Polish Romanticism: the birth of modern Poland

Why do Poles constantly fight for something? To understand this, one has to go back to the literature of two hundred years ago. On 15 October 2023, elections were held in Poland that restored the democracy which had been under threat for the past eight years. This latest event is part of a whole series of important historical phenomena in Polish history, resistance, struggle, opposition. How is this possible?

Professor Maciej Junkiert will present two works by classics of Polish Romanticism, Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki, which show how the modern attachment to the idea of a nation was born and how Poles thought about their place in the world when they were deprived of their own state and sovereignty.

Professor Maciej Junkiert (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland) is a Polish philologist and historian of ideas. His research focuses on relationships of classical philology with literary studies in Poland and Germany, the literary reception of the French Revolution in the nineteenth century and Polish literature as world literature.

He is author of two recent books:  Cyprian  Norwid  and  the  History  of  Greece  (2020)  and The New Greeks: Polish Romantics’ Historicism and the Emergence of Altertumswissenschaft (2017, in Polish). He has published articles in: Welt der Slawen, Comparative Critical Studies, Ktèma and Oeuvres et Critiques and is University co-ordinator for intercultural studies “Polish and Germans in Europe” (Joint Study Master’s Programme with Christian–Albrechts–Universität zu Kiel).