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In the 1930s, seven plays by Polish women writers created a flurry of excitement and condemnation as these women dared to question national myths, reinterpret the definition of subject, and subvert genre expectations. This study interrogates the feminism of these shocking dramas.
List of contents
Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Women and Drama in Other Western Modernisms 2. Inter-War Poland 3. Who Were They? A Short Biographical Introduction 4. What Are They? Plot Summaries of the Plays 5. Theorizing the Subject: Seeing Through an Essentialist Lens 6. Theorizing the Subject: Possibilities of Change 7. The Subject Vis-à- Vis Cultural Myths 8. Dramatic Fissures 9. Inter-War Critical Reception Conclusion Bibliography Index
About the author
Professor of Polish and Russian at Northern Illinois University,
Joanna Kot has written extensively on Polish and Russian modernist drama, including the monograph
Distance Manipulation: The Russian Modernist Search for a New Drama. Her recent work focuses on 1930s Polish women playwrights as important predecessors to contemporary feminist drama.
Summary
In the 1930s, seven plays by Polish women writers created a flurry of excitement and condemnation as these women dared to question national myths, reinterpret the definition of subject, and subvert genre expectations. This study interrogates the feminism of these shocking dramas.
Additional text
“In Complicating the Female Subject: Gender, National Myths, and Genre in Polish Women’s Inter-War Drama, Joanna Kot works to broaden the landscape of interwar Polish literature and to consider how women playwrights worked in and against the conventions of their time to complicate the female subject. … Kot’s work, rooted in literary theory and contextualized culturally and historically, offers a thought-provoking introduction to women playwrights engaged in the project of defining their role within a rapidly changing Poland. … As Poland continues to grapple with the role of women in society, Complicating the Female Subject introduces us to a group of women who 'shared faith in the possibility' of improvement.”
—Alena Gray Aniskiewicz, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Women East-West
