Marvels of Reading. Essays in Honour of Professor Andrzej Wicher

"Marvels of Reading: Essays in Honour of Professor Andrzej Wicher" is a collection predominantly in English that celebrates the 60th birthday of Professor Andrzej Wicher, a leading Polish scholar of medieval and Shakespearean studies. This volume compiles eleven essays by renowned Polish academics specializing in literature, culture, and philosophy of English-speaking regions, including friends and former students of the Professor. The essays are centered on the research interests of the honoree. Topics discussed include studies of Old Germanic, Old English, and Middle English literature, John Milton's "Paradise Lost," G. M. Hopkins' poetry, the philosophy of melancholy, the structure of fairy tales, and the translation of Middle English chivalric romance. Articles featured in the collection are: "Margery Kempe's Roman (Purgatorial) Holiday, or on Penance and Pleasure in Medieval Journeys" by Liliana Sikorska; "Magic and Religion in the Prose Merlin" by Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz; "All That is Wrought is not Gold: Locating Wealth in Old English Gnomic Texts" by Rafał Borysławski; "The Character of Isu Krist in the Old Saxon Gospel Harmony The Hliand as a Dramatic Cultural Synthesis Combining Elements of Deep Christian Piety and the Germanic Code of Heroic Honour" by Łukasz Neubauer; "'Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving?': 'Spring and Fall' in the Poetic Thoughts of Gerard Manley Hopkins (and Charles Taylor's Philosophy)" by Ewa Borkowska; "Ethnically Different Mothers-in-law in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale and Its 2003 BBC Adaptation" by Anna Czarnowus; "Jacques and the Politics of Melancholia" by Tadeusz Sławek; "Death and the Hero - Paradise Lost and the Problem of Theomachia" by Maria Błaszkiewicz; "A Fairy Tale in Focus: Ecstatic Focalisations in A Christmas Carol" by Jacek Mydla; "Czytanie cudów w Panu Gawenie i Zielonym Rycerzu i Opowieści Franklina" by Barbara Kowalik; and "More Motivated Malignity? The Ominous Agenda of the Green Knight in Andrzej Wicher's Translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by Piotr Spyra. This work is particularly valuable for English philologists, scholars of Anglo-Saxon literary culture, and students of English philology.