The 20th volume of the journal “Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne” (“Poznań Slavonic Studies”) is dedicated to the image of animals in language, literature, folklore and culture in the broadest sense.
It is a wellknown fact that fauna and flora play an important and essential role in human life. Animals accompany people in everyday life, help them at work, but also serve as a source of food and different materials (e.g. skin). Of course, they are perceived as totems, friends, enemies and pets as well.
Many ancient philosophers were fascinated with the interference of human and animal worlds. Aristotle pointed at a close relation between them and he compared men to animals, emphasizing that only intellect could be a human distinguishing quality. The Bible and Quran played also a big role in constructing symbolic meanings of concrete animals.
Direct and indirect contact with animals, evoking both admiration and disgust, is an inspiration for describing their appearance, but also for attributing unjustified characteristics to them, a fact which is visible especially in phraseology and paremiology. Intriguing stereotypes related to animals dominate in different contexts.
However, an attitude to animals differs in all linguistic and cultural milieus. Their varied roles are expressed in national ceremonies, customs, mythology, religion, oral and written literatures, a fact which leads to a conclusion that the image of the animal world is not constructed only on an experimental base.
In this volume of the journal we aim to unify viewpoints of different research fields, because we want to show that the close connection between human and animal beings does not stop raising interest and it opens new perspectives in research approaches to the phenomena called animalistic world. We are sure that contributions will fulfil previous knowledge about human orientation toward animal beings and interlacement of their existence.
In the framework of mentioned problematics, we propose possible thematic fields taken from linguistics, folklore studies, literature and cultural zoology:
- animals as symbols
- animals in mythology
- animals in literature
- stereotypization of animals
- anthropomorphism and zoomorphism
- zoosemy
- contrastive research of zoonemic and animalistic phrases and proverbs
- animalistic feminism
You can send articles in all Slavonic languages, in English and other congressional languages, edited according to the instructions on the page https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/pss/about/submissions to the e-mail address; studiaslawistyczne@gmail.com or submit them on the platform https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/pss/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions until 30 November 2020.
The suggested length of papers is 30000 signs with a summary (about 700 characters), key words in English and a short note about the author (max 700 characters), ORCID number of the author and e-mail address.
Please confirm your participation in this volume until the 20th of February. The title of the work is expected to be sent until 20 March.
The thematic editors of the 20th volume are Ana Samardžić and Ivana Vidović Bolt.