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Canonizing The Wieszcz: The Subjective Turn In Polish Literary Biography In The 1860s, Andrea Lanoux

Slavic Studies Faculty Publications

Part of a forum on the work of Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. The writer examines the radical change in the presentation of poets' biographies in Polish textbooks of literature during the 1860s. She contends that this change coincided with the stabilization of a Polish romantic literary canon and involved, among other things, the subject's personal life, contributions to the national cause, and subjective experiences and feelings. This subjective turn in literary biography demonstrates the relationship between canon building and nation building, she argues, in the respect that it served to unite millions of people living under different political systems. Moreover, …