The national house and home in Polish literature and culture

Abstract

This chapter outlines the national discourse on the house and home in Polish literature and culture under the condition of foreign rule. Literature and art played a particularly important role in the construction of this ‘cultural matrix’, that is in the multigenerational construction of a cultural identity. In Polish culture, the aristocratic manor house played a particularly important role in the unification of the ‘members of a nation’ and the preservation of the Polish identity under the period of rule by foreign powers. After the unsuccessful 1863 Polish January Uprising, the home as a national ‘fortress’ would increasingly become a place of repression and opposition. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, images of urban town houses began to appear in Polish literature with increasing frequency. The heterogeneity and socio-economic problems of town houses were juxtaposed with, among other things, the idyllic rural manor house landscapes.