Ucieczki i powroty. Wieś w nowej prozie polskiej
Escapes and Returns. The Village in the New Polish Prose

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to present a collection of rural novels written in recent years (2013–2022). The author adopted the expanded category of “prose of rural spaces,” pointing to its advantages and limitations. Then he lists two basic features of the new rural prose: focus on the past and its seriousness. In the main part, the author refers to two concepts mentioned in the title: escapes and returns. He notes that in new Polish prose we are dealing with escapes from the cities to the countryside, never in the opposite direction. He divides the issue of literary returns to the countryside into several problem clusters. In the most general terms, it is described by literary critics as a new wave of rural literature, which was generally associated with the plebeian (folk) turn that took place in Polish culture in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century. Then – on the example of Andrzej Stasiuk’s prose – he discusses the writer’s private returns to their rural childhoods and presents an original literary project, an anthology collecting stories written by members of the Writers’ Union from the Countryside. The next part of the article discusses the problem of a short-term return to the countryside, treated as a “rehabilitation stay.” The article closes with an interpretation and analysis of three works by Andrzej Muszyński, a writer who has been particularly attached to rural issues for a decade now.

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