Author : Richard Butterwick
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 406 pages
File Size : 46,7 MB
Release : 1998
Category : History
ISBN : 9780198207016
In Poland's Last King, Richard Butterwick reassesses the achievement of Poland's most controversial king. He shows how Stanislaw August's radical plans for constitutional reform and the renewal of Polish culture were profoundly influenced by his admiration of England, and examines the successes and limitations of the Polish Enlightenment.
Author : Adam Zamoyski
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 361 pages
File Size : 24,92 MB
Release : 2020-03-19
Category : History
ISBN : 1474615201
A superb study of one of the most important, romantic and dynamic figures of European history. 'A fine book ... the web of political intrigue unfolds like an appetising detective novel' Scotsman The last king of Poland owed his throne largely to his youthful romance with the future Catherine the Great of Russia. But Stanislaw Augustus was nobody's pawn. He was an ambitious, highly intelligent and complex character, a dashing figure in the finest eighteenth-century tradition. A great believer in art and education, he spent fortunes on cultural projects, and finding that he was blocked politically by Catherine, he put his energies into a programme of social and artistic regeneration. He transformed the mood of his country and brought it to a new phase of reform and independence. Poland's neighbours, however, viewed this beacon of liberty in their midst with alarm, and as they invaded and partitioned it, Stanislaw saw the destruction of his life's work, and ultimately was forced to abdicate, a broken man, deceived and disillusioned.
Author : Maggie Ann Bowers
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 26,3 MB
Release : 2023-09-07
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 303132188X
This edited volume explores the historical, cultural and literary legacies of Polish Britain, and their significance for both the British and Polish nations. The focus of the book is twofold. First, it investigates the history of Polish immigration and the ways in which Polish immigrants have conceptualised their own experiences and encounters with Britain and the British. Second, it examines how Poles and Poland have been represented by Anglophone writers in both fictional and non-fictional forms of discourse. Inevitably, these issues are intertwined. Polish experiences of Britain have been shaped, in part, by British ideas about Poland, just as British notions of Poland have been transformed by the emergence of large and culturally active Polish communities in the UK. By studying these issues together, this volume develops a wide-ranging and original analysis of Polish Britain.
Author : Stanley Bill
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
Page : 357 pages
File Size : 37,3 MB
Release : 2023-11-14
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 0822990199
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795) was once the largest country in Europe—a multicultural republic that was home to Belarusians, Germans, Jews, Lithuanians, Poles, Ruthenians, Tatars, Ukrainians, and other ethnic and religious groups. Although long since dissolved, the Commonwealth remains a rich resource for mythmakingin its descendent modern-day states, but also a source of contention between those with different understandings of its history.Multicultural Commonwealth brings together the expertise of world-renowned scholars in a range of disciplines to present perspectives on both the Commonwealth’s historical diversity and the memory of this diversity. With cutting-edge research on the intermeshed histories and memories of different ethnic and religious groups of the Commonwealth, this volume asks how various contemporary conceptions of multiculturalism can be applied to the region through a critical lens that also seeks to understand the past on its own terms.
Author : R. Butterwick
Publisher : Springer
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 38,79 MB
Release : 2001-06-26
Category : History
ISBN : 0333993802
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is often considered an 'aberration' where monarchy was reduced by the nobility to impotence, and which was consequently partitioned. However, historians' reappraisal of monarchy in early modern Europe calls for a reconsideration of the extent of Polish-Lithuanian 'divergence'. The essays of this collection assess the institution and idea of monarchy in one of Europe's largest and most neglected states. It will appeal to all those interested in early modern history.
Author : Jakub Lipski
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 15,92 MB
Release : 2020-09-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 168448233X
Published in 1719, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is one of those extraordinary literary works whose importance lies not only in the text itself but in its persistently lively afterlife. German author Johann Gottfried Schnabel—who in 1731 penned his own island narrative—coined the term “Robinsonade” to characterize the genre bred by this classic, and today hundreds of examples can be identified worldwide. This celebratory collection of tercentenary essays testifies to the Robinsonade’s endurance, analyzing its various literary, aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural implications in historical context. Contributors trace the Robinsonade’s roots from the eighteenth century to generic affinities in later traditions, including juvenile fiction, science fiction, and apocalyptic fiction, and finally to contemporary adaptations in film, television, theater, and popular culture. Taken together, these essays convince us that the genre’s adapt- ability to changing social and cultural circumstances explains its relevance to this day. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Author : Robert E. Alvis
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 28,12 MB
Release : 2016-08-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0823271722
In 1944, the Nazis razed Warsaw’s historic Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. “They knew that the strength of the Polish nation was rooted in the Cross, Christ’s Passion, the spirit of the Gospels, and the invincible Church,” argued Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in a letter celebrating the building’s subsequent reconstruction. “To weaken and destroy the nation, they knew they must first deprive it of its Christian spirit.” Wyszynski insisted that Catholicism was an integral component of Polish history, culture, and national identity. The faithfulness of the Polish people fortified them during times of trial and inspired much that was noble and good in their endeavors. Filling a sizable gap in the literature, White Eagle, Black Madonna is a systematic study of the Catholic Church in Poland and among the Polish diaspora. Polish Catholicism has not been particularly well understood outside of Poland, and certainly not in the Anglophone world, until now. Demonstrating an unparalleled mastery of the topic, Robert E. Alvis offers an illuminating vantage point on the dynamic tension between centralization and diversity that long has characterized the Catholic Church’s history. Written in clear, concise, accessible language, the book sheds light on the relevance of the Polish Catholic tradition for the global Catholic Church, a phenomenon that has been greatly enhanced by Pope John Paul II, whose theology, ecclesiology, and piety were shaped profoundly by his experiences in Poland, and those experiences in turn shaped the course of his long and influential pontificate. Offering a new resource for understanding the historical development of Polish Catholicism, White Eagle, Black Madonna emphasizes the people, places, events, and ritual actions that have animated the tradition and that still resonate among Polish Catholics today. From the baptism of Duke Mieszko in 966 to the controversial burial of President Lech Kaczyński in 2010, the Church has accompanied the Polish people during their long and often tumultuous history. While often controversial, Catholicism’s influence over Poland’s political, social, and cultural life has been indisputably profound.
Author : Jerzy Lukowski
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 533 pages
File Size : 15,2 MB
Release : 2019-01-24
Category : History
ISBN : 1108341454
Poland is a tenacious survivor-state: it was wiped off the map in 1795, resurrected after the First World War, apparently annihilated again in the Second World War, and reduced to satellite status of the Soviet Union after 1945. Yet it emerged in the vanguard of resistance to the USSR in the 1980s, albeit as a much more homogeneous entity than it had been in its multi-ethnic past. This book outlines Poland's turbulent and complex history, from its medieval Christian origins to the reassertion of that Christian and European heritage after forty-five years of communism. It describes Poland's transformation since 1989, and explains how Poland navigated its way into a new Commonwealth of Nations in the European Union. Recent years have witnessed significant changes within Poland, Eastern Europe and the wider world. This new edition reflects on these changes, and examines the current issues facing a Poland which some would accuse of being out of touch with 'European values'.
Author : Norman Davies
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 628 pages
File Size : 14,51 MB
Release : 2005-02-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199253401
This new edition of Norman Davies's classic study of the history of Poland has been revised and fully updated with two new chapters to bring the story to the end of the twentieth century. The writing of Polish history, like Poland itself, has frequently fallen prey to interested parties. Professor Norman Davies adopts a sceptical stance towards all existing interpretations and attempts to bring a strong dose of common sense to his theme. He presents the most comprehensive survey in English of this frequently maligned and usually misunderstood country.
Author : Phillip Papas
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 636 pages
File Size : 15,8 MB
Release : 2014-04-11
Category : History
ISBN : 1479811793
Honorable Mention for the 2015 Book Award from the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond Honorable Mention for the 2015 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award In November 1774, a pamphlet to the “People of America” was published in Philadelphia and London. It forcefully articulated American rights and liberties and argued that the Americans needed to declare their independence from Britain. The author of this pamphlet was Charles Lee, a former British army officer turned revolutionary, who was one of the earliest advocates for American independence. Lee fought on and off the battlefield for expanded democracy, freedom of conscience, individual liberties, human rights, and for the formal education of women. Renegade Revolutionary: The Life of General Charles Lee is a vivid new portrait of one of the most complex and controversial of the American revolutionaries. Lee’s erratic behavior and comportment, his capture and more than one year imprisonment by the British, and his court martial after the battle of Monmouth in 1778 have dominated his place in the historiography of the American Revolution. This book retells the story of a man who had been dismissed by contemporaries and by history. Few American revolutionaries shared his radical political outlook, his cross-cultural experiences, his cosmopolitanism, and his confidence that the American Revolution could be won primarily by the militia (or irregulars) rather than a centralized regular army. By studying Lee’s life, his political and military ideas, and his style of leadership, we gain new insights into the way the American revolutionaries fought and won their independence from Britain.
