Polish press for children and youth up to 1918 year (assumptions of a research project)

Abstract

The purpose of the project is the preparation of a monograph on the history of periodicals for children and young people which appeared in Poland until 1918. The research will include all of their types, both the periodicals addressed to the young readers, and those from created by them (approximately 350-400 titles in total). The outcome will be both a critical, multi-faceted analysis of the phenomenon and its full documentation. It is hypothesized that the Polish periodicals from the period the Partitions of Poland substituted for the non-existent national organizations and institutions, i.e. it primarily served a compensatory function. The analyses will aim to show the periodicals as a carrier of educational methods, role models, literary means of expression and self- education, self-organization and political activity of the youth. The subject matter will be examined from the perspective of periodicals’ studies; however, its literary and pedagogical aspects will be included and dealt with extensively. The monograph will consist of papers focusing on the context of the phenomenon and a synthetic characterization subject discussed. The individual typological groups and their leading members will be examined as well. An integral part of the monograph will be a complete bibliography of the writings analysed. In the course of the work, a variety of methods will be used: at the stage of data collection – bibliographic and documentary techniques, at the stage of data analysis and comparative studies – statistical techniques, at the stage of content analysis – quantitative content analysis and at the level of description – heuristics and methods of literary history, respectively. The work is undertaken with the aim to comprehensively investigate children’s and young people periodicals from the period. The study results should reflect the role of this group of publications in the broad sense of social communication. The analyses will include research on the communication channel of interest (conditions, creation, reception, circulation) and its content and form. The beneficiaries of the results include researchers dealing with periodicals and book scientists, along with literary historians and scholars of history of education and culture. The research should contribute to progress in all these areas. This assumption results from the analysis of previous studies, which were taken infrequently and at a level of considerable generality. The main reason for this unsatisfactory progress was the lack of basic research, both in terms of documentation and quantitative analysis of the phenomenon.