The Routledge World Companion to Polish Literature

Tomasz Bilczewski is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities at Jagiellonian University, Poland. Stanley Bill is Senior Lecturer in Polish Studies and Director of the Polish Studies Programme at the University of Cambridge, UK. Magdalena Popiel is Professor in the Department of Anthropology of Literature and Cultural Research at Jagiellonian University, Poland.

Introduction: Polish Literature and Its Worlds PART 1: OLD POLISH LITERATURE: MIDDLE AGES, RENAISSANCE, BAROQUE 1. In Search of Origins: Bogurodzica 2. World Order in a Harmonious Hymn: Jan Kochanowski’s "What Dost Thou of Us Require, Lord, for Thy Plenteous Graces?" 3. A Child’s Death, the Poet’s Immortality: Jan Kochanowski’s Laments 4. The Poetry of “Passage”: Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński’s Sonnets PART 2: SOURCES OF MODERNITY: THE ENLIGHTENMENT LEGACY 5. The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom: Reading Ignacy Krasicki with Kant 6. The “Fairytale” Magic of Speech: Franciszek Karpiński’s Lukierda’s Plaint 7. Is Jan Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa a Polish Work? 8. The Letters of Jewish Lovers in Dutch: Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz’s Levi and Sarah PART 3: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: ROMANTICISM AND POSITIVISM 9. The Culture of Memory: Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz 10. Adam Mickiewicz: Two Poems and their Brazilian Readings 11. "Being’s Fated Shade": Cyprian Kamil Norwid’s "Irony" 12. Bolesław Prus’s The Doll: Polish Historical Vistas from a Japanese Perspective 13. Toward Mass Culture: The Global Renown of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis PART 4: POLISH MODERNISM: FROM YOUNG POLAND TO THE INTERWAR PERIOD 14. Stanisław Brzozowski’s Flames 15. “Rebellion Against Boundaries”: Bolesław Leśmian’s The Meadow 16. The Polish Avant-Garde in Japan: Bruno Jasieński’s I Burn Paris 17. “A Man on the Brink of Disaster”: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz’s Insatiability 18. History and Myth: Bruno Schulz’s Spring 19. Psychological Realism and Modernist Poetics: Zofia Nałkowska’s Boundary PART 5: POSTWAR LITERATURE: TRAUMA, EXILE, IDENTITY 20. Witness and Form: Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen 21. Gustaw Herling-Grudziński’s A World Apart 22. Making Sense of Trans-Atlantyk: The Reception of Witold Gombrowicz’s Exile Novel in Norway 23. Archaism as a Tool of Change: Reflections on a Poem by Czesław Miłosz 24. Stanisław Jerzy Lec’s Unkempt Thoughts 25. Stanisław Lem’s Solaris: Interpretations in the Russian-Speaking World 26. Translating Memory: The Reception of Miron Białoszewski’s A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising in North America PART 6: BEYOND IDEOLOGY: LITERATURE OF THE LAST FOUR DECADES 27. The Drama of Otherness: Tadeusz Różewicz’s White Marriage 28. Wisława Szymborska: “Writing a résumé” 29. Zbigniew Herbert and Antiquity: Poetry, Oppression, and "the Classic" 30. The Untranslatable Trope: Mariusz Wilk’s "Russian" Cycle 31. A Thicket of Hieroglyphs and Ideograms: Ryszard Kapuściński’s Travels with Herodotus 32. "Try to Praise the Mutilated World": Adam Zagajewski and the Poetry of 9/11 33. Micro-suspense and the Desire to Keep Reading: Translating Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob AFTERWORD: A World History of Polish Literature