This book is a case study of the way in which ethnic identities are created and shaped by literature, focusing on the American image of the Pole from the 1830s to the present. Using a vast range of writings, some well known and others long neglected, Thomas S. Gladsky shows how the 19th-century view of the Pole as kindred spirit or beau ideal was supplanted by other literary models - anarchist, peasant, proletarian, antisemite - and culminated in the present-day idea of ethnicity as the heart of Americanness.
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This book is a case study of the way in which ethnic identities are created and shaped by literature, focusing on the American image of the Pole from the 1830s to the present. Using a vast range of writings, some well known and others long neglected, Thomas S. Gladsky shows how the 19th-century view of the Pole as kindred spirit or beau ideal was supplanted by other literary models - anarchist, peasant, proletarian, antisemite - and culminated in the present-day idea of ethnicity as the heart of Americanness.
Read Less
