Nineteenth Century Writers on Poland’s History in the Context of National Identity: Mickiewicz – Kraszewski – Norwid

Abstract

Summary This study is part of a larger project focused on the 19th-century understanding of national identity, Polishness, the idea of a community and the idea of a state. The article examines some historiographic texts of Adam Mickiewicz’s First Series of Lectures on Slavic Literature (December 1840–June 1841), Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s Lectures on Civilisation in Poland (1861) and Cyprian Norwid’s ‘Boga-Rodzica’ [Bogurodzica] – a literary-historical interpretation (1873). Although these writers held widely opposed views, their portrayals of Poland’s history seem to have a lot in common. The texts analyzed here are remarkably consistent in their representations of Poland, the nation and the state, on its long historic road before the fatal partitions; they also show the importance of the Age of the Piasts and the Age of the Jagiellons for the 19th-century reflection on Polish identity.