The article begins with the statement based on current research, that Poznań 1956 protests are little represented in literature. Subsequently, the article analyses the construction of character and temporal composition of several novels about the Poznań 1956 protests. The novels are arranged chronologically and divided into two parts: censored ones and those published without official approval and censorship. The first group includes Jeszcze miłość by Bogusław Kogut, Odyseja, odyseja by Marian Grześczak and Wióry by Krystyna Kofta. The second group includes Krótki żywot bohatera pozytywnego by Piotr Guzy, Ciemnia by Bogusława Latawiec, Krew by Andrzej Górny, and Węzeł by Józef Ratajczak. The first group, true to the course of history, represent the rise of the political thaw and the party regaining control over situation. The second group, because of the time of writing, cover a longer time and tend to universalize the theme. In novelistic representations of Poznań 1956 protests there are two strains: uprising-themed and strike-themed. It turns out that the latter is the least present, because most novelistic characters are party-members and intelligentsia, whereas workers and ordinary people are relegated to the background. Plotlines are arranged biographically, not chronologically, because the novels are narrated as internal monologues with retrospective memories. The novels written by authors from Poznań, or related to Poznań, focus on the provintial character of the city, as opposed to the centralist influence of Warsaw.
PL
The article begins with the statement based on current research, that Poznań 1956 protests are little represented in literature. Subsequently, the article analyses the construction of character and temporal composition of several novels about the Poznań 1956 protests. The novels are arranged chronologically and divided into two parts: censored ones and those published without official approval and censorship. The first group includes Jeszcze miłość by Bogusław Kogut, Odyseja, odyseja by Marian Grześczak and Wióry by Krystyna Kofta. The second group includes Krótki żywot bohatera pozytywnego by Piotr Guzy, Ciemnia by Bogusława Latawiec, Krew by Andrzej Górny, and Węzeł by Józef Ratajczak. The first group, true to the course of history, represent the rise of the political thaw and the party regaining control over situation. The second group, because of the time of writing, cover a longer time and tend to universalize the theme. In novelistic representations of Poznań 1956 protests there are two strains: uprising-themed and strike-themed. It turns out that the latter is the least present, because most novelistic characters are party-members and intelligentsia, whereas workers and ordinary people are relegated to the background. Plotlines are arranged biographically, not chronologically, because the novels are narrated as internal monologues with retrospective memories. The novels written by authors from Poznań, or related to Poznań, focus on the provintial character of the city, as opposed to the centralist influence of Warsaw.
The article analyses and interprets Włoskie szpilki [Italian High Heels] in the context of autobiographic writing, which is a new phenomenon in Tulli’s creative development. The analysis of autobiographical writing consists in a description of subject-construction. The construction is determined by combination of roles: the real author, the literary author, and the narrator-character. The style of the novel is characterized by the use of Holocaust topoi, and “March talk”, which leads the writer to the discovery that Polish post-war antisemitism castigates Jews for concealing their extraction. The aesthetic of postmemory, manifested in the novel, is interpreted as a transition from the modern rhetoric of inexpressibility and unutterableness, to the postmodern aesthetic of expression of what is absent.
This paper presets the flourishing of Borderlands literature and accompanying literary studies since the 1980’s. The first part is devoted to the discussion of terminology, which evolved around the term “kresy” (the Borderlands), triggered by the final disappearance of the referent following the World War II, and by various ensuing interpretations of this traumatic fact. Therefore, the notion of “kresy” enters into some semantic relation to notions such as: “borderlands”, “my native land”, “myth”. The second part is focused on methodological concerns, presenting the structuralist-semiotic, thematic, deconstructionist, feminist, postcolonialist, and comparative approaches and tendencies in the studies of Borderlands literature. These observations lead to the final conclusion acknowledging that the theme of “kresy”, central to the evolution of Polish historical awareness, entangles those interdisciplinary, multicultural directions of studies, which interpret Polish history and culture in the perspective of philosophy and the aesthetics of dialogue and its central European identity.
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