Why Does Regional Literature Need an Imaginarium of Horror? On Gothicizing Lower Silesia Cover Image

Do czego literaturze regionalnej potrzebne jest imaginarium grozy? O gotycyzowaniu Dolnego Śląska
Why Does Regional Literature Need an Imaginarium of Horror? On Gothicizing Lower Silesia

Author(s): Elżbieta Rybicka
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: gothic; gothic regionalism; hauntology; psychotopography; contemporary Polish literature; Olga Tokarczuk; Joanna Bator; Lower Silesia

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the relationship between gothicism and regionalism in the literature of Lower Silesia. The author poses a question about the role of the imaginarium of horror in shaping the psychotopography of the region, in which real, spectral and affective topographies converge. An important context is the peripheralization of the region after the political transformation, which resulted in economic regression of Lower Silesia. Gothic regionalism is therefore interpreted as a reaction to social, economic and political processes taking place on a local and global scale, but perceived from a peripheral point of view. As a descriptive term, however, it allows to recognize several aspects: the key role of center-periphery relations, local-global interactions, the influence of late capitalism, the return of repressed events as the uncanny, the horror of everyday life and the exclusion of what exceeds the internal normativity of regional communities. Works of selected authors were analysed, e.g. Joanna Bator, Olga Tokarczuk, Henryk Waniek, Jakub Bielawski, Maciej Bobula.

  • Issue Year: 2023
  • Issue No: 55
  • Page Range: 61-87
  • Page Count: 27
  • Language: Polish