The New Greeks

The book discusses how Polish scholars created an image of ancient Greece in the first half of the nineteenth century. In an era when Poles were deprived of their own independent state, classical philology, historiography, and literary studies became the arena of struggle to mark one’s own subjectivity on the map of Europe’s rival humanities.

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The book discusses the development of Polish studies on Greek antiquity in the first half of the nineteenth century. Junkiert scrutinizes the relationship of Polish intellectuals with their predecessors in this field in France and the German-speaking culture. The book describes scholarly rivalry between nations in search of their own visions of antiquity. Methodologically, the book develops the vein of classical reception studies. The key figures of this study are Adam Mickiewicz, Joachim Lelewel, and Gottfried Ernst Groddeck.