Money, Banks and Business in British and American Literature, Culture and Language

From the Editor 7

Part One: Literature and Culture

Daniel Defoe as an advocate of maritime enterprise, international trade and business. A study of Robinson Crusoe (parts 1 and 2), Captain Singleton, and A New Voyage Round the World - Marek Błaszak 13

"In possession of a good fortune". Money and the question of matrimony in the selected novels of Jane Austen - Bojana Bujwid-Sadowska 29

Business, money and the English gentleman in Victorian novel - Marlena Marciniak 41

"[G]old for the note" and the logic of economic exchange in Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford - Agnieszka Setecka 55

In the company of power. Wealth, society and speculation in Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now - Małgorzata Nitka 67

The anthropology of the modern world in eighteenthand early nineteenth-century money narratives - Joanna Maciulewicz 89

Argentina means silver. Ricardo Piglia's Money to Burn as a critique of the sacralisation of money - Justyna Ziarkowska 103

Money - profi t - salvation. Predicates of American civil religion - Piotr Grabowiec 119

Part Two: Language

'Do you speak business?' On successful teaching ESP to business students and professionals with an advanced level of English - Ewa Bułat 147

The Polish Kodeks spółek handlowych [The Commercial Companies Code] in English. Selected translational and terminological issues - Tomasz P. Górski 163

Notes on the Authors 183

Marek Błaszak obtained his MA from Wrocław University for a thesis on foreign and exotic settings in D. H. Lawrence's novels, PhD from Łódź University for a dissertation on Ann Radcliffe and the Romantic revival, and the degree of habilitated doctor (DLitt) from Opole University for a monograph on Captain Frederick Marryat as a proper father of the English sea novel. He has published around 40 academic articles and given a number of conference presentations, covering a range of issues and problems in English, American, and French prose fiction, and dedicated - apart from the above-mentioned writers - to Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, Thomas Love Peacock, Charles Dickens, Michael Cunningham, Philip Roth, and the Abbé Prévost.

Bojana Bujwid-Sadowska graduated from and subsequently taught at the University of Silesia. Her doctorate focused on the topos of labyrinth in the writings of Anaïs Nin. Her research interests include contemporary British novel, especially Kazuo Ishiguro's fiction. Currently she has been lecturing at Wrocław School of Banking.

Ewa Bułat holds her PhD degree in English linguistics from the University of Wrocław and a diploma in Business English at level C2 from the University of Cambridge. Her academic achievements include several publications and conference presentations in theoretical linguistics. Professionally, she filled positions in business development and marketing & sales both at executive and specialist level, working for London Chamber of Commerce and Industry IQ and a British IT company. As a result, her research interests have shifted to teaching ESP and specialist business subjects in English. Currently, she is an assistant professor at Wrocław School of Banking.

Tomasz P. Górski graduated the University of Wrocław in 2001, where he also obtained his Ph.D. in 2005. He has been researching in linguistics and translation as well as working as a translator for The Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He is a member of the Wrocław branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and author of numerous articles published in Poland and abroad. His research includes theory and practice of translation, language and cultural studies, cognitive linguistics, and literary-linguistic interface. To date he edited the book At the Crossroads of Linguistic Sciences (Kraków 2006), and Miłosz in "Pamiętnik Literacki" (Warszawa 2013), the first online English publication of the oldest Polish studies scholarly periodical in Poland. Polskie przekłady "Hamleta" Williama Shakespeare'a. Analiza intertekstualna [Polish Translations of Shakespeare's "Hamlet". Intertextual Analysis] (Wrocław 2013) is his latest monograph.

Piotr Grabowiec, habilitated doctor (DSc) and political sciences scholar, graduated the University of Wrocław, and is currently employed in the Department of European Studies, University of Wrocław, and in the Department of Political Sciences, Wrocław School of Banking. His research includes political theory and political philosophy, especially civil religion, political theology, biopolitics, surveillance society, theories of civilizations and relations between them. He authored 36 articles and two monographs: Model of a Civil Society in the Historiosophy of Feliks Koneczny (2000) and Civil Religion as a Theoretical Proposal for Political Integration of the
European Community (2013).

Joanna Maciulewicz, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University. Her research interests include history of the book and literature of the long eighteenth century. She has published articles on various aspects of English eighteenth-century fiction. She is currently working on a post-doctoral book on the representation of book culture in eighteenth-century literature which addresses such problems as orality, literacy, print culture, commercialisation of literature and authorship.

Marlena Marciniak, PhD, works as an assistant professor at the Institute of English, Opole University. She specialises in Victorian fiction and culture, as well as gender studies, especially masculinity studies. She has published several articles on the Victorian concepts of fatherhood, married life and male homosocial relations, as well as on the nineteenth-century ideals of manliness. Her recent research interests include monstrous masculinities, subversive masculine activities and male disability in the Victorian period.

Małgorzata Nitka, habilitated doctor (DLitt) is an associate professor in the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures, University of Silesia. Her research interests cover English literature and culture of the 19th century, particularly social and cultural aspects of the Industrial Revolution. Her major publication in this field is Railway Defamiliarisation, The Rise of Passengerhood in the Nineteenth Century (2006), an analysis of cultural changes following the development of the railway in the 19th century. She also published articles on Charles Dickens, George Gissing, and Elizabeth Gaskell.

Agnieszka Setecka, DLitt, is an associate professor in the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University. Her interests include Victorian fiction, women's literature, history of the English novel, realism in literature. She has published several articles in academic journals and in article collections and she is the author of Vanishing Realities. Social Significance of Material Culture in Victorian Novelistic Discourse (2013), which is a study of the relations between Victorian literature and culture.

Justyna Ziarkowska, DLitt and associate professor, is a Hispanist scholar specialising in twentieth-century Spanish and Latin American literature. Her research interests lie with narrative techniques and avant-garde poetics. She is the editor-in-chief of the eminent peer-reviewed journal Estudios Hispánicos. She is the author of two monographs Ucieczka do głębi. O surrealizmie w literaturze hiszpańskiej przed 1936 [An Escape into Depth. On Surrealism in Spanish Literature Before 1936] (2010) and W gorączce. Krytyka literacka Maurycego Mochnackiego i Mariano José de Larra [In Fever. Literary Criticism of Maurycy Mochnacki and Mariano José de Larra] (2004), a co-author of a critical anthology W poszukiwaniu Alefa. Proza hispanoamerykańska w świetle najnowszych badań [In Search of Alef. Hispano-American Prose in the Light of the Latest Research] (2007), and of a book Rzeczywiste i możliwe. Rozmowy z Florianem Śmieją [The Real and the Possible. Conversations with Florian Śmieja] (2005), as well as the editor of volumes of essays and the author of articles published both in Poland and abroad.