Utwory romantyków polskich w procesie kształcenia galicyjskiej młodzieży szkolnej w latach 1860-1900 - uwagi na marginesie badań nad recepcją

Abstract

In the Polish school system after the partitions, the literary public was composed of pupils of the elementary and intermediate schools, gymnasia, pro-gymnasia, and seminaries. The reception of the works occurred during the literary education, which was concentrated within one school subject only in the autonomous period of Galicia. Analyses of the contents of the most important handbook publications during the discussed period show that in the Polish language handbooks, works by the Polish romanticists of the first and the second generation constituted a large percentage, and romanticism had a decisive influence on the traditional list of obligatory reading matter and its poetic nature. Both, complete texts of the works and fragments of larger pieces for analysis, were included there. Among the literary genres, the first rank was occupied by descriptive lyrics, followed by reflective lyrics, and subsequently by: historical lyrics, lyrics of appeal (to the youth) and ballads. The epics were dominated by fables and epic fragments of Pan Tadeusz by A. Mickiewicz; more remote positions were occupied by epigrams, fragments of descriptive and historical poems, fragments of satires and idylls, and finally sayings, maxims, and proverbs. Prose was represented by moral tales, short stories, religious and patriotic legends, chats, historical stories, pictures-dcscriptions, pictures with historical contents, letters from historic persons, writers, national heroes, lyrical pictures in prose, fairy tales, readers, fragments of memoirs and diaries, anecdotes, sermons. Romantic dramas are represented only sporadically, and only in fragments. Selection of texts was strongly influenced by the methodical guidelines for the pupils and teachers. According to the requirements at that time, a pupil of the elementary or the secondary school ought to recount the text which he or she has read, or learn it by heart. Therefore, the compilations preferred short narrative texts, easy to memorise. Attention was focused on mnemotechnical qualities of the text, simple language and clear style, action and event. In that context, the descriptive lyrics won, and the reflective one was provided by the religious poetry due to its aesthetic and moral values. Selection of works in the handbooks and school anthologies in Galicia during its autonomy was characterized by subjectivism, and oriented to forming not only the pupil’s erudition, but also to his/her posture of a conscious Pole. At the top of the extra-literary values preferred in the school handbooks was the issue of morality, and the overt ethical program of education was accompanied by camouflaged national education, related to the so-called “knightly ethos” as the model concept of education through literature.