Wulkan energii, strażniczka pamięci, waleczna czarownica – postać babci w najnowszej polskiej literaturze dla dzieci
An Energetic Woman, a Guardian of Memory, a Valiant Witch – the Figure of the Grandmother in Recent Polish Children’s Literature

Summary/Abstract: This article presents different ways of portraying grandmothers in children’s literature. Primarily, Rafał Witek’s novel Klub Latających Ciotek, Marcin Szczygielski’s novel Czarownica piętro niżej and Katarzyna Ryrych’s novel Koniec świata nr 13 are being analysed against the background of recent children’s prose. In the works analysed, grandmothers are presented primarily as very energetic people (often portrayed in a slightly caricatured manner, with comic elements), holders of knowledge about the past and guardians of memory (created in the adventurous and moral convention) and brave witches (existing on the borderline of two worlds, presented in the convention of a fairy tale or magic realism). The reflections point out the need for contact between the generations of grandmothers and granddaughters (defined in adult literature by Anna Pekaniec as the category of grandmotherness, which does not herald the return of post-figurative culture (with reference to Margaret Mead’s paper), but is a part of the pre-figurative model (where the domestication of the past is one of the aspects of the wide-ranging development of children preparing for an unknown future).

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