The analysis of sexual differences in the representations of illnesses and patients in Polish medical literature in the 1840s shows that female and male patients were depicted in different ways. While female bodies were shown as open, vulnerable and malleable, male bodies were fortified, closed, and resistant. These two modes of representation entail two different concepts of illness: while women’s illnesses were caused by external factors, men’s maladies were believed to be the result of a distortion of inner balance. Interestingly, in the period discussed, there was more and more scientific evidence to support the ‘feminine’ concept of illness. Doctors projected the new vision of malady only on women, equating femininity and modernity and depicting them as dangerous forces disturbing the previous autarky of the men’s world.

No abstract

Summary This is an analysis of J. I. Kraszewski’s controversial novel The Poet and the World in the context of the idea of Bildung. The main character’s development is treated here as a passage from childhood - associated with innocence, clarity, unity with nature, a belief that the world makes sense and a reliance on one’s coherent identity - to adulthood, which brings with a revision of all those certainties. Faced with a disenchanted world and stripped of his dreams, Gustaw looks back at the golden age of childhood, which now reveals to him its mythical constitution. Yet it is not a story of the triumph of disillusionment and despair. Gustaw can be saved by his imagination (which functions, as noted by Agata Bielik-Robson, as a defense and strategic trope): even if it will not restore the idyllic landscapes of childhood, it should help him to salvage his individual identity.

Recenzja książki: Katarzyna Czeczot. 2016. Ofelizm. Romantyczne zawłaszczenia, feministyczne interwencje. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo IBL PAN.