Polish Journal for American Studies Yearbook of the Polish Association for American Studies and the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw Vol. 9 (2015) Vol. 8 (2014) Jacek Gutorow Melancholic Interiors and Secret Objects in Henry James’s The Ivory Tower Kacper Bartczak John Ashbery: The Poetics of Plenitude and the Poet’s Biography Brian Brodhead Glaser The Spiritual Work of Art in the Poetry of Robert Duncan Małgorzata Poks Radical Christian Discipleship and the Current Transformational Moment in the United States Ewa Antoszek Cinematic Representations of Homegirls: Allison Anders’s Mi Vida Loca AMERICAN STUDIES CENTER UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW TYTUŁ ARTYKUŁU 1 Polish Journal for American Studies Yearbook of the Polish Association for American Studies Vol. 9 (2015) Warsaw 2015 2 IMIĘ NAZWISKO MANAGING EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR Marek Paryż Marek Paryż EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIALIzabella Kimak, BOARD Mirosław Miernik, Jacek Partyka, Paweł Stachura Paulina Ambroży, Patrycja Antoszek, Zofia Kolbuszewska, Karolina Krasuska, ZuzannaADVISORY Ładyga BOARD Andrzej Dakowski, Jerzy Durczak, Joanna Durczak, Andrew S. Gross, Andrea AO’ReillyDVISORY Herrera, BOARD Jerzy Kutnik, John R. Leo, Zbigniew Lewicki, Eliud Martínez, AndrzejElżbieta Dakowski,Oleksy, Agata Jerzy Preis-Smith, Durczak, Joanna Tadeusz Durczak, Rachwał, Andrew Agnieszka S. Gross, Salska, Andrea Tadeusz O’ReillySławek, MarekHerrera, Wilczyński Jerzy Kutnik, John R. Leo, Zbigniew Lewicki, Eliud Martínez, Elżbieta Oleksy, Agata Preis-Smith, Tadeusz Rachwał, Agnieszka Salska, Tadeusz Sławek,REVIE WMarekERS WilczyńskiFOR VOL. 9 Tomasz Basiuk, Julia Fiedorczuk, Paweł Jędrzejko, Anna Krawczyk-Łaskarzewska, REPawełVIE Marcinkiewicz,WERS FOR V OJadwigaL. 8 Maszewska, Zbigniew Mazur, Tadeusz Pióro, Agata TomaszPreis-Smith, Basiuk, Piotr Mirosława Skurowski, Buchholtz, Beata Williamson Jerzy Durczak, Joanna Durczak, Dominika Ferens, Paweł Jędrzejko, Ewa Łuczak, Zbigniew Mazur, Tadeusz Pióro, AgataISSN 1733–9154Preis-Smith, Justyna Wierzchowska, Beata Williamson, Justyna Włodarczyk ISSNCopyright 1733–9154 by the authors 2014 CopyrightPolish Association by the authors for American 2014 Studies, Al. Niepodległości 22, 02–653 Warsaw Polishwww.paas.org.pl Association for American Studies, Al. Niepodległości 22, 02–653 Warsaw Publisher: www.paas.org.pl Polish Association for American Studies Al. Niepodległości 22 Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw 02-653 Warsaw ul. Nowy Świat 4, 00–497 Warsaw paas.org.pl www. angli.uw.edu.pl Typesetting, cover design by Bartosz Mierzyński, www.charakter.com.pl Typesetting, cover design by Bartosz Mierzyński CoverCover Image:Image: “MartinHome of R. Mrs. Delany,” C. Vanderbilt, National PortraitNew York, Gallery, LC-B2- Washington 14-15 [P&P], D.C. courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA Nakład: 110 egz. Nakład: 130 egz. Printed by Sowa – Druk na życzenie phone:Printed +48 by Sowa22 431 – 81Druk 40 na życzenie www.sowadruk.plphone: +48 22 431 81 40; www.sowadruk.pl TYTUŁ ARTYKUŁU 3 T able of Contents ARTICLES Bożenna Chylińska The Colonial American Working Wife and Her Dear and Loving Husband Absent upon Some Public Employment: Deborah and Benjamin Franklin’s Married Life ................................................................................................................5 Jacek Gutorow “That Possible Immunity in Things”: Melancholic Interiors and Secret Objects in Henry James’s The Ivory Tower ..............................................................21 Alicja Piechucka Women and Sculptures: Femininity in Hart Crane’s Ekphrastic Poems .................. 35 Kacper Bartczak The Poetics of Plenitude and the Poet’s Biography: Self-Creation in Some Later Poems by John Ashbery .................................................................................. 51 Brian Brodhead Glaser The Spiritual Work of Art in the Poetry of Robert Duncan ..................................... 75 Joanna Mąkowska “For the Relief of the Body and the Reconstruction of the Mind”: Adrienne Rich’s Metamorphoses ............................................................................. 97 Małgorzata Poks A New Great Awakening: The Tradition of Radical Christian Discipleship and the Current Transformational Moment in the United States ........................... 113 Ewa Antoszek Cinematic Representations of Homegirls: Echo Park vs. Hollywood in Allison Anders’s Mi Vida Loca .............................................................................. 133 Karolina Słotwińska The Rising Multitude: Zombie Invasion and the Problem of Biopolitics in Max Brooks’s World War Z ............................................................................... 151 4 IMIĘ NAZWISKO REVIEWS Nicolas Barreyre, Michael Heale, Stephen Tuck, and Cécile Vidal, eds., Historians across Borders: Writing American History in a Global Age (Zbigniew Mazur) .................................................................................................. 165 Grzegorz Kosc, Robert Frost’s Political Body (Agnieszka Salska) ....................... 168 Joseph Kuhn, Allen Tate: A Study of Southern Modernism and the Religious Imagination (Grzegorz Kosc) ................................................................ 174 Simone Knewitz, Modernist Authenticities: The Material Body and the Poetics of Amy Lowell and William Carlos Williams (Alicja Piechucka) ............. 177 Conseula Francis, The Critical Reception of James Baldwin, 1963-2010 (Anna Pochmara) ................................................................................................... 181 Jean-Jacques Malo, ed., The Last Time I Dreamed About the War: Essays on the Life and Writings of W.D. Ehrhart (Aleksandra Kędzierska) .......................... 182 Alan Gibbs, Contemporary American Trauma Narratives (Agata Preis-Smith) ............................................................................................... 190 Sylvia Mayer and Alexa Weik von Mossner, eds., The Anticipation of Catstrophe. Environmental Risk in North American Literature and Culture (Joanna Durczak) ................................................................................................... 196 Marek Paryż, ed., Cormac McCarthy (Józef Jaskulski) ........................................ 200 Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis, ed., Dixie Matters: New Perspectives on Southern Femininities and Masculinities (Candela Delgado Marín) .................... 205 CONTRIBUTORS ............................................................................................... 213 Deborah and Benjamin Franklin’s Married Life 5 Bożenna Chylińska The Colonial American Working Wife and Her Dear and Loving Husband Absent upon Some Public Employment: Deborah and Benjamin Franklin’s Married Life A bstract: Although historians recognize Deborah Franklin’s abilities and accomplishments, she invariably suffers in comparison with her famous husband. She seems to have shared the fate of Anne Bradstreet a century earlier, whose worldly spouse, Simon, for years remained object of his wife’s tender affection and dutiful supervision of his affairs. The article attempts to examine and evaluate Mrs. Franklin’s immeasurable contribution to the Franklin household and business, which enabled Benjamin to act on the international arena and indulge in the frivolities of the contemporary high life, against his egalitarian declarations. Keywords: Franklin, Bradstreet, marriage, Puritanism, ethic, work More than anyone else in his time, Benjamin Franklin expounded, interpreted, and defined the cultural reality of eighteenth-century British Colonial America. Franklin, the Enlightenment sage, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a leading author, printer, politician, scientist and noted inventor, statesman, diplomat, and a friend of mankind, in many ways brought forward Cotton Ma- ther’s Puritanism into the much more secular Age of Reason in philosophy, and the Age of the Democratic Revolution in politics. Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706 in Boston which, although no longer a Puritan outpost, was a prospering commercial center sheltering preachers and ministers on the one hand, and merchants and seamen on the other. Benjamin’s father, Josiah Franklin, burdened with a large family of 17 children, was unable to pay for a college education of his youngest son. Consequently, at the age of ten, after only two years of education, Benjamin Franklin left Boston Latin School which was to prepare him for Harvard to study ministry. Thus Benjamin’s “Harvard” were the training and experience of a printer, publisher, and newspa- perman, which were enlightening enough to make him one of the most practical 6 Bożenna Chylińska business strategists and entrepreneurs of Boston and Philadelphia, and—through such virtues as diligence, frugality, and honesty, achieved by self-improvement practice and civic-improvement schemes—a beneficent member of his commu- nity. In 1718, at the age of twelve, Benjamin started serving as an apprentice to his elder brother James at his print shop. At the time, James printed the Boston Gazette, a paper established by Boston Postmaster William Booker. Significant- ly, throughout his life, Benjamin would always refer to himself as “B. Franklin, printer.” Unquestionably, the complexity of Benjamin Franklin’s character and achieve- ment resulted from his unorthodox Puritan upbringing. By assuming the Protestant ethic considerably separated from dogma