• Moving young people’s imagination and teaching them objective evaluation and the art of discussion;
• Building the skill of reading with comprehension;
• Practising the principles of effective communication;
• Unaided construction of utterances aimed at solving a given problem;
• Showing Olga Tokarczuk as a writer with extraordinary creation skills owing to which her writing consists of telling intriguing stories based on a psychological foundation;
• Drawing attention to the use of existential and philosophical issues merged with an engaging fictional element;
• Showing how Tokarczuk manages to discuss universal matters while maintaining an individual character of her stories;
• Showing the importance of storytelling itself to Tokarczuk;
• Analysis and interpretation of Tales of the Bizarre;
• Showing the pro-ecological tone of the works, the diversity of human fears, which also reveal things hidden deeply in the human subconsciousness, the dualistic perception of reality, the bizarre nature of the world, and the crossing of boundaries (those which are located between life and death and related to old age, those which separate human aspects from animal ones, and those which are connected with entering into relationships with new technologies or religiousness);
• Showing that one can use the eccentricity potential within common events to throw the readers beyond their habits, testing the boundaries of their sensitivity and reading resilience

• The student: understands the relationships and connections between various literatures, cultures and communication codes;
• has basic knowledge of the main development directions and chief recent achievements regarding the history of Polish literature and literary theory;
• knows and understands the specificity of the main methods of analysis and interpretation of literary texts;
• can present a coherent interpretation of a literary text according to the assumptions of a selected literary studies method (school) and with the use of cultural contexts;
• can interpret texts of literary criticism and literary theory;
• can identify and describe the elements of a historical convention, style or current in an analysed literary text;
• can carry out a poetics analysis and a stylistic analysis of a literary text on all the levels of its structural organization;
• has the skill of formulating subject matter arguments and drawing research conclusions;
• can engage in a subject matter conversation with other participants.

Coogle, Mentimeter, Padlet, any remote education platform which enables interaction (e.g. MS TEAMS)

The group of students can be divided into smaller ones. Each group will be given a different story to analyze. The stories will concern following problems: aging and dying, human vs. animals, new technologies, religion.

Inspiring students to develop their reading interests; perfecting the skills of analysing and interpreting a literary work. The classes will be devoted to the analysis and interpretation of Olga Tokarczuk’s Tales of the Bizarre, which will serve as the basis for discussing the most significant tendencies in female writing as well as the broadly defined aspect of crossing various kinds of boundaries. The aim of the classes is to draw attention first and foremost to the human’s unprivileged position in the ecosystem (and hence to the pro-ecological tones) as well as to the hazards stemming from human subconsciousness, new technologies or postsecularism.

Anthropocentrism, posthumanism, identity, metamorphosis, boundary, ecocriticism, ecology, postsecularism, cloning

STEP I
The teacher encourages the students to participate in a warm-up exercise entitled ‘Storytelling’ (described in the Warm-up set, exercise no. 3). The teacher suggests three topics of a short story which will be created together. Sample topics: 1. Cyborgs are among us. 2. My strangest adventure. 3. ‘A book is a bit like a human.’ The exercise is aimed at reviving, engaging and stimulating the students’ creativity. After choosing the topic together, the teacher begins the storytelling. The next person adds a sentence. The exercise is continued until a short story is created or until each participant has uttered at least two or three sentences. The task is supposed to make the students feel at ease and show them that virtually everyone can create, achieving various results. The task also serves as an introduction to demonstrating Olga Tokarczuk’s creative strategy: the writer usually chooses common events as the starting points for exploring peculiarity.

STEP II
The teacher familiarizes the students with the most important aspects of Olga Tokarczuk’s literary output and with selected facts from her biography, highlighting, among other things, her winning of the Nobel Prize. This can be done using a presentation prepared in PowerPoint or on Padlet. The presentation can be prepared using the biographical film Podróże Olgi T. [The journeys of Olga T.] (1996, directed by Ewa Pytka) or the text by Paweł Kozioł: ‘Olga Tokarczuk’ https://culture.pl/pl/tworca/olga-tokarczuk [access: 30.03.2022]. However, it is recommended to play a short film ‘Olga Tokarczuk laureatką literackiej Nagrody Nobla’ [Olga Tokarczuk: a Nobel Prize winner] made by Professor Przemysław Czapliński, in which he synthetically summarizes Olga Tokarczuk’s writing to date: https://youtu.be/82iMZmB0vSo

STEP III
The teacher encourages a discussion about the watched film, asking guiding questions:

• What is the phenomenon of Olga Tokarczuk’s literary output?
• What is Olga Tokarczuk’s thematic scope of interest?
• What does it mean that Olga Tokarczuk is a ‘global citizen’?

The students give answers, practising their skills of constructing utterances, drawing conclusions and formulating arguments.

STEP IV
The teacher explains the origin and meaning of the tales’ title, citing Tokarczuk’s words: ‘I have selected the word “bizarre” as their title frame because I think that their common denominator is penetration of the periphery of our experience and tackling new topics which appear within the scope of our interests, fears and anxieties. These include cloning, body, human solitude, the inability to comprehend the world, social roles and our positions in those roles. To what extent are we constructed by external expectations and by our own prime mower respectively?’ (‘Olga Tokarczuk: ja już jestem takim trochę robotem’ [Olga Tokarczuk: I already am a bit of a robot myself], 2018, an interview by Emilia Padoł. https://kultura.onet.pl/wywiady-i-artykuly/olga-tokarczuk-ja-juz-jestem-takim-troche-robotem-wywiad/6zknwet [access: 29.07.2021].), as well as the conclusion drawn by one critic: ‘In English and French, this word is used to denote a hardly perceptible weirdness or untypical nature of an object or situation. Still, it is difficult to formulate a direct definition, so it is better to use a metaphor instead – a spatial metaphor in this case. The bizarre is a condition into which the reality falls in borderline places and transitional states, where the impact of various and frequently opposite forces weakens’ (M. Sowiński, 2018, ‘Olgi Tokarczuk dziwniejsze opowieści’ [Olga Tokarczuk’s weirder stories]. https://krytykapolityczna.pl/kultura/czytaj-dalej/olga-tokarczuk-opowiadania-bizarne-recenzja/ [access: 28.07.2021]). The teacher asks what borderline places and transitional states the author may mean.

STEP V
The teacher uses a mind map (exercise 2 described in Consolidating exercises) in Coggle to make the students share their insights after reading Olga Tokarczuk’s Tales of the Bizarre for the classes. The students prepare a mutual list of the topics explored by the writer. The list may include: pro-ecology, the diversity of human fears, which also reveal things hidden deeply in the human subconsciousness, the dualistic perception of reality, the bizarre nature of the world, and the crossing of boundaries (those which are located between life and death and related to old age, those which separate human aspects from animal ones, and those which are connected with entering into relationships with new technologies or religiousness). If needed, the teacher suggests the necessary adjustments or additions.

STEP VI
The teacher commences a discussion about crossing the boundaries, the human’s unprivileged position in the ecosystem and the hazards stemming from human subconsciousness, new technologies or postsecularism. The questions asked include, among other things, the following: What benefits may the technological progress bring about? What is the role of religion in human life? How do we cope with fear? This is also an opportunity to introduce such terms as anthropocentrism, posthumanism, identity, metamorphosis, boundary, ecocriticism, ecology, postsecularism and cloning.

STEP VII
To conclude the classes, the teacher offers an exercise entitled ‘Do you have any questions?’ (exercise 3 in ‘Reference to previously acquired knowledge’). The teacher requests the students to ask questions concerning the discussed topic. The students type the questions using the Mentimeter tool which displays the questions. The teacher can choose the display of the questions in a sequence or as one cloud. The teacher then answers the questions or involves the students themselves in answering them.