The study deals with human community and its relation with the individual. It takes recourse to the notions of friendship, moral respect and solidarity which allow for the extension of the notion of community above the limitations of the human sphere and takes up Thoreau’s work as early and prophetic diagnosis of the modern crisis of relationships.

The series "Katowice Interdisciplinary and Comparative Studies" publishes works of scholars who, on the one hand, wish to see literary works in the unceasing dialogue with other arts and, on the other, want to rethink literary theory. It contains essays on a wide range of topics which include studies of individual texts placing them in a rich web of comparative references as well as in-depth investigations of particular notions in their historical and multicultural contexts.

Dwight Macdonald was the most prominent American excoriator of mass culture in the 1950s and ‘60s, but has since been derided as elitist and irrelevant. argues against previous interpretations, offering new perspectives on a figure that grappled with issues of culture that remain ever-pertinent.