Coming of Age under Martial Law
Subtitle: The Initiation Novels of Poland's Last Communist Generation
Publisher: University of Rochester Press; University Of Rochester Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9781580465281
Subjects: Polish literature, history and criticism; Identity (psychology) in literature; Poland, politics and government; Intergenerational relations; Bildungsromans
Description: "How do historical cataclysms affect the social conditioning of young people? How do individuals born in the same period come to form an identifiable "generation"? How do coming-of-age stories create a sense of community and generational identity? Coming of Age under Martial Law: The Initiation Novels of Poland's Last Communist Generation addresses these questions, examining a selection of post-1989 coming-of-age novels authored by the generation of Polish writers whose transition from adolescence to adulthood coincided with Poland's transition from communism to liberal democracy. Svetlana Vassileva-Karagyozova argues that when cataclysms of any nature overlap with the sensitive period of maturation into adulthood, they disrupt the natural rhythm of society's self-renewal. In the case of the Polish '89ers, the generational clash with their predecessors did not produce the anticipated generational change in leadership, but a pathological role reversal: the elders refused to give up their leadership positions, while the young were stifled in their development and occupied marginal social spaces" --