Distance and Isolation. The Role of Australia in Wojciech Gutkowski’s Colonial Dream in Journey to Kalopeia
Distance and Isolation. The Role of Australia in Wojciech Gutkowski’s Colonial Dream in Journey to Kalopeia

Summary/Abstract: This contribution is an attempt at a different reading of Wojciech Gutkowski’s Journey to Kalopeia (1817), which may be of interest to both Polish and Australian readers in the twenty-first century, since it tries to connect Polish history with the dream of the Antipodes represented by Australia. Gutkowski’s book, unknown until 1913, when it was deemed a utopian novel of little scientific value, gained recognition in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. At that time it was studied as a political treatise and an Enlightenment model for the creation of an ideal utopian-socialist-communist state. This paper offers a new reading of the work in question, discussing its cultural-historical aspects as a precursor of a specifically Polish model of a utopian-colonial state.

• Details
• Contents