The International Potential of the Polish Nineteenth-Century Novel – a Review of Grażyna Borkowska and Lidia Wiśniewska’s (eds.) Another Canon: The Polish Nineteenth-Century Novel in World Context

Abstract

The article is a review of Another Canon: The Polish Nineteenth-Century Novel in World Context, edited by Grażyna Borkowska and Lidia Wiśniewska, published in 2020 by Lit Verlag, Switzerland within the Polonistik im Kontext series. The first part of the monograph includes articles that provide a reinterpretation of selected novels (including Krasicki’s The Adventures of Mr. Nickolas Wisdom, Orzeszkowa’s On the Niemen, and Sienkiewicz’s Without Dogma) in relation to the main currents of world literature. The second part focuses on the reception of selected nineteenth-century Polish novels in Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia, France, Spain, the United States, and Great Britain. The publication is aimed at raising the interest of non-Polish recipients in the nineteenth-century novels during a period when twentieth and contemporary Polish literature has already gained relative popularity abroad.