The work presents articles discussing various subjects relating to literary, cultural borders and borderlands as well as their crossings with the Orient and the Occident. A broad, multifaceted scope of the volume draws the attention of readers to the problem of liminal spaces between cultures, genres, codes and languages of literary and artistic communication. The perspective of borderness proposed by orientalists, literary specialists, culture experts provide insights into multi-dimensional and heterogenic subjects and methods of consideration. The authors referring to, inter alia, comparative studies, theory of reception, intertextuality, transculturality of the East and West works touch upon themes such as coexistence, exclusion, crossing or the instability of borders. Also by taking into account identity issues, the interpenetration of various influences between different literatures, poetics and languages, the readers gain a broader context of intercultural dialogue between the Orient and Occident, what allow them to transgress barriers of a purely artistic, literary reception of the book contents. The volume – due to the abundance of proposed topics, its heterogeneous representations and manifold approaches used in analysis, discussion and (re)interpretations – is a debate’s record or a result of an academic reflection rather than a comprehensive monograph.

ALMAHASHEER, Muneerah Bader (Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Saudi Arabia)
Adaptations and Evocations of Orientalism in Nazik al-Mala’ika’s Poetry

BEDNARCZYK, Adam (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland)
Poetic Souvenirs: The Meaning of Ise monogatari in Sōkyū’s Miyako no tsuto

DEREZHYTSKA, Tetiana (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine)
Dichotomy “East-West” in the English modernist novel: imagological perspective

EWERTOWSKI, Tomasz (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)
The Great Wall of China in Polish and Serbian travel writing (since the 18th till the middle of the 20th century)

HARENDA, Olivier (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland)
The Boundaries of Historical Accuracy: Contemporary Re-reading of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

JAROSZ, Aleksandra (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland)
The Story of Isamiga: analysis of a Miyakoan epic song

KUBAREK, Magdalena (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland)
Between Literature and Ideology.
Ad-da‘wa Al-Islāmiyya in the novels by Naǧīb Al-Kaylānī

LEWICKA, Magdalena (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland)
Ar-Riḥla in the service of An-Nahḍa. Rifā ‘a aṭ-Ṭahṭāwī’s concept of crossing
geographical and cultural boundaries

MARZEC, Karolina (University of Lodz, Poland)
Bringing the Orient to the Empire – an analysis of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess and The Secret Garden

MOZAHEB, Mohammad Amin; SHAHIDITABAR, Mostafa (Imam Sadiq University, Iran)
MOHAMMADI, Mohammad-Javad (University of Tehran, Iran)
An In-depth Comparative Study of Victor Hugo and Shahriar’s Poetry

NOWICKA, Olga (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Crossing Boundaries: From Private to Public Space Memoirs of Antarjanam

OBRENOVIĆ, Milica (Independent researcher, Serbia)
World of Haruki Murakami – Hidden World of Ourselves

SADYKHOVA, Arzu (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)
Formation of Plot Canon in Arabic Literature: The Case of Love Stories About Poets of Bedouins

SOKOŁOWICZ, Małgorzata (University of Warsaw,The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, Poland)
Crossing the Borders of Decency. Gustave Flaubert, Maxime du Camp and their Oriental Journey

ŠTEINMANE, Zane (University of Latvia, Latvia)
Borderlines of Morality: Exploring the Ethos of the Mu’allaqat

SUTCLIFFE, Benjamin (Miami University, USA)
Trifonov’s Turkmenia: Optimism, Despair and the Intelligentsia

UYANIK, Gözde Begüm; KARAVIN, Harika (Istanbul University, Turkey)
Role of translation in identity formation: A case study of Turkish translations of Martine

ZHANG CZIRÁKOVÁ, Daniela (Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia)
Crossing borders in opposite direction. An influence of Western elements in contemporary Chinese poetry

Adam BEDNARCZYK – MA in Oriental philology, specialization Japanology at the Jagiellonian University, Institute of Oriental Philology (2006); PhD in the Humanities (Japanese language and culture) from Osaka University, Japan (2010). Since 2010 Assistant Professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Department of Japanese Studies, and senior lecturer at the Department of Japanese Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in 2011–2014. His research fields are medieval Japanese prose, influences of Chinese literature and culture on medieval Japanese literature, text-image interrelations in pre-modern Japanese culture, and traditional ludic culture in Japan. Major work: Kinsei no eawase (Toruń 2013).

Magdalena KUBAREK – PhD in Arab philology, literary translator, Assistant Professor at the Department of Arabic Language and Culture of Nicolas Copernicus University in Torun and lector in School of Eastern Languages of Warsaw University. Her research fields are contemporary Arabic literature and intercultural interferences. Major works: Mirages and Oasis, Suad as-Sabah and other Women Poets of Kuwait, (Warszawa 2006), The Death Motif in the Works of Contemporary Arab Women Poets (Łódź 2009). Polish translations from Arabic: Abd ar-Rahman Munif, Cities of Salt (Sopot 2010) and Khalil Gibran, The Broken Wings (Warszawa 2012).

Maciej SZATKOWSKI – graduated from the Adam Mickiewicz University (MA in Sinology), head of the Center for Chinese Language and Culture at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. In 2016, he received PhD in the Humanities with the dissertation on Meng Jinghui’s works at Warsaw University. Lecturer and translator of Chinese. Member of Polish Orient Society and Polish Society of Theater Studies. Major research fields: postmodern drama, contemporary Chinese literature and culture.

Orient, literature, Asian writing, Western literature, Orientalism, Orient-Occident, East-West, borders, borderlines, liminality, otherness, tradition, literary inspiration, intertextuality, comparative studies, intercultural relations, travel literature, translation studies, imagology