Romantyzm a narodziny wyobraźni populistycznej – przypadek Mickiewicza
European Romanticism and the Emergence of the Populist Imaginary: The Case of Adam Mickiewicz

Author(s): Jens Herlth
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Customs / Folklore, Sociology, Nationalism Studies, Sociology of Politics
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza
Keywords: Adam Mickiewicz; populism; folk culture; people; nation
Summary/Abstract: This article examines the development of the aesthetic and political functionalization of the concept of the “people” in Adam Mickiewicz’s work. On the basis of current research on the rhetorical practice and the political imaginary of populism, the article shows that figures of argumentation, discursive strategies, and ideological posi- tions that we today associate with the political phenomenon of populism can be found in Mickiewicz. In this respect, a development can be discerned. The early Ballads and Romances are inspired by the fascination with folk culture generally rampant in Europe at the time. After Mickiewicz’s arrival in Paris in the early 1830s, one can detect an increas- ing political concretization of the concept of the people, which is also expressed in the activist rhetoric of his Paris Lectures. In the late journalism from The Tribune of the Peoples, we can detect a strategy of domesticating the rebellious impulses of the “people” by tying it back to the “nation.”

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