Twórczość Elizy Orzeszkowej w syntezach historycznoliterackich badaczy z jej pokolenia

Abstract

The paper focuses on the question regarding the ways of presenting Eliza Orzeszkowa’s work in historical-literary syntheses written by the most outstanding literary scholars belonging to her generation: Piotr Chmielowski, Stanisław Tarnowski and Bronisław Chlebowski. For various reasons, the publication of their books was divided with longer periods of time (they were published in 1900, 1907 and 1923, respectively). Despite the ideological and methodological differences between Chmielowski’s and Tarnowski’s approach, they are similar to each other mainly because both historians place Orzeszkowa at the centre of a generational community and treat her work as representative of contemporary writing. Chlebowski, on the other hand, was sensitive to taking into account geographical differences and emphasizing the specificity of the social and political circumstances of the Grodno region, which influenced his approach to Orzeszkowa’s biography and work. He captured the uniqueness of her situation due to the distance from the Warsaw centre of positivist changes. The novelty of Chlebowski’s remarks is also due to the fact that he linked Orzeszkowa’s writing vocation with new social and cultural roles of women after the January Uprising.