In this special issue, we propose to map Polish structuralism as a large field of possibilities. We welcome both historical and methodological approaches and most gladly accept combinations of the two. We are particularly interested in:
- Polish structuralism’s relationships with other dominant in this area schools of thought, such as formalism, phenomenology and the Brentano School (Lwów-Warszawa School), Marxism, neo-positivism, hermeneutics, etc.
- its ties with other scholarly cultures Russian, Czech, French, American, etc., including the role of great precursors, e.g. Roman Jakobson, Viktor Vinogradov, Jan Mukařovský, Petr Bogatyrev, Nikolai Trubeckoi
- the Polish precursors to global structuralism, such as Jan N. Baudouin de Courtenay, Mikołaj Kruszewski, and Wiktor Porzeziński
- the interferences of structural literary studies with other object areas (science of language, society, art history and theory, musicology, etc.)
- the relevance of the interwar Wilno and Warsaw schools for the developments after 1958
- the relevance of structuralism’s computational results for the present-day digital humanities as well as the ratio of the mathematical methods to philological inquiry, beginning with Kazimerz Wóycicki’s book on Polish trochaic verse from 1914
- the impact of the historical events, especially the major traumata, on the lives of the structuralists
- the meaning of “Polishness” in the case of structuralism
- the role of the Jews in international and Polish structuralism
- the kinds and periods of literary history the Polish structuralists worked on
- the language of structuralism – its syntax and its Dictionaries
- the structuralists as creative writers
- structuralism on and in translation
- institutions of structuralism: institutes, congresses, conferences, magazines, book series, circles, family ties, friendships and hostilities, etc.
Paper proposals in English or French are to be sent to Michał Mrugalski (michal.mrugalski@uni-tuebingen.de) before September 30, 2020.
Letters of acceptance will be sent out by the end of October 2020.
The deadline for submitting articles is June 1, 2021.