Męskość rycerska na Kresach
Chivarly Manhood on the Frontier

On Mieczysław Romanowski’s Epic Tale Novels

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to an analysis of three late Romantic 1850s Mieczysław Romanowski’s epic tale novels, „Chart Watażki” („Cossac Headman’s Greyhound)”, „Chorąży” („Warrant Officer”), „Łużeccy” („Łużeccy”), researched from the perspective of men’s studies. Reaching for inspiring studies in memory and papers in orientation, the author interprets Romanowski’s proposal as strengthening the masculine heroic imaginary built in the 19th c. within the framework of Tyrtaeian Romanticism (references to Spartan models, old-Polish heritage within the framework of frontier discourse). Romanowski actualises the myth of the frontier knight by placing him into the patriotic message based on legible Tyrtaeian liberation slogans. The paper also makes a polemical reference to the concept of dislocated masculinity as a symptom of diagnosed weakness of post-partition male protagonists culture, showing the presence of other phenomena, namely overcoming the crisis of dislocated masculinity in the 19th c. due to taking great advantage of Sarmatian cultural universum within the framework of Romantic patriotic actualisation raised in pre-uprising literary programs in the Polish Romanticism.

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