Miasta za żelazną kurtyną. Warszawa – Tadeusza Konwickiego, Bukareszt i Timiszoara – Herty Müller

• Authors: Bogna Paprocka-Podlasiak

Title variants

EN

The Cities Behind the Iron Curtain: Tadeusz Konwicki’s Warsaw and Herta Müller’s Bucharest and Timisoara

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The paper presents the picture of the city in communist totalitarianism on the basis of Tadeusz Konwicki’s prose (Ascension, Minor Apocalypse) and Herta Müller’s prose (Hunger and Silk; Even Back Then, the Fox was the Hunter). It depicts different aspects of the way the city functions as a place appropriated by the totalitarian system and – what is important – harnessed into a service to totalitarian authorities. The aim of this comparative study is to juxtapose two viewpoints of life in the city behind the Iron Curtain: the depiction of Warsaw in Konwicki’s novels as well as the descriptions of Bucharest and Timisoara in Herta Müller’s prose. In the case of these two writers, common levels of perception of the totalitarian city might be distinguished, such as: the city as a Kafkaesque “castle”, the city as an arena of the Apocalypse, the city-prison and the city space as Trauma-Raum.

Keywords

EN

Comparative literature; Geopoetics; City in literature; Tadeusz Konwicki; Herta Müller

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego
• Journal: Rocznik Komparatystyczny
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 3
• Pages: p. 117-136

Contributors

author

Bogna Paprocka-Podlasiak

• Instytut Literatury Polskiej, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu, ul. Fosa Staromiejska 3, 87-100 Toruń