Polish Literature in the European Context

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

• Acquainting students with important and/or representative phenomena of broadly understood Polish literature, its prominent representatives and its reception within a comparative approach (the main ideas, currents, trends and genres of the global literature) and building skills of finding wide-ranging references to their cultural and historical background (global and Polish histories)
• Developing the skills of analysis, interpretation and evaluation of a literary work within a basic theoretical and historical frame of knowledge with a particular stress on Polish literature’s uniqueness and its selected representatives in the light of various forms of intercultural contact (the flux of ideas and currents, the translations to foreign languages, the reception of masterpieces of the world literature).
• Developing of skills in using historical and aesthetic categories and in putting in use an organized knowledge, skills and competences from other modules of humanities studies.  

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

English skills at the B1 level

Syllabus

Course learning content:

Transitions in ideas, currents, trends and genres (eg. humanism, manierism, historicism, messianic, epic, irony, modernism, postmodernism…)

Polish literature in the context of European literatures (the writer’s place in socjety, reception strategies, literary market)

Global literature in relations to the world’s history (literary works in relations to important historical events: the dusk of antiquity, Renaissance, the French Revolution and the industrial one, Napoleonic wars, the colonization and the decolonization, totalitarian regimes and the Holocaust, globalization processes…)

The masterpieces of the world’s literaturę with their Polish translations and reception (eg. Oddysey, Hamlet, Faust, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, The Magic Mountain)

Polish writers and their reception of foreign influences (np. Górnicki vs Castiglione; Kochanowski vs Horace; Morsztyn vs Marino; Krasicki vs Rousseau; Mickiewicz vs Goethe; Norwid vs Baudelaire; Komornicka vs Woolf; Berent vs Nietsche; Iwaszkiewicz vs Mann)

Reading list

• A Companion to Comparative Literature, ed. by A. Behdad and D. Thomas, Wiley Blackwell 2014 (artykuły Davida Ferrisa, Davida Palumbo-Liu).
• A Companion to Comparative Literature, ed. by A. Behdad and D. Thomas, Wiley Blackwell 2014 (artykuły Mary Louise Pratt, Allison Van Deventer / Dominica Thomasa).
• Peter V. Zima, Einführung in die Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, A. Francke Verlag Tübingen und Basel 2011, s. 19-67.
• Komparatistik, Evi Zemanek, Alexander Nebrig (Hg.), Berlin 2012, s. 21-33.
• Angelika Corbineau-Hoffman, Einführung in die Komparatistik, Berlin 2013, s. 113-131.
• Fieguth, O europejskich wartościach klasyków literatury polskiej, [w:] Humanizm polski. Długie trwanie - tradycje - współczesność (Wstęp do badań). red. A. Nowicka-Jeżowa, M. Cieński, Warszawa 2008-2009, s. 341-361.
• Axer, Central-Eastern Europe, w: A Companion to the Classical tradition, ed. by C.W. Kallendorf, Wiley Blackwell 2010.
• Krasicki, Rozmowy zmarłych. (wobec Lukiana i Fénelona)
• S. Dmochowski, Iliada, pieśń 1. (wobec Homera)
• Mme de Stäel, O Niemczech (BN, wybór).
• Norwid, Vade-mecum. (wobec Baudelaire'a)
• Prus, Faraon.
• Sienkiewicz, Quo vadis.