Regional culture studies. Literary regionalism

Abstract

The terms “Region and regionalism” may have two meanings: a broad or a narrow one. Their broad meaning is found in sentences such as “the South-Western Europe region,” “the Zagłębie regionalism,” “the Podhale region” etc. We are interested in the meaning of the term regionalism in the sense of a deliberate, intended cultural trend (e.g. literary, poetic) related to a certain space and history, the culture of specific land, architecture, folklore, landscape, “works of nature.” In such cases, the term regionalism is closely linked to culture, and thus, to poetry and prose. The author attempts to find an answer to the questions of how the ideals of regionalism are realised in the literary works of well-known Polish writers, and how often they stem from the spirit of the region of the writers’ origin.