Magna Mater modernistów – kobiecość archetypiczna i inne aspekty boginiczności w epoce Młodej Polski

Abstract

The Great Goddess is a figure/idea/deity that has been “resurrected” again and again over the past century and a half, both in the context of various scholarly studies and Western spirituality. The popularity of the concept of the Great Goddess is analyzed from the perspective of various disciplines: psychology, anthropology, history of religion, etc. The origins of this phenomenon – the great return and vindication of the female deity in culture – lie primarily in the 19th-century literary texts and philosophical essays. The pancultural motif of Magna Mater has already captured the attention of Polish literary scholars, but the research has mainly concerned contemporary works and has concentrated primarily on the fantasy genre. Drawing in particular from the field of depth psychology, the author of the article adopts similar research methods to analyze works from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. She seeks to discover in them the archetype of the Great Goddess, which already at that time began to inspire female and male artists. This resulted in extremely interesting literary creations and motifs, including Polish works.