Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Room 127; Tel. (22) 6572-838

office hours: Tuesdays 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Members of the Department:
Chair:  Ms. Marlena Sęczek, M.A. 
Associate Professor Beata Dorosz 
Dr. Alicja Szałagan 
Ms. Katarzyna Batora, M.A.
Dr. Barbara Tyszkiewicz, M.A.
Dr. Grażyna Pawlak 
Associate Professor Ewa Kołodziejczyk 
Dr. Weronika Szulik

Retired scholars who participate in the activities of the Department:

Associate Professor  Ewa Głębicka
Dr. Maria Kotowska-Kachel
Ms. Barbara Marzęcka, M.A.

 

About the Department:
Bibliographical and documentary work has been carried out at the Institute since its inception, treating the creation of the Polish studies apparatus for analyzing literature from the Middle Ages to the present as one of the basic directions of activity. The Department has operated under various names since 1954. It was first led by Professor Ewa Korzeniewska, then, from 1966 to 1992, by Professor Jadwiga Czachowska, and since 1993 by Professor Ewa Głębicka. The mainstream of its activities consisted of wide range bibliographic and biobibliographic projects within the twentieth century, and thanks to Professor Czachowska’s methodological studies a new formula of literary documentation has been developed as a separate area of literary study. At present, the Department continues its documentation work, as well as historico-literary and editorial projects about twentieth- and twenty-first century writers and the literary life during this period.
The Department’s subsequent research teams worked on the preparation of biobibliographical dictionaries of contemporary writers, which included Słownik współczesnych pisarzy polskich [A Dictionary of Contemporary Polish Writers], series I, ed. by Ewa Korzeniewska, vols. 1-4 (1963-1966); series II, ed. by Jadwiga Czachowska, vols. 1-3 (1977-1980); and Współcześni polscy pisarze i badacze literatury [Contemporary Polish Writers and Literary Scholars], ed. by Jadwiga Czachowska and Alicja Szałagan, vols. 1-10 (1994-2007). Also, the Department’s researchers put together a bibliography Literatura polska i teatr w latach II wojny światowej [Polish Literature and Theater during the Second World War], authored by Jadwiga Czachowska, Maria Krystyna Maciejewska, and Barbara Tyszkiewicz (vols. 1-3; 1983-1986), and a section on modernity of Słownik pseudonimów pisarzy polskich XV w.-1970 [A Dictionary of Polish Writers’ Pseudonyms, 15th Century-1970], a collective volume edited by Jadwiga Czachowska, vols. 1-4 (1994-1996).
In 2011, a volume of a new compendium was published – the dictionary Polscy pisarze i badacze literatury przełomu XX i XXI wieku [Polish Writers and Literary Scholars at the Turn of the 21st Century] edited by Alicja Szałagan. Produced in the Dutch system, the subsequent volumes will be published at intervals of several years. It is predicted that the volumes will be placed gradually on the website of the Institute of Literary Research, where it will be updated.

Individual works on biographical and bibliographical monographs of writers have also been produced in the Department. Among others, the monographs cover the following writers: Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński (by Barbara Winklowa), Władysław Broniewski (by Feliksa Lichodziejewska), Leon Kruczkowski (by Jadwiga Kaczyńska), Maria Kuncewiczowa (by Alicja Szałagan), Aleksander Świętochowski (by Maria Brykalska), and Gabriela Zapolska (by Jadwiga Czachowska). A separate publication is the lexicon Grupy literackie w Polsce w 1945-1989 [Literary Groups in Poland, 1945-1989] edited by Ewa Głębicka. Currently, studies are being prepared on Maria Dąbrowska (Ewa Głębicka), Julia Dickstein-Wieleżyńska (Mariola Wilczak), Jan Lechoń (Beata Dorosz), Jan Parandowski (Grażyna Pawlak), Antoni Słonimski (Alicja Szałagan), Adam Ważyk (Katarzyna Batora), Jerzy Zawieyski (Barbara Tyszkiewicz), as well as on the literary life of New York emigrants from 1941 to 1969 (Beata Dorosz).

A separate field of research includes editorial works devoted to writers’ diaries and correspondence. At present, the following projects are carried out: (1) the correspondence between Maria Dąbrowska and Stanisław Stempowski (Ewa Głębicka); (2) the writings and journalism of Julia Dickstein-Wieleżyńska (Mariola Wilczak) and Jan Kasprowicz (Roman Loth, Mariola Wilczak); (3) the letters of Mieczysław Grydzewski, Jan Lechoń and Kazimierz Wierzyński (Beata Dorosz); and (4) the diaries of Jan Parandowski (Grażyna Pawlak) and Jerzy Zagórski (Barbara Marzęcka).

For research purposes, the Department makes available unpublished bibliographic materials that were prepared in the 1950s and 1960s. They include, among other things, bibliographic records of the contents of the selected left-wing periodicals from the interwar period, bibliographic records of the published bibliography Literatura polska i teatr w latach II wojny światowej [Polish Literature and Theatre During the Second World War] (in the order different from the published one), and the typescript of the Chronicles of literary life, 1944-1969. The Department also grants access to the records of the literary contents of Polish periodicals from the nineteenth century to the year 1939 (the so-called Adam Bar file lists ca. 800,000 items). In 2012, on the basis of the file, the Department began work on the creation of the database, which is part of a long-term project "The Institute of Literary Research Integrated Bibliographic Database (e-ZBB)."

Access to the Archive – containing surveys of the writers included in biobibliographic dictionaries and the dictionary of pseudonyms (its contemporary section) – is possible with the consent of Chair of the Department.