This book explores the covert and overt creative potential?of misunderstanding. Viewed from the authors’ perspective, misunderstanding proves an elementary and unavoidable aspect of linguistic and cultural communication that can have a surprisingly beneficial impact on social relations and concomitantly stimulate the emergence of new cultural forms. As the authors of the book prove, cross-cultural contact is definitely a dynamic and asymmetric process rather than a static and symmetric transfer of values from one culture to another.

Tamara Brzostowska-Tereszkiewicz is Associate Professor at the Department of Historical Poetics, Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. Her most recent works concern comparative modernism studies, literary translation studies and experimental translation. Magdalena Rembowska-P?uciennik is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Historical Poetics, Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. Her main subjects of research are literary theory (cognitive narratology) and literary anthropology. Beata ?niecikowska is Associate Professor at the Department of Historical Poetics, Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. Her most recent works concern transcultural genre studies, comparative avant-garde studies and intersemiotics.