Published: 2025-12-04

What Appeals to the Foreign Reader? Literary History and Its Reception by Foreigners

Monika Válková Maciejewska Logo ORCID

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the factors dominating various literary studies on the norm (here: readings) of literature and to juxtapose them with the expectations and reception of the same by foreigners in the history of modern Polish literature classes. In the course of the argument, we will focus first of all on the assumptions of structuralism, where we will try to point out and comment on the relevant passages, which could be useful in the process of preparing literature block classes, and then juxtapose them with contemporary reflections on the way the same literature is approached and presented to a non-Polish audience. The author starts from the premise that the reading and critical reception of a literary work in a foreign environment is often different from the reception in a native environment because the recipient’s habits and experiences are different. This statement was confirmed by the reality of the university: the latest Polish literature was juxtaposed with the reception of the Other in lectures and exercises at the Collegium Polonicum in Słubice (course for the third year of bachelor degree studies for Polish Studies). The article answers the question of what the history of literature is today (a constellation, a lens, a window on the world?) for a foreigner.

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Válková Maciejewska, M. (2025). What Appeals to the Foreign Reader? Literary History and Its Reception by Foreigners. Postscriptum Polonistyczne, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.31261/PS_P.2025.36.04

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Domyślna okładka

2025
Published: 2025-05-26


ISSN: 1898-1593
eISSN: 2353-9844
Ikona DOI 10.31261/PS_P

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

Licence CC Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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