Shakespeare in Poland: Recent Scholarly and General
Publications
Shakespeare in Poland -- page 14
13. Recent Scholarly and General Publications (1989-2003)
Under the Communist regime very few scholarly works were published with Shakespeare as their main subject. One of the most important events was the completion of Wiktor Hahn's Shakespeare w Polsce: Bibliografia (1958). Stanisław Helsztyński contributed his monograph Moja szekspiriana (My Shakespeareana, 1964), and a biographical fiction, Shakespeare. Opowieść bibliograficzna (Shakespeare. A Biographical Tale, 1974), while Henryk Zbierski published his Droga do Werony. Studium historyczno-literackie "Romea i Julii" Szekspira (A Road to Verona. A Historical and Literary Study. Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", 1966) and a lengthy monograph William Shakespeare (1988).
Nowadays Shakespeare re-lives his renaissance in the Polish academic spheres. As the Polish annual contribution to The World Shakespeare Bibliography demonstrates every year, more and more essays, articles, and monographs devoted to Shakespeare studies appear. Generally these works can be divided into two thematic groups: those that analyse and interpret Shakespeare's appropriation by Polish culture, and those that present more general/universal dimensions of his plays. [Note 48]
In addition to monographs, Polish critics frequently publish collection of essays on various aspects of Shakespeare's works. The Theatrum Gedanense Foundation and the Polish Shakespeare Society, recently established, have published their conference proceedings: Od Shakespeare'a do Szekspira (From Shakespeare to Szekspir,1993) and Hamlet East-West (1998), while the Interdisciplinary Research Group "The Role of Shakespeare in Polish and World Culture" of the University of Lodz has issued two volumes of international essays: On Page and Stage. Shakespeare in Polish and World Culture (2000) and The Globalization of Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century (2003). In 2003 Szekspir. Lexicon (Shakespeare. Lexicon), the first ever comprehensive dictionary to Shakespeare in Polish, was produced by Jacek Fabiszak, Marta Gibinska, and Marta Kapera.
Responding to the needs of a strikingly heterogenous Shakespeare and to the multicultural community, the University of Lodz published the first issue of Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance in 2004 (its former name was Shakespeare Worldwide). Its general publishing policy is to create an international forum for Shakespeare scholarship, focusing on his works in translation as well as the history and challenges, both theoretical and practical, of selected performances and appropriations by world cultures.
Notes
[48] Throughout this work references to various aspects of Polish Shakespeare appropriation demonstrate the most representative examples of the first thematic group. The monographs by Sadowski (1991), Mroz (1992), Kydrynski (1993) Kujawinska Courtney (1993; 1997), Fabiszak (2001), and Bolewski (2002) show that the scope of the latter group's interests is extensive. It includes general criticism, interpretations of Shakespeare's works, and analyses of their dramaturgical, linguistic and cultural dimensions. [Back]