Ever since the Renaissance urge to modernize enforced irreverent reading of ancient and classical texts, the European mind resisted complete secularization. The new dissociated sensibility followed the processes of formal as well as conceptual alchemization. The papers collected in this volume map a wide range of cultural and literary discourses, from Reformation theology to reader-response criticism to modern fiction.

The Editors: Zbigniew Bia?as is Professor of English at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland. His recent publications include Mapping Wild Gardens and papers on colonial and postcolonial literature. Krzysztof Kowalczyk-Twarowski is Lecturer in American studies at the same university. He has published on South African fiction and American regional writing.