A myth-making and demythological approach to Jewish thematic in Polish literature Cover Image
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Ujęcie mitotwórcze i demityzujące w polskiej literaturze współczesnej o tematyce żydowskiej
A myth-making and demythological approach to Jewish thematic in Polish literature

Author(s): László Kálmán Nagy
Subject(s): Polish Literature, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust, History of Antisemitism, Theory of Literature
Published by: Akadémiai Kiadó
Keywords: the Second World War; holocaust; myth creation; demythologization; heroic and deheroizing approach;

Summary/Abstract: The paper claims that thematic approach has played an essential role in Polish literary criticism for the last fifty years. Although the typological criteria for thematic classification are usually disputed, literary works depicting the tragic experience of the Second World War do not lack the consensus of scholars in this respect. There has been intense debate over Jewish topics as literary controversy has been determined by external factors for the past half-century. Further complications may arise from the manifestation of demythologization and myth-creating tendencies in deheroizing and heroic forms in works on the Second World War. While these facts can be merely used as classifying factors in the case of existential-historical themes, the heroic and myth-creating approach indicates the posterity’s negative aesthetic evaluation of works describing life in concentration camps.

  • Issue Year: 48/2003
  • Issue No: 1-3
  • Page Range: 205-216
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: Polish