Papers by Marcin Polkowski
Religions 17, 430. , 2026
Titus Brandsma (1881-1942), Dutch Carmelite and martyr, canonized in 2022, has been widely studie... more Titus Brandsma (1881-1942), Dutch Carmelite and martyr, canonized in 2022, has been widely studied as a journalist, mystic and writer on spirituality. His poetry, however, still remains a relatively understudied part of his work. The purpose of this article is to provide a new evaluative survey of Brandsma's poetic oeuvre, and to trace the reception of his poetry during his lifetime, and through the postwar period until the present day. One of the effects of this research, presented in this article, is a bio-bibliographic analysis, which for the first time offers a comprehensive overview of Brandsma's poetry. As regards critical reception, this article focuses on the reasons why Brandsma's verse was initially neglected and he himself was not considered a poet by his biographers. It examines the factors responsible for a recent revival of interest in several, though not all, of Brandsma's poems, and their representation in recent biographies. The findings suggest that the postwar popular appeal of Brandsma's poetry, especially his prison poem "Before the picture of Jesus", and its growing international circulation, combined with an increased literary awareness and new methods of analysis, as well as changes to the understanding of literature itself, led to a much-needed reassessment of Brandsma as a poet in the first decades of the 21st century. However, the bibliography of Brandsma's poetry indicates that the majority of his poems require further in-depth research using modern literary-critical methods.
Roczniki teologiczne, 2023
The recently canonised Dutch Carmelite Titus Brandsma (1881-1942), World War II martyr, mystic, C... more The recently canonised Dutch Carmelite Titus Brandsma (1881-1942), World War II martyr, mystic, Catholic journalist and historian of spirituality, was also-what is less known-a talented poet. The article recalls his early occasional poetry, written in Dutch and Frisian between 1898 and 1906 for members of his immediate family. Its literary characteristics are presented, demonstrating that this poetry is a valuable testimony to the saint's views on human life from an eschatological perspective, including topics on the family, marriage, and the relationship between children and parents. This justifies recognising St. Titus Brandsma's occasional poetry as an expression of his unique poetic theology of the family. The article also includes an English translation of a hitherto untranslated poem by St. Titus Brandsma.
Badania niderlandystyczne na KUL-u już od 100 lat
Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023
Father Prof. Gommar Michiels was not only a celebrated specialist in canon law but in 1923 he als... more Father Prof. Gommar Michiels was not only a celebrated specialist in canon law but in 1923 he also authored a Polish-language article about the Flemish Movement in the Cracow journal Przegląd współczesny. Michiels' publication deals strictly with a topic of interest to Dutch Studies. His article - published 100 years ago - can be called the first scholarly research in Dutch Studies done by a scholar at the Catholic University of Lublin.
Roczniki humanistyczne, 2023
Review of:
Hense, Elisabeth, and Joseph Chalmers, eds. Titus Brandsma. Mysticism in Action. The ... more Review of:
Hense, Elisabeth, and Joseph Chalmers, eds. Titus Brandsma. Mysticism in Action. The Collected Works of Titus Brandsma, vol. 1 (Roma: Edizione Carmelitane, 2021). 382 pp. ISBN: 978-88-7288-199-6.
Hense, Elisabeth, and Joseph Chalmers, eds. Titus Brandsma. Letters to the family. The Collected Works of Titus Brandsma, vol. 2 (Roma: Edizioni Carmelitane, 2021), 512 pp. ISBN: 978-88-7288-205-4.
Visualisation in Late-Medieval Franciscan Passion Literature from the Low Countries: Cransken van minnen (Wreath of Love), 1518
Religions. Special Issue Visionary and Contemplative Practice in the Medieval World, 2023
Late-medieval devotional literature embraced visualization as a means of providing the reader-dev... more Late-medieval devotional literature embraced visualization as a means of providing the reader-devotee with the experience of being a virtual witness during a text-guided meditation. Based on a new reading of Cransken van minnen, a Middle Dutch prayer book from Franciscan milieus, this paper will propose a framework based on the interrelations between visualization and other key aspects pointed out in recent research as significant for understanding this type of literature: affective reactions, anamnesis and virtual witnessing. This framework entails two assumptions. The first is that visualization, especially with Mary as the compassionate “focaliser”, was instrumental in achieving the goal of devotion, which was to promote an affective reaction (contrition). The second is that this prayer book offered devotees an experience of anamnesis (“recalling”) that depended on the provision of sensory perceptions through which readers could become virtual witnesses to the events meditated upon. Using a combination of philological and literary–historical methods, the structure and content of this prayer book are scrutinized in detail to provide new insights into the strategies used by the compiler to infuse the prayer discourse with elements suggesting visual perception.
Roczniki Humanistyczne
Dit artikel onderzoekt het beeld van Polen en de Poolse samenleving onder de Russische deling vóó... more Dit artikel onderzoekt het beeld van Polen en de Poolse samenleving onder de Russische deling vóór de Januariopstand tegen de Russen (1863/64) in Albrecht Rodenbachs toneelstuk Studenten van Warschau. Poolsche tafereelen (1879). Een overzicht van Rodenbachs belangstelling voor Polen wordt gevolgd door een analyse van de traditionele wegen die literatuurwetenschappers bewandelen bij de interpretatie van dit drama. Rodenbachs literair beeld van Polen onder de Russische deling en de Poolse samenleving aan de vooravond van de opstand wordt onderzocht vanuit een aantal invalshoeken (geografie, topografie, taal, cultuur, de maatschappij en haar instellingen, politieke en militaire aspecten) door middel van de methode van de literaire en culturele imagologie. Dit onderzoek toont aan dat een nieuwe lezing van Rodenbachs toneelstuk, met meer aandacht voor Poolse motieven, een reeks inzichten oplevert over verschillende tot nu toe onopgehelderde aspecten van de tekst. Het bevestigt het beeld ...
Laski, 2021
Zawiera integralny przekład dwuczęściowego artykułu ks. Woutera Lutkie z gazety codziennej De Tijd.
Roczniki humanistyczne, 2022
This article researches the image of Poland and Polish society under Russian partition before the... more This article researches the image of Poland and Polish society under Russian partition before the January Uprising (1863) in the Flemish poet Albrecht Rodenbach’s play Studenten van Warschau. Poolschetaferelen (Students of Warsaw. Polish scenes, 1879). A survey of Rodenbach’s interest in Poland and his contacts with Poles is followed by an analysis of the traditional paths followed by literary scholars interpreting this drama. Rodenbach’s literary image of Poland and Polish society on the eve of the insurrection is analysed from several angles (geography, topography, language, culture, society and its institutions, political and military aspects, etc.) using the methodological framework of literary and cultural imagology. The research reveals that a new, more Polish-oriented reading of Rodenbach’s play produces a wide range of insights on various hitherto unexplained aspects of the text. It confirms the view of Rodenbach’s nuanced understanding of mid-19th century Polish culture and society, augmenting it in several important respects.
Rzeczpospolita a Niderlandy. Relacje literackie i kulturowe w dobie staropolskiej
Polkowski, M., Rzeczpospolita a Niderlandy. Relacje literackie i kulturowe w dobie staropolskiej,... more Polkowski, M., Rzeczpospolita a Niderlandy. Relacje literackie i kulturowe w dobie staropolskiej, [w:] M. Hanusiewicz-Lavallee (red.), Wśród krajów Północy. Kultura Pierwszej Rzeczypospolitej wobec narodów germańskich, słowiańskich i naddunajskich: mapa spotkań, przestrzenie dialogu. Wydawnictwo UW: Warszawa 2015, seria: Kultura I Rzeczypospolitej w dialogu z Europą. Hermeneutyka wartości, tom I, s. 190-246.
Neerlandica Wratislaviensia, 2020
The research presented in this article demonstrates the application of the imagological method to... more The research presented in this article demonstrates the application of the imagological method to an analysis of the portrayal of interconfessional relations in 17th-century Dutch religious polemic literature by a Roman Catholic author, the priest Joannes Stalpart van der Wiele. The aim of this research is above all to identify how informal contacts between Catholics and non-Catholics were depicted in a literary discourse. The analysis focuses on Stalpart’s two texts, Roomsche reijs (Journey to Rome) and Extractum katholicum (Catholic extract), to identify images which may be classified as showing “interconfessional conviviality” and omgangsoecumene, twin concepts postulated by Willem Frijhoff. By pointing to the existence of themes related to religious toleration in the work of Stalpart van der Wiele, an author not associated with such ideas, a change of emphasis in the image of his oeuvre may be achieved.
Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2018
Werkwinkel, 2015
Although in the early-modern period The Hague was not officially a city, its identity was based o... more Although in the early-modern period The Hague was not officially a city, its identity was based on specifically urban features. During the 17
Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2018
This codex, which transmits devotional texts in a translation by Geert Grote, a pioneer of the Mo... more This codex, which transmits devotional texts in a translation by Geert Grote, a pioneer of the Modern Devotion movement, especially the Small Office of the Virgin Mary and the Middle Dutch adaptation of Heinrich Suso's Hundert Betrachtungen und Begehrungen, offers valuable evidence of literary and religious culture in the late-medieval Netherlands. The article begins with a codicological description, followed by a preliminary analysis of the artistic program of the manuscript, a description of the structure of the codex and the identification of the most important texts. Textual evidence indicates that the codex most probably originated from the diocese of Utrecht.
From Propaganda to the Denial of Free Speech: Politics and the Misuse of Language in Elizabethan England in the Writings of Anglo-Dutch Polemicist Richard Verstegan (c. 1550–1640)
Dutch Crossing
De Zeventiende Eeuw. Cultuur in de Nederlanden in interdisciplinair perspectief, 2013
Reconstructing the Middle Ages Dirck van Bleyswijck's Beschryvinge der stadt Delft and its uneasy... more Reconstructing the Middle Ages Dirck van Bleyswijck's Beschryvinge der stadt Delft and its uneasy relationship with the past Marcin Polkowski Marcin Polkowski (1978) obtained an M.A. in English (2001) and Dutch (2003) literature from Warsaw University. In 2007 he defended his doctoral thesis on the sonnets of P.C. Hooft at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków. He subsequently obtained a Habilitation Degree, based on his book on the local dimension of Dutch Catholic religious literature from the Middle Ages to the Golden Age. He currently teaches at the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin. His fields of interest include Dutch, English, and Polish Renaissance poetry, religious literature, urban literary networks, Anglo-Dutch and Polish-Dutch relations, Dutch economic history, and interconfessional relations in early modern Europe.
Het 'corresponderende lezen'van Odile Heynders als interpretatiemethode voor PC Hoofts Waer't dat Juppijn...
gespin.amu.edu.pl
Abstract. In Correspondenties: Gedichten lezen met gedichten (2006), the Dutch literary critic Od... more Abstract. In Correspondenties: Gedichten lezen met gedichten (2006), the Dutch literary critic Odile Heynders proposes a new method of interpreting poetry, which she labels corre-sponding reading. Heynders applies this method to modern poetry. Her reading strategy offers also ...
Przegląd uniwersytecki, 2020
The article presents several mentions concering the Catholic University of Lublin in the Dutch pr... more The article presents several mentions concering the Catholic University of Lublin in the Dutch press of the early interbellum (1918-1923) which have been hitherto unknown to Polish scholars. The article discusses e.g. the first mention of the founding of a university in Lublin in the daily Het Vaderland (28.10.1918), an article in De Tijd regarding the funeral of father Idzi Radziszewski (1922) with wide-ranging reflections of an anonymous correspondent about the new university, and the wishes of father Jacek Woroniecki OP for the community of the Catholic University of Nijmegen (1923) published in the same newspaper.
De Honderd artikelen van Henricus Suso in Lublin, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, hs. 2626
Ons geestelijk erf, 2019
This article presents research on a newly-discovered Dutch prayer book from the University Librar... more This article presents research on a newly-discovered Dutch prayer book from the University Library of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, MS. 2626. Research on the manuscript is placed in context by way of a brief survey of the state of research on Dutch prayer books in Poland’s libraries. An inventory of such manuscripts, based on the most recent sources, is provided in the article. After a brief survey of the contents of in MS. 2626 the focus shifts to the text of the Hundred articles of Henry Suso conveyed in this prayer book. This redaction is identified as a South-Netherlandish adaptation. Because its prologue contains elements akin to to the Middle Dutch translation of Willem Jordaens’ Latin version of the Hunderd articles, one may speak of the Lublin redaction as an example of the 'cross-pollination' (a term used by José van Aelst) between various textual versions of the Hundred articles.
Neerlandica Wratislaviensia, 2019
"Beyde borghers, beyde leken, en van al de rest ghelijck, buyten geus en catholijck". Het beeld v... more "Beyde borghers, beyde leken, en van al de rest ghelijck, buyten geus en catholijck". Het beeld van omgangsoecumeniciteit in de Roomsche reijs en Extractum katholicum van Joannes Stalpart van der Wiele Abstract The research presented in this article demonstrates the application of the imagological method to an analysis of the portrayal of interconfessional relations in 17th-century Dutch religious polemic literature by a Roman Catholic author, the priest Joannes Stalpart van der Wiele. The aim of this research is above all to identify how informal contacts between Catholics and non-Catholics were depicted in a literary discourse. The analysis focuses on Stalpart's two texts, Roomsche reijs (Journey to Rome) and Extractum katholicum (Catholic extract), to identify images which may be classified as showing "interconfessional conviviality" and omgangsoecumene, twin concepts postulated by Willem Frij-hoff. By pointing to the existence of themes related to religious toleration in the work of Stalpart van der Wiele, an author not associated with such ideas, a change of emphasis in the image of his oeuvre may be achieved.
Epos. Od Homera do Martina, ed. by B. Błaszkiewicz and J. Godlewicz-Adamiec, Gdańsk: WN Katedra, 2019
This paper undertakes a spatial reading of the Middle Dutch religious epic poem Beatrijs by focus... more This paper undertakes a spatial reading of the Middle Dutch religious epic poem Beatrijs by focusing on how representations of physical spaces and places in the text interact with instances of prayer and miracles. A vantage-point for this interpretation is Aron Gurevich’s adaptation of Mikhail Bakhtins’ concept of the chronotope. The function of topography in Beatrijs is additionally investigated using the interpretative practice of geopoetics to determine that physical space is not merely a passive backdrop but can be regarded as an actor of the events unfolding in the plot, actively impacting the protagonists’ behaviour and psychological condition.
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Papers by Marcin Polkowski
Hense, Elisabeth, and Joseph Chalmers, eds. Titus Brandsma. Mysticism in Action. The Collected Works of Titus Brandsma, vol. 1 (Roma: Edizione Carmelitane, 2021). 382 pp. ISBN: 978-88-7288-199-6.
Hense, Elisabeth, and Joseph Chalmers, eds. Titus Brandsma. Letters to the family. The Collected Works of Titus Brandsma, vol. 2 (Roma: Edizioni Carmelitane, 2021), 512 pp. ISBN: 978-88-7288-205-4.