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Published: 2020-10-23
Vol. 16 No. 2 (2020)

Is this only a social realist agitprop novel? An attempt to re-read “Mother” by Maxim Gorky

Joanna Dobrowolska Logo ORCID
Section: Essays and Articles
https://doi.org/10.31261/SSP.2020.16.10

Abstract

My paper is a proposal for a non-standard reading of Mother by Maxim Gorky, often perceived as a piece of propaganda with low artistic value, a novel overfilling with ideology, subjugated to the doctrine of social realism. I would like to step beyond these stereotypes and show some contexts that have hardly been identified in the Polish reception of Russian literature from the early 20th century. I distinguish three main issues in the content of the novel: the image of the mother (novel about a mother), socialism as the “new religion” and the utopia of the “new man”. I see the current of Marxism called God-Building as a very important ideological context. I refer to research by Polish and Russian literary scholars and to my own findings.

Keywords:

1905 revolution , Maxim Gorky , God-Building , utopias in literature

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Citation rules

Dobrowolska, J. (2020). Is this only a social realist agitprop novel? An attempt to re-read “Mother” by Maxim Gorky. Śląskie Studia Polonistyczne [Silesian Journal of Polish Studies], 16(2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.31261/SSP.2020.16.10

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Vol. 16 No. 2 (2020)
Published: 2010-06-04

ISSN: 2084-0772
eISSN: 2353-0928
Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press
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