Models of Polish ‘Union’ Prose. An Attempt at Classification

Abstract

Poland’s accession to the European Union and the democratization of the country resulted in a change in the specificity of the Polish emigration prose. Its political dimension was subdued. The status and role of the writer-emigrant changed. Now, without the feeling of having betrayed his/her homeland or language, the writer has become a chronicler of the life of compatriots abroad and an observer of the culture of the country of settlement.  The focus of the present considerations is an attempt to characterize three models according to which the description of sociological and cultural phenomena takes place. The first one covers the type of stories symptomatic of migration in which the characters are young people without complexes, curious about the world, wishing to discover it. In this case, we are dealing with intercultural texts that attempt to describe the new culture of the country of settlement and the related identity experiences. The second model uses a model present in postcolonial literature. The hero of this prose is an oppressed migrant whose “mission” is, in a sense, to conquer the new country in order to become a “colonizer” and lose the status of a “colonized” one. He/she thus stands in opposition to a foreign world and the new culture/cultures. The third variant collects polemic works in the face of both this doctrine and the post-colonial discourse, both of which, entering into dialogue with the above mentioned forms, create their own model of counter-discourse.