A time for the province : palimpsests and borders in twentieth-century Polish literature /

"This study reads narratives of seven modern writers who hailed from the Polish borderlands or set their works there (or both). Within the context of discourses of Polish provincial or marginal literature, my case study explores the rich tapestry of cultural fabrics and social interfaces in the worl...

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Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Gasyna, George Z. (Author)
Format:	Book
Language:	English
Published:	Montréal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2025]
Subjects:	Polish literature > 20th century > History and criticism. Polish literature > 20th century > Social aspects. Poland > In literature. Borderlands in literature. Cultural pluralism in literature. Literary criticism. Critiques littéraires. 1900-1999 Social aspects. Literature. Polish literature. Poland. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Summary:	"This study reads narratives of seven modern writers who hailed from the Polish borderlands or set their works there (or both). Within the context of discourses of Polish provincial or marginal literature, my case study explores the rich tapestry of cultural fabrics and social interfaces in the world of the modern Poland in the context of Poles' fascination with their country's provincial and borderland regions, past and present. Through a series of close readings, I trace the transformation of these historical and geographic areas into something more transcendental, namely, a cultural myth. The work, then, sets out to explore and theorize the province as, at once - albeit in different forms over different times, given the diversity of the regions considered - a space of grand utopian visions and dystopic gestures about both the Polish past and a Polish future. My study does not purport to be a historical survey of Poland's regions; nor is it a story of ethnicities that might have inhabited them. Rather, establishing the perimeter of my interest and the contact points between and among my chosen texts are two terms that are well known, if heavily freighted (though what they connote in literary critical theory is quite specific): palimpsest and contact zone. Through analysis of works by Polish authors who grappled with questions of cultural palimpsest and contact zone, and through engagement with the theoretical apparatuses of postmemory studies and border-studies, this work seeks to (re-)define Polish cultural identity in the current moment of postsocialist transition and globalized citizenship."--