Children and young people in Polish literature or once again on the topic
The paper the nature of which is clearly recapitulatory has been constructed in the simplest possible manner – as an enumeration of examples with commentary. As the author reviews the material, following a specific typology, he stresses the frequency of appearance of two motifs in Polish literature of successive social and cultural groups. In part one, he explores the most important aspects of the child as a literary protagonist: the world of children’s experiences, thoughts and dreams; the specific language of children; their place within society and their roles. All the descriptive and exegetic efforts are to reveal the functioning of a model, thus becoming in fact an attempt to discover the rules and principles that govern the presented set of facts. Similarly in part two, in addition to a diachronic presentation of examples regarded as typical though deliberately reduced in number, the author introduces comparative relations: the young–old opposition that is used to build interpretative contexts psychological, sociological and even economic in literary studies. The outline-like sketch-like nature of this attempt to follow the “history of the motif” makes it only a research reconnaissance. Therefore, the paper obviously could not end with generalising judgements and categorical statements. Just like other all? thematic approaches, this one also remains “open”...