the Supreme Court. The last part consists of papers dealing with social issues such as racial policy, popular movements, and Obama's public image. All these perspectives combine to form a portrayal of America at the beginning of Obama's administration. The image is probably not entirely complete, but very interesting.

The analysis of a selection of Emily Dickinson's texts confirms the notion that suffering occupies the principal position in the poet's work. Her poetry constitutes an example of a painful literary quest for subjectivity as well as an act of self-transcendence, which means that through her writing the poet obtained conscious control over her personal anguish. By using pain as a poetic strategy she transformed her private biography into a literary text. In this way she became a model for coping with suffering and using it for self-examination and self-development. In Emily Dickinson's poems suffering creates a new language and a new outlook on the self and the world. During the investigation of her poetic texts three dimensions of suffering as a poetic strategy have been distinguished: suffering as a theme, suffering as a subversive force affecting the language, and suffering as a form of poetic expression. The critical tool used for this analysis was the theory of Julia Kristeva, who emphasises these elements as crucial in the interpretation of literary texts.

The healing power of Emily Dickinson's poetry lies in her presenting that suffering also has the positive, empowering side. By displaying an astounding autonomy and showing an alternative way of existence the poet demonstrated that fulfilment can be understood in a very broad sense. Her poetry constitutes evidence that the creative processes can be used as psychotherapy for both the creator and the recipient.

Lifelong Learning Today is the result of cooperation between the scientists of the University of Ljubljana and the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. The aim of the authors and editors was not to create a compendium of knowledge about the current state of the development of education in the field of lifelong learning. The creation of a publication that would present a comprehensive, "photographic" image of the state of research and practices in the field of lifelong learning would be so laborious and long-term that it would not keep up with the constant changes which appear in reality. The authors decided to present a compilation of examples illustrating areas worth considering, contexts and practices, as well as certain problems and dilemmas.

The image of the reality outlined in this book is very selective, but "spatial" to such an extent that it enables for the grasping of its size and dynamism of development. It encompasses not only significant issues from the standpoint of economy in the scope of key competences, but also concepts related to the social, cultural, scientific, artistic and common schooling, leading to more comprehensive personal development and to raising the quality of life.

This collection provides readers with an opportunity to consider the issue of mental health and resilience from various perspectives. It examines numerous concepts of resilience as they relate to patterns of adaptation in adverse contexts. Consequently, resilience can be conceived by readers as good adaptation, effective coping, or well-being attained despite adversity.

Referring to a class of complex phenomena, resilience is not only a basic category for developmental psychopathology and positive psychology but also applies to developmental, educational, family, and health psychology, as well as to psychoneuroimmunology. The chapters in this book address the issue of resilience from either the nomothetic or the idiographic perspective. They discuss theoretical models of resilience, investigate mechanisms and processes connected with health and resilience, scrutinize various aspects of the latter (such as risk and protective factors or internal and external resources), and provide examples of support in difficult life circumstances.

"Klimkiewicz shows how the EU attempts to balance social, political, technological, and economic demands in creating media policy while making it applicable to a broad range of media systems and media cultures in member states and why its struggles to do so have produced uneven results."—Robert G. Picard, Reuters Institute, University of Oxford

"This meticulously researched book studies EU enlargement and conditionality and examines the EU's impact on new member states in Central and Eastern Europe, insightfully exploring such themes as content regulation and the promotion of European works, media ownership and media pluralism, the independence of regulatory agencies, and public-service media. Building on a state-of-the-art review of media and communications-policy scholarship and offering its own perspective on comparative approaches to the subject, the book makes an original and informed contribution to theory building and empirical research."—Peter Humphreys, University of Manchester

This volume shows the panorama of the contemporary studies of the Polish Renaissance, presented here in the Italian and transalpine context, taking into consideration its characteristics. An important aspect of this volume is the specification of the research needs and the definition of new directions of studies and their methodology. A large, multiethnic and multireligious state, which was Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów) shaped its modern identity in the sixteenth century. This period gave rise to the flowering of literature and art, creating the Golden Age of Polish culture. The ideas of Renaissance humanism proved to be vitally attractive for the domestic elites and contributed to the creation of the foundations of the political system of the Commonwealth, becoming its pride—a republic with an elected king, where both passive and active electoral rights were vested in the entire Gentry Nation. The Latin Culture of the Renaissance became also an integrating factor for this multilingual state organism, and Latin, together with Polish was the main medium of communication among nobility (who accounted for about 10 percent of the inhabitants of the Republic).

The disintegration of this commonwealth, the loss of independence for more than a century (1795-1918), and then loss of sovereignty for another half of a century (1939-1989) and then isolation between Poland and the West resulted in the fact that the culture of this area was not included in the studies of the European Renaissance, which were commenced in the nineteenth century. This gap has been seen until today in the Western course books and more general overviews. The purpose of this volume is, at least to a limited degree, to fill in the lack of scientific analyses of the Polish Renaissance in western languages and also to invite foreign scholars to a debate about Polish humanistic literature.

Particular chapters concentrate on the following issues: From the History of the Renaissance Idea; The State of Research on the Renaissance Humanism: Poland Case; Editing of Primary Sources; Old and Contemporary Translation Studies; The Renaissance Genres (Theory and Practice).

?This book tackles the issue of individual rights within the Polish constitutional system. It begins by asking why the horizontal effect of individual rights was not contemplated in Polish jurisprudence until the 1980s, and why it is not expressly addressed in the Polish Constitution despite the proposal of a relevant clause during the drafting process. Through extensive research, the author finds that the decision to abandon this clause was done on purpose, therefore nothing stands in the way of incorporating the horizontal application of constitutional rights into the framework of the Polish Constitution.

The author then analyzes the regulation of individual rights and freedoms in Poland's constitution to determine whether the document covers rights or freedoms that may have a horizontal dimension. Further chapters then seek to determine what practical form the direct application of the constitution may take when examining the horizontal dimension of constitutional rights; the scope of the horizontal application of constitutional rights and the related issue of the collision of constitutional rights; and the three basic models for the horizontal operation of individual rights to determine their applicability within the Polish constitutional system. In different countries, these models are applied in a parallel and complementary manner. This book makes available to English-speaking readers the inner workings of Polish jurisprudence and their effect on individual rights legislation beyond the boundaries of Poland.

?This book looks at the development of language skills in Swedish as a second language in young adults, beginning from the first months of their second language instruction and ending after three years of intensive language courses. The focus is on three proficiency dimensions: complexity, accuracy, and fluency, and their interplay at group level and in individual students.

At the beginning of the second language learning process, accuracy, complexity, and fluency are not integrated in the learner's mind and they tend to act in an arbitrary fashion. During second language development, integration of all dimensions proceeds steadily and after three years of learning the discrepancy between different aspects of proficiency is very low. The study traces the mutual impact of each dimension on particular aspects in order to identify four distinct learner profiles. The goal of this book is to provide a platform for further discussion of the dynamics of second language development and the interconnectedness of the systems involved in this development. Iwona Kowal calls for an individual approach to be taken with every learner and for development to be treated as a constant interplay between many factors.

This book sets out to present the Polish-Russian conflict the way the elite of Russian society saw it. One of its chief research topics is the interaction between Russian public opinion, the policy the Empire pursued on its uncompliant subjects, and the impact the Polish conflict had on the evolution of Russian political ideas and movements. A major issue it addresses is the reaction of Russian society, its diverse political factions and social and philosophical trends and their relationship to the Polish national movement, and the effect of the Polish question on their evolution. Research in numerous archives and manuscript collections in Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, played a fundamental role in the work for this book.

This book was originally published in Polish as Fatalna sprawa: Kwestia polska w rosyjskiej mysli politycznej (Kraków: Arcana, 2000). It was awarded the Klio Prize, a prestigious Polish award for the best monograph on a historical subject. This English translation is an abridged version (about 1/3 of the book's original size).

This book is an attempt to diagnose the condition of (post-)modern comparative literature and to formulate its role in the media society in a multicultural world. Andrzej Hejmej reviews the current situation of an “indiscipline” in the widest possible perspective, taking into account both the first concepts from the nineteenth century, including proposals from the French comparative literary scholars, Goethe's idea of Weltliteratur, and the institutional work of H. Von Meltzl, as well as the latest concepts from the comparative literary scholars from Western Europe and the U.S.

The history of the formation of the main trends of comparative literary studies is explained through the use of metaphors: the Eiffel Tower, the World Trade Center, and the Tower of Babel. Tackling a variety of proposals from comparative literature scholars as well as proposals from researchers into intermedial and intercultural phenomena leads us to a new look at comparative literature and comparative literary studies. As a result, Hejmej understands modern comparative literature not so much as a further extension of the institutional dimension but more as an interpretative practice embedded in everyday life. This intercultural perspective opens new horizons for comparative literary studies in the twenty-first century.

The book presents the biography of Maria, daughter of Christopher Lekapenos (the eldest son of emperor Romanos I). For about 35 years, she was the tsaritsa of the Bulgarians at the side of her husband, Tsar Peter (927-969). Her character is but dimly visible in the sources; interestingly, the few sources that do mention her are almost exclusively of Byzantine provenance. Most scholars who have dealt with her life—usually as a side note to studies on Peter’s reign—saw in her a representative of the interests of Constantinople and a propagator of Byzantine culture. Some have gone so far as to call her a Byzantine agent at the Bulgarian court.

In this book, the first monograph on Maria ever to have been written, Mirosław J. Leszka and Zofia A. Brzozowska construct a balanced narrative of the tsaritsa’s life and her role in tenth-century Bulgaria through meticulous analysis of primary sources, putting aside biases. The publication is supplemented by a translation of the fragments of the Hellenic and Roman Chronicle of the second redaction devoted to Maria and Peter.

This book attempts to describe and understand the processes which are at work in the Polish and Swedish contexts and lead to the construction of new, Europeanized representations of the past. It asks how the ongoing process of European political integration influences local, regional, national, and transnational interpretations of the past in these two countries. It is the outcome of a multidisciplinary effort on the part of Polish and Swedish researchers working in the fields of ethnology and cultural anthropology, the sociology of culture, history, memory, and heritage studies. It describes a variety of cases and approaches while at the same time being firmly anchored in shared research questions and the authors' common attempts to grasp the sometimes fluid and elusive aspects of the Europeanization of heritage and memories in Poland and Sweden.

The selection of cases presents the diverse directions of the processes of Europeanization as well as its dynamics in places which differ in terms of their axiology. The contributors analyze its influence in places connected with contemporary museum narration (Lucja Piekarska-Duraj), transnational initiatives (Lars-Eric Jönsson), regional/transnational idylls (Eleonora Narvselius), national pride (Krzysztof Kowalski), dark memories from the period of the Second World War (Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, Björn Magnusson Staaf, Elisabeth Büttner) and new forms of heroism (Ulf Zander, Katarzyna Suszkiewicz). The examples of the Europeanization of heritage and memory provided in this volume show that its efficacy varies, with some places easily being linked to the European context and others resisting it. In other words, it does not follow the same course everywhere nor does it lead to the same redefinition of the past.