Imatge dels confins orientals en la literatura polonesa. Visió històrica i funció en la narrativa creada a Polònia als anys 60-80 del segle XX, La

Abstract

"The image of the Eastern Borderlands in the Polish literature. Its historical vision and function in the narrative prose, written in Poland between 1960 and 1989". The aim of the present work is to describe and analyse from the historical and literary point of view a current in the Polish literature that some critics call the current of the Eastern Borderlands. The theme of the Eastern Borderlands has always been one of the most frequent in the works of Polish writers. The Eastern Borderlands of Poland were ethnically diverse, but as they formed part of the multinational Polish-Lithuanian State (XIV-XVIII c.) and were constantly defended against Muslim invasions, they became the symbol of the Polish identity. This work analyses the function of the image of the Eastern Borderlands in the Polish literature over centuries. It begins in the XVIth century, when this image was fundamental to the formation of the Polish national identity. Then we analyse the period in which the Polish State ceased to exist (1795-1918) and the Eastern Borderlands, thanks to romantic poets, became the centre of Polishness. Finally, we study the years after the Second World War, when the Eastern Borderlands, incorporated into the Soviet Union, disappeared from the reality, but continued alive in the literature. Although the communist government did not allow even mentioning the territories annexed by the Soviet Union, it could neither eliminate from the Polish literature the most valuable works of the past that spoke about them, nor erase their image from the writers memory and from the collective conscience of the Poles. The second part of this work analyses the function that we consider compensatory, of the image of the Eastern Borderlands in narrative prose written in Poland between 1960 and 1989. According to our assumption, the constant presence of the Eastern Borderlands in that prose does not respond only to the nostalgia, but also expresses an ontological acceptance of the complexity and multiplicity of the world and rejection of any ideological intention to simplify the reality by dividing it easily and inadequately into categories such as social classes or nationalities."