The Temptations of the Times of Siege: Parodies of Religious Literature in Polish Political Writings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Cover Image
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Pokusy czasu oblężenia. O trawestacjach literatury religijnej w staropolskim piśmiennictwie politycznym
The Temptations of the Times of Siege: Parodies of Religious Literature in Polish Political Writings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Author(s): Maciej Pieczyński
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: political poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth century; Bible parodies; political catechisms; providentialism; Poland; seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; psychoanalysis

Summary/Abstract: This article examines seventeenth and eighteenth-century political works that parody religious texts, above all the Lord’s Prayer. While most interpreters have situated this type of creativity within the carnivalesque peripheries of the civic and political literature of the time, Pieczyński argues that they are inexorably linked to key aspects of contemporary notions of the Polish Republic’s political system, above all to providentialism. Drawing on the conceptual framework of psychoanalysis, Pieczyński is also able to read those parodies as an expression of an unconscious temptation to liberate oneself from the power of the phantasmal Father, i.e. the sacralised authority that guarantees the political order of the Polish Republic.

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 311-336
  • Page Count: 26