Introduction

Martin, W., Chicago Review

In 1989-90, Poland experienced a sea-change in every area of public life: in the reorganization of political power, in economic reform, and in the liberation of media and public discourse from politically-determined constraints. The immediate consequences of this for literature were unclear. Many feared that poets, in particular, who had played an important role in the 1970s and 1980s in defining positions of resistance to ideological saturation and to martial law, would lose readerships along with this authority. Novelists and other prose writers, for their part, found themselves confronted with another kind of obsolescence, that of a new, profit-driven publishing market. Bookstores in the first few years of the 1990s were infused with historical exposes of Soviet atrocities, new editions of long-unavailable Polish works, and translations of bestsellers from the U.S. and western Europe; while contemporary Polish literati were more or less jettisoned from display tables and publishing programs.

But during these uncertain years at the beginning of the decade, there were also signs of renewal. …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Introduction. Contributors: Martin, W. - Author. Journal title: Chicago Review. Publication date: Summer-Fall 2000. Page number: 7. © 1999 University of Chicago. COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group.

This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.