Między „swoim” a „obcym”: figura pośrednika w powieściach „Świat Rocannona” Ursuli K. Le Guin i „Pan Lodowego Ogrodu” Jarosława Grzędowicza

The article presents an analysis of Stephen Greenblatt’s fi gure of the middleman read\udthrough the lenses of Bernhard Waldenfels’s notion of “the third” and attributed to a comparative\udreading of two science fantasy novels: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Rocannon’s World,\udconsidered a hallmark of the genre, and Jarosław Grzędowicz’s tetralogy The Lord of the\udIce Garden. In both these works the protagonist engages in the role of a middleman, which\udallows for pointing at specifi c similarities in the storytelling, creation of the two worlds, and\uda symbolic “gate” between them. Nevertheless, it is the identity created within the sphere\udof the intermundium that remains here the most prominent issue, as it belongs neither to the\udworld abandoned by “the third,” nor to the one where “the third” fi nally fi nds him/herself