The aim of the article is to present recent fundamental changes in thinking about poetry. Authors of books published in the years 2010–2016 are much more aware of the political and social situation than those who were debuting right after the year 2000. They are also aware of the context of artistic creation and aesthetic criteria. They seek to redefine the production and distribution of poetic works and react (as their predecessors did) with resistance to social and political oppression.

The article aims to present the themes of popular contemporary women’s novels. The contexts for the analyses are stereotypes of sex and commercial expectations. The marketing strategy of the publishers and authors is important as well as the changing rules about creating the image of an author by the media. Pretending social involvement in popular women’s novels is connected with marketing strategies and the need to refer to popular subjects is of secondary importance. What is important, however, is the literary awareness of the authors and the capacity of recognizing the place of one’s own creativity on the map of pop culture.

Polish woman­‑centered symbolism has a specific dimension, which is depicted in the iconic ‘Polish Mother’ (Matka Polka). The iconic image is deeply rooted in Polish history and culture and it often refers to the mother of Jesus as she is expected to sacrifice her children for the motherland. As a woman, she realizes herself not only through motherhood but also in the service of her nation, and as such, she becomes a highly charged metaphor for both motherly love and patriotism. The ‘Polish Mother’ is a myth; a stereotype that has shaped the thinking of the nation for more than two centuries and is still largely in force. In contemporary literature (and also in various media texts and blogs) one can identify however, obvious attempts to re­‑evaluate this very traditional iconic image. Especially motherhood, in Poland today, has gained a new dimension. I investigate some of the most characteristic aspects of the selected texts, focusing on the discrepancy between the old clichés and expectations and the subversion of traditionally defined motherhood in a modern society, which no longer takes the ‘Polish Mother’ at face value.

The article discusses the literary representations of the experience of unwanted pregnancy and abortion in new women’s prose. The author of the article refers to the novels published between 2003 and 2016. He considers the previously conducted research on the same subject (especially that of Agnieszka Mrozik). However, he concentrates mainly on the prose created in the last few years. He is above all interested in changes regarding the problem of unwanted pregnancy and abortion that occurred after 1989. When writing about this aspect of female experience has appeared in new prose, it is usually about the past and used to question the morality of the Polish People’s Republic. Recently the problem of unwanted pregnancy seems to be non­‑existent as all issues pertaining to maternity are solved in a similar way: despite initial hesitations the heroines of the novels decide to have babies and never regret their choice. In this context Aleksandra Zielińska’s novel Przypadek Alicji (The case of Alice) seems to be especially interesting. Considerations concerning this novel appear in the final part of the article.

The article discusses a unique experience of death such as a perinatal loss described in Obsoletki by Justyna Bargielska and Spójrz na niego by Anna Starobiniec. The author of the article analyses the ways in which narration aims at assimilating the traumatic experience (in Bargielska’s writing: ‘cataloguing’ the pain of other mothers, ‘a split screen’, adapting external observer’s point of view, dividing the trauma into separate elements, lack of logic; in Starobiniec’s writing: externalization of the loss by the experience of mourning, ‘recreating’ lost relations; in both authors’ creativity: connecting life and death, placing loss in the story of life, conventional endings).

The article analyses myths concerning menstruation in Izabela Filipiak’s and Olga Tokarczuk’s creative works. The writers refer to female physiology in order to abolish the taboo on the female body and its excretions and to create mythology free from the male universe. Menstruation is considered a taboo subject even at the beginning of the 21st century and this physiological aspect of feminity is connected with an attempt to respect the differences between the sexes. One can observe not so much an attempt to destroy the rules of patriarchal culture, but a need to recreate the Western imagination, which is able to renew social and symbolic order and create new female mythology, which enables women to identify with their own needs, feelings, physical, sexual and erotic experiences.

Gender theory concerns most areas of woman‘s existence in a society and an artistic text is one of many subject manifestations, which may and is likely to influence public opinions. After the period of literature dominated by heroines fighting for the rights, the woman­‑provocateurs came to set free not only their bodies, but also their souls. Apart from the male–female relations (gender theory), Olga Tokarczuk’s short story Najbrzydsza kobieta świata (tr. The Ugliest Woman of World) reveals various aspects of women’s writing, in particular – the aesthetics of ugliness. Within this milieu, the ugliness is locked in two stands: 1. the direct characteristics of the ugliest woman in the world and 2. the shocking element of the suffering aesthetics, namely, the exposure of woman by the others.

Biała Rika (White Rika, 2016) presents the trauma of a third generation. Magdalena Parys, referring to autobiographical motifs, recalls past events – the difficult childhood of the main character, specific family relations, and the tragic experiences of a so­‑called grandmother. The author of the article discusses the types of trauma connected with the experience of war, unsuccessful relationships within a family and the period of growing up. She concentrates on female characters, as the women in Biała Rika represent a wide variety of women with different features and values. The aim of the article is to interpret Biała Rika in the context of post­‑trauma with past torments and the work of memory always in the background of one’s consciousness.

The article aims to analyse the relationship between the writer, her text and imagination that is influenced by the image of death. In Gruszecka’s novels this is revealed mostly by the way in which the author presents her heroines, whose existence is uncertain, phantom­‑like. In reference to the works of Hélène Cixous and Jerzy Grotowski, the author of the article considers how the body is presented (regarded as a certain type of an archive) as a source of the text existing between life and death. In this context ‘writing (with) the body’ could be understood as a mode of ‘stillness as to give way to the life that comes (also from the past and memory) in a momentary experience of self­‑mortality.

Most scholars dealing with Ewa Lipska’s poetry claim that a motif of home is amongst the most important ones in her works. The author of the article discusses the existence of this very motif in the late works of the poet. The article also aims to consider the different senses evoked by the Greek term ‘atopy’ in Lipska’s works.

The article presents the evolution of the heroes in Polish cinema after the Second World War, as well as while showing the characters that influenced the social awareness of Poles, it reveals those which have been created in response to the social needs. Although the Polish postwar cinema for decades used to be exclusively masculine, lately this tendency changed, and thus for, the author shows that the features and attributes of male characters have been transferred to the female characters by the scenarists and film directors.

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The article aims at presenting part of the research that has been done on the stereotypes of a ‘girlfriend’ (Polish: ‘dziewczyna’). The research is based on letters published in Polish magazines for teenagers at the end of the communist regime and in the first decades of the 21st century. Partner profiling is an important element of the reconstructed stereotype. The description follows analysis of the traditional image of a female partner, which is based on an analysis of Polish proverbs. The research reveals many elements typical of the traditional model, especially the culturally accepted passive attitude of girls (especially in the Polish People’s Republic period). Modification of the model appears in a later period: freedom of customs, sexual awareness, and behaviour that is more liberated (based on letters written from the beginning of the 21st century).

The aim of the article is to reinterpret the landscapes created by Eliza Orzeszkowa with the use of the tools offered by geocritics and geopoetics. It enables treating topography as the main element of the literary landscape, which – in the case of Orzeszkowa – creates the landscape itself. Topography/’topographic experience’ contains the landscape and makes it visible. Using some selected examples, the author of the article explains how space has been created and which senses it evokes.

The article discusses the problem of objectivity in humanistic (literary) research methodology. A starting point is Thomas Khun’s question concerning conditions that would initiate a paradigm. The author of the article refers to considerations on the influence of bodily integrity (attributes and modes of ‘the matter’) and on human thinking (on what can be logically thought). The author follows the path of logic investigations that lead to the concept of experimental literary criticism (three­‑dimensional reading of the texts), which is closely connected with the recently forgotten idea of truth, as defined by Charles Sanders Peirce.

The aim of the article is to describe the way in which Tomasz Łychowski defines the phenomenon of emigration in his poems from the volume Spojrzenia (Glances, 2016). Emigration is not only regarded from different perspectives here, but the author also plays with the traditional image of an emigrant. In his poetry Tomasz Łychowski promotes the idea of unity in multiplicity and the value of diversity.