Polish Literature and National Identity

Polish Literature and National Identity
Author: Dariusz Skórczewski
Publisher:
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2020
Genre: Group identity
ISBN: 1580469787

"Although for half a century East-Central Europe was part of the Soviet empire and was subject to its "civilizing" mission, its colonial status escaped the attention of most postcolonial critics. It still remains a blank spot in global studies of postcolonialism. In Polish Literature and Identity: A Postcolonial Landscape Dariusz Skórczewski argues for the advantages of applying postcolonial thought to Polish realities; at the same time, he modifes the theoretical framework worked out by other postcolonialists. The book seeks to reveal how Poland's two lines of experience-one of foreign hegemony since the late 1700s through 1989 (excluding a short period of sovereignty between the two world wars); and the other of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as itself a pre-modern empire-have shaped the culture of contemporary Polish society. The book focuses on identity transformations as reflected in Polish literature and critical discourses. It opens up the question of the identity of a postcolonial nation in contemporary East-Central Europe where globalization and cosmopolitanism clash with growing national sentiments, making predictions about a speedy advent of a post-national era premature. The first few chapters are devoted to the postcolonial theorizing of Poland in the East Central European context. This part of the book seeks relevant language(s) and registers for the analysis of the cultural condition of East Central Europe as a part of the world which slipped most postcolonial critics' attention. The second part of the book (Chapters 7-11) deal with the effects of the colonial encounter on Poles' self-perception and perception of Others, as reflected in Romantic and modern Polish literature. The book closes with a Postscript titled "Three Warnings," outlining a critique of postcolonial theory and criticism"--

Traitors and True Poles

Traitors and True Poles
Author: Karen Majewski
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2003-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0821441116

During Poland’s century-long partition and in the interwar period of Poland’s reemergence as a state, Polish writers on both sides of the ocean shared a preoccupation with national identity. Polish-American immigrant writers revealed their persistent, passionate engagement with these issues, as they used their work to define and consolidate an essentially transnational ethnic identity that was both tied to Poland and independent of it. By introducing these varied and forgotten works into the scholarly discussion, Traitors and True Poles recasts the literary landscape to include the immigrant community’s own competing visions of itself. The conversation between Polonia’s creative voices illustrates how immigrants manipulated often difficult economic, social, and political realities to provide a place for and a sense of themselves. What emerges is a fuller picture of American literature, one vital to the creation of an ethnic consciousness. This is the first extended look at Polish-language fiction written by turn-of-the-century immigrants, a forgotten body of American ethnic literature. Addressing a blind spot in our understanding of immigrant and ethnic identity and culture, Traitors and True Poles challenges perceptions of a silent and passive Polish immigration by giving back its literary voice.

The Nation in the Village

The Nation in the Village
Author: Keely Stauter-Halsted
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2015-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501702238

How do peasants come to think of themselves as members of a nation? The widely accepted argument is that national sentiment originates among intellectuals or urban middle classes, then "trickles down" to the working class and peasants. Keely Stauter-Halsted argues that such models overlook the independent contribution of peasant societies. She explores the complex case of the Polish peasants of Austrian Galicia, from the 1848 emancipation of the serfs to the eve of the First World War. In the years immediately after emancipation, Polish-speaking peasants were more apt to identify with the Austrian Emperor and the Catholic Church than with their Polish lords or the middle classes of the Galician capital, Cracow. Yet by the end of the century, Polish-speaking peasants would cheer, "Long live Poland" and celebrate the centennial of the peasant-fueled insurrection in defense of Polish independence. The explanation for this shift, Stauter-Halsted says, is the symbiosis that developed between peasant elites and upper-class reformers. She reconstructs this difficult, halting process, paying particular attention to public life and conflicts within the rural communities themselves. The author's approach is at once comparative and interdisciplinary, drawing from literature on national identity formation in Latin America, China, and Western Europe. The Nation in the Village combines anthropology, sociology, and literary criticism with economic, social, cultural, and political history.

National Identity in Literary Translation

National Identity in Literary Translation
Author: Łukasz Barciński
Publisher: Studies in Linguistics, Anglophone Literatures and Cultures
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Literature
ISBN: 9783631800683

This book is a collection of theoretical and empirical studies steering the reader through the intricacies of literary translation from the perspective of national identity. It offers a multifaceted view of the condition of the contemporary national identities and its linguistic transfer from different perspectives.

Being Poland

Being Poland
Author: Tamara Trojanowska
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 853
Release: 2018-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442650184

Being Poland offers a unique analysis of the cultural developments that took place in Poland after World War One, a period marked by Poland's return to independence. Conceived to address the lack of critical scholarship on Poland's cultural restoration, Being Poland illuminates the continuities, paradoxes, and contradictions of Poland's modern and contemporary cultural practices, and challenges the narrative typically prescribed to Polish literature and film. Reflecting the radical changes, rifts, and restorations that swept through Poland in this period, Polish literature and film reveal a multitude of perspectives. Addressing romantic perceptions of the Polish immigrant, the politics of post-war cinema, poetry, and mass media, Being Poland is a comprehensive reference work written with the intention of exposing an international audience to the explosion of Polish literature and film that emerged in the twentieth century.

Exile and Identity

Exile and Identity
Author: Katherine R. Jolluck
Publisher:
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN:

Exile and Identity focuses on the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Polish women forcibly transported deep into the USSR as prisoners or "special settlers" after the Soviet invasion and annexation of eastern Poland in 1939. Using firsthand accounts ranging from the briefly factual to the intensely personal, Katherine R. Jolluck reconstructs the daily lives and attitudes of Polish women based on reports collected upon their amnesty and evacuation from the USSR. These moving stories provide a clear and detailed picture of the conditions in which these women were forced to live, and examine how those victimized interpreted and coped with their daily traumas.

Modernism: Representations of National Culture

Modernism: Representations of National Culture
Author: Ahmet Ersoy
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9637326642

Presentations of National Cultures. Fifty-one texts illustrate the evolution of modernism in the east-European region. Essays, articles, poems, or excerpts from longer works offer new opportunities of possible comparisons of the respective national cultures, from the different ideological approaches and finessing projects of how to create the modern state liberal, conservative, socialist and others to the literary and scientific attempts at squaring the circle of individual and collective identities.

The Literature of Nationalism

The Literature of Nationalism
Author: Robert B. Pynsent
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2016-07-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1349246859

The Literature of Nationalism concerns literature in its broadest sense and the manner in which, in belles lettres, the oral tradition and journalism, language and literature create national/nationalist myths. It treats East European culture from Finland to 'Yugoslavia', from Bohemia to Romania, from the nineteenth century to today. One third of the book concerns women and ethnic identity, and the rest covers subjects as varied as Bulgarian Fascism and the impact of political change on language in Hungary and ex-Yugoslavia.

The Devil's Chain

The Devil's Chain
Author: Keely Stauter-Halsted
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2016-02-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501701665

In the half-century before Poland’s long-awaited political independence in 1918, anxiety surrounding the country’s burgeoning sex industry fueled nearly constant public debate. The Devil’s Chain is the first book to examine the world of commercial sex throughout the partitioned Polish territories, uncovering a previously hidden conversation about sexuality, gender propriety, and social class. Keely Stauter-Halsted situates the preoccupation with prostitution in the context of Poland’s struggle for political independence and its difficult transition to modernity. She traces the Poles’ growing anxiety about white slavery, venereal disease, and eugenics by examining the regulation of the female body, the rise of medical authority, and the role of social reformers in addressing the problem of paid sex. Stauter-Halsted argues that the sale of sex was positioned at the juncture of mass and elite cultures, affecting nearly every aspect of urban life and bringing together sharply divergent social classes in what had long been a radically stratified society. She captures the experiences of the impoverished women who turned to the streets and draws a vivid picture of the social milieu that shaped their choices. The Devil’s Chain demonstrates that discussions of prostitution and its attendant disorders—sexual deviancy, alcoholism, child abuse, vagrancy, and other related problems—reflected differing visions for the future of the Polish nation.

Poland's Memory Wars

Poland's Memory Wars
Author: Jo Harper
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2018-10-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9637326553

This volume of essays and interviews by Polish, British, and American academics and journalists provides an overview of current Polish politics for both informed and non-specialist readers. The essays consider why and how PiS, Law and Justice, the party of Jarosław Kaczynski, returned to power, and the why and how of its policies while in power. They help to make sense of how “history” plays a key role in Polish public life and politics. The descriptions of PiS in Western media tend to rework old stereotypes about Eastern Europe that had lain dormant for some time. The book addresses the underlying question whether PiS was simply successful in understanding its electorate, and just helped Poland to revert to its normal state. This new Normal seems quite similar to the old one: insular, conservative, xenophobic, and statist. The book looks at the current struggle between one ‘Poland’ and another; between a Western-looking Poland and an inward-looking Poland, the former more interested in opening to the world, competing in open markets, and working within the EU, and the latter more concerned with holding onto tradition. The question of illiberalism has gone from an ‘Eastern’ problem (Russia, Turkey, Hungary, etc.) to a global one (Brexit and the U.S. elections). This makes the very specific analysis of Poland’s illiberalism applicable on a broader scale.