The text constitutes an attempt to provide an answer to the question: “What uses can literary studies derive from feminism and what pitfalls can be expected in connection with it?” Right at the very beginning, the authoress distinguishes between the concept of “feminism” and that of “feministic literary criticism” and subsequently she mentions the most important inspirations derived by literary studies from the feminist movement. While enumerating the benefits and advantages which flow from these inspirations, she also warns against some negative consequences of the ideological pressure exerted by feminism on literary studies.

While writing about her attitude towards feminist criticism and gender studies, the authoress emphasizes the possibility of referring to the sphere of individual experience which permits her to write about literature, without relinquishing her own subjectivity. Presenting the biographies and creative output of the authoresses as well as the life stories of the heroines described in their works from the point of view of the category of experience, has refreshed the language of Polish literature studies, which has so far been dominated by structural and historical methodology; at the same time, it has made room for self-expression or else “self-creation” of the researcher and for breaking the barriers between science and life in a critical text.
The authoress confesses that today the problem of self-creation and the role of her own experience in the process of reading and interpreting literary texts is no longer so important to her. The subject has ceased to act like a mirror for the analyzed text; the unavoidable process of the “blackening of the mirror” has been initiated. Yet the practice of feminist criticism teaches one that critical and academic texts are always somehow entangled in the biography of the writer. The ability to understand this truth allows one to better understand oneself and others.

The bibliography of Polish academic feminist criticism is so vast that it would seem to require an equally extensive monograph as the one which Krystyna Kłosińska devoted to world criticism. Kłosińska’s book entitled Feministyczna krytyka literacka /Feminist Literary Criticism/ was arranged in such a way as to point to the most important debates, including that of dialogism and the flourishing of discourses. In such a presentation, one perceive the attitude of both authoresses to the most important theoretical conceptions; the reading practices and the new matrixes created in their consequence as well as the new trails to be followed. Attempts to place the gender discourse in a wider context of literature studies have been undertaken in Poland already before,
usually with the view of shedding light on the foreign tradition. In her article, the authoress describes these attempts, pointing fi rstly to the historical-literary revendications undertaken primarily in the academic space, and secondly: the gender criticism of culture reviving the extra-academic discourse.

The article recapitulates briefly the history and achievements of Polish feministic criticism in the course of the last two decades, so as to analyze its present condition and immediate future perspectives against this background. According to the authoress, after the period of considerable successes and evident research autonomy, the academic identity of this branch of literary studies, became somewhat obliterated. Feministic criticism operates today as a participant of various alliances and methodological constellations, among others, together with the reflection from under the sign of gender or queer; it also appears together with post-colonial or eco-critical thought, as well as with post-humanism, new historicism or cultural materialism. And although the ease with which it enters into alliances with other cultural discourses in literature studies, obliterates somewhat its formerly sharp and prominent contours, at the same time it provides it with energy which is necessary to exist and generate new projects; at the same time, special emphasis is attached to feministic studies of Polish literature

The text poses some questions concerning the future of the feminist history of literature in the context of contemporary transformations in the fi eld of “academic knowledge production”, as well as the rhetoric and politics of the women’s movement. Moreover, it draws attention to the emancipatory character of the early feminist literary projects relating to the recovery of women’s past and also problematizes the present-day notion of women’s “sister community”. The analysis of family metaphors often used in discussions concerning “mother heritage” in the 70s, points to differences between second- and third-wave understanding of the category of “belonging somewhere”. Looking at those arguable places in feminist criticism (e.g. Showalter, Gubar, Gilbert and Moi) allows one to notice changes in the way feminist scholars perceive the literary past. Finding a new critical language to describe the pluralistic and multidimensional nature of women’s literary tradition seems to constitute the biggest challenge to contemporary feminist studies.

Gabriela Zapolska’s play Moralność pani Dulskiej (1906, The Morality of Mrs. Dulska) is undoubtedly one of her best works and one of the best comedies written in Polish. Its interest lies in the way in which the author satirizes moral philistinism by reversing gender roles in a middle class family. The presentation shows how gender related issues are used in the play to underscore the point that philistine morality is not gender specific, and it analyzes the way in which comic effects are achieved against conventional stereotypes. It then compares the text of the play with two more recent performances, both TV fi lms (one by Andrzej Wajda, and the other by Tomasz Zygadło), in which Zapolska’s originality becomes re-conventionalized in accordance with patriarchal stereotypes. In both instances patriarchal gender expectations are reintroduced and reinforced, but with the loss of the humour of the play in Wajda’s production, and a shift to the more traditional, anti-feminine comedy in Zygadło’s version.

In her dissertation Magnone carries out a reinterpretation of Konopnicka’s writings in the light of feminist theories and post-Freudian psychoanalysis. The researcher focuses on the reception of the poetess’s work, so as to reject the existing directions of interpretation, as she notices in them symptoms of a male striving to dominate the discourse and a fear of a disturbing feminine perspective. She regards the social context, the influence of critics and the moves of Konopnicka herself as mirrors which limit the poetess, which conceal the truth about her life, which distort and imprison. Whereas the truth is liberated only thanks to what has been denied or ousted – the poetess’ complicated relations with her daughters and the twenty-year stay abroad caused by it; it is only the latter that put Konopnicka closer to the discovery of the truth about herself. Yet the authoress of the article points that the interpretation which is suggested by the Warsaw scholar constitutes a kind of mirror and limitation, for Magnone requires that Konopnicka’s entire non-feminist literary output should be rejected and that her writings should be interpreted in a way contrary to her own declarations