Combining a Lament with a Verse Memoir: Anna Stanisławska's Transaction (1685)
Combining a Lament with a Verse Memoir: Anna Stanisławska's Transaction (1685)

Summary/Abstract: Anna Stanisławska is considered the first Polish woman poet by some, and the first Polish autobiographer by others. The title of her only text is A Transaction; or a Description of the Entire Life of One Orphan Girl through Doleful Laments Written by the Same 1685. The present paper addresses several generic issues raised by the Transaction. Stanisławska’s title offers more than one misleading assumption: firstly, her Transaction fails to narrate the entire life of its author, focusing on her three marriages. Secondly, the text is not a lament or elegy, either, as it does not celebrate a deceased individual, the majority of its stanzas featuring a personal narrative.

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