“Prelude to Revolt”. Women’s Rebellion in the Poetry of Joanna Mueller Cover Image

„Preludium rewolty”. Bunt kobiet w poezji Joanny Mueller
“Prelude to Revolt”. Women’s Rebellion in the Poetry of Joanna Mueller

Author(s): Monika Glosowitz
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Gender Studies, Poetry, Polish Literature, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Psychoanalysis, Family and social welfare, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Polish women’s poetry; reproductive labour; motherhood; feminist criticism; Joanna Mueller

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to answer the question about the causes of oversights, silences and shifts in the critical-literary reception of Joanna Mueller’s poetry. The author analyses discussions of the poet’s successive books and demonstrates the workings of what she calls the ‘double standard’ of the language of criticism; this mechanism has enabled repeated gestures to discredit the importance of this poetry, and has its origins in critics’ specific elaboration of the experience and subject of motherhood, whose poetic thematisation is often met with negative critical commentary. This analysis is juxtaposed with an alternative proposal for reconstructing the main line of Mueller’s poetic story of motherhood, a story in which individual personal experience becomes the basis for building a community of women based on experiencing the oppression they share. Joanna Mueller’s work has certainly been recognised by critics and has been widely (albeit irregularly) commented on and described, so the writer functions in the broad field of literary production and popularisation in Poland.

  • Issue Year: 2023
  • Issue No: 1 (21)
  • Page Range: 1-10
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: Polish