CONFLUENCES: ON THE POSSIBILITY OF DESCRIBING A TRANSCULTURAL HISTORY OF THE (MICRO)LITERATURE – THE UPPER SILESIAN PERSPECTIVE

• Authors: Pospiszil-Hofmańska Karolina
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Any attempt to fully describe the history of a particular literature is doomed to fail. Such a description requires simplifications and generalizations, and necessitates selection. The same is true for literatures of contact zones, which are transcultural in their nature. The history of such literatures should reflect their character and accommodate their transcultural dimension. By using the example of Upper Silesian micro-literature, the author presents the challenges a researcher would be confronted with even while approaching literatures of small range, both geographically and in the number of recipients (micro-literatures), referring to the theory of polysystems and transcultural studies. She discusses the nodal points of the postulated transcultural history of Upper Silesian micro-literature, namely: 1) works in the Silesian language, 2) works in dominant languages, 3) translations, and 4) proposals for its literary canon. Concurrently, she argues that Upper Silesian literature cannot be examined in isolation from its transcultural context, the confluences of German and Slavic cultures, as well as the history of the cultural melting pot in which it was developed and the character of which is still noticeable today.

Keywords

EN

UPPER SILESIA; BORDERLAND; MICRO-LITERATURE; MINOR LITERATURE

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 60 - 78

Contributors

author

Pospiszil-Hofmańska Karolina

• Faculty of Humanities, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland

• https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7622-5394

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2022.14.3.6