Późne lato” Johna Crowleya jako postmodernistyczna wizja procesualnej koncepcji tożsamości

The article John Crowley’s “Engine Summer”: A Postmodern Vision of the Processual Construction of Identity analyses the eponymous novel as pivoted around the narrative’s role in constructing both individual and collective identity. Drawing from Mieke Bal’s narrative theory, as well as a number of established (such as paratextuality) and emerging theoretical concepts (Piotr Kubiński’s emersion), Gancarczyk emphasises the multifacetedness of novelistic references, including the stereotypisation of the Other and top-down control of social relationships. Furthermore, Engine Summer is interpreted here as drawing the reader’s attention to the medium itself and to the embodied text which co-creates narrative identity, allowing for its inscription and transmission—an idea literally realised in a postapocalyptic world of the novel. Finally, Gancarczyk shows how Campbell’s concept of monomyth reverberates in Crowley’s narrative, proving pivotal for the overall interpretation, indicating the active role of the medium and narrative subjectivity in constructing the meaning.