Stanisław KRAWCZYK (University of Warsaw, Poland) | [email protected] OVERVIEW
Contemporary sociologists have hardly been interested in literary periodicals, at least not in the English- and German-speaking academia (English, 2010; Parker & Philpotts, 2009, p. 3). The paper contributes to filling this gap by demonstrating the role of periodicals in the Polish field of fantastic fiction in the 1980s and 1990s. This role is examined with regard to the peripheral status of Polish literature in the global fantastic system at that time.
The study follows Franco Moretti’s application of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory to the sociology of literature (Milner, 2012, pp. 155–177). Moreover, the paper draws on the field theory of Pierre Bourdieu (1996) and on the work it has inspired among literary scholars interested in periodicals (Parker & Philpotts, 2009; Philpotts, 2010). The research is also informed by sociological investigations of various art fields (Becker, 1982; Jankowicz, Marecki, Palęcka, Sowa, & Warczok, 2014; Thompson, 2012; Warczok & Wowrzeczka-Warczok, 2009). SUBJECT MATTER AND SIGNIFICANCE
The neglect of periodicals has caused sociologists to miss an important opportunity to study amateur literary criticism—the corpus of non-academic commentaries on fiction that circulate among readers, writers, and editors. Working on essays, discussions, reviews, columns, or readers’ letters may allow researchers to recognise how literature is understood in communities and networks that have an effect on its production and reception. Other sociologically relevant texts include publishing news, convention reports, items on local initiatives, etc. Taken together, all kinds of materials found in periodicals contain a wealth of information on aesthetic and social dynamics of the respective literary field.
What is more, periodicals are not just a source of data on other developments in the field; they are significant institutions in their own right, actively shaping the literary life. It is this role of journals and magazines that is explored in the current paper. While based on historical data, the study is also relevant to the present: many periodicals are still published online, and other sites providing space for amateur criticism—blogs, message boards, Facebook groups, fan-managed
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web portals—can be understood more fully in the context of their genetic or functional relationships to printed media.
The world system of fantastic fiction offers an illustration of how periodicals may work. One of the ways to conceive of fantastic prose is to treat it as a distinctly modern phenomenon which took form as a separate body of literature in the United States of America between the 1920s and 1950s. The so-called pulp magazines—cheap periodicals printed in high circulations— played a key role in this process, not in small part due to critical commentaries whose authors shaped the collective awareness of the new type of prose. The abundance of periodicals has long remained a marked feature of fantastic fiction fields around the world (Westfahl, 1999). To ground the study in a concrete empirical setting, a particular component of the world fantastic system has been selected: namely, the field of fantastic prose in Poland. As a non- central element within the system, it is structurally similar to those of Australia, Japan, Brazil, Germany, Russia, or Czechoslovakia, all strongly influenced by North American and in part British fields which have come to form the global fantastic core (Milner, 2012, pp. 166–175). Naturally, more studies would be needed to determine the extent to which the Polish example is representative of other peripheral or semi-peripheral fantastic literatures. In the same vein, it cannot yet be established how similar this field is to other fields of popular literature (crime fiction, thriller, romance). Nevertheless, the present research may facilitate further studies, and the paper will inspect a national phenomenon that is important in itself. Fantastic fiction in Poland has been quite popular at least since the 1970s, and it has had a rich social context— from fan clubs, to awards, to the dozens of conventions currently held each year.
OBJECTIVE AND METHODOLOGY
The goal of the paper is related to that of Stephen Parker and Matthew Philpotts, whose study of the long-standing East German journal "Sinn und Form" aimed ‘to lay the foundations for a new and systematic approach to … research into journals as agents in literary in cultural history’. Whereas the authors sought ‘to identify the generic, “anatomical” dimensions of the journal … and to explore the contribution made by each of these dimensions to the functioning of that institution’ (Parker & Philpotts, 2009, p. 3), the objective of the current study is to distinguish and analyse the main ways in which periodicals can influence the dynamics of a peripheral literary field. The attempts of social actors to exert this influence are also regarded as efforts to accrue resources (such as symbolic capital) with a view to strengthening the actors’ own positions in the field.
Two vastly different decades are investigated in order to encompass two contrasting situations as well as the transition between them. In the 1980s the number of translations from English was very limited in the Polish fantastic field. This was caused mostly by the socialist ideology and economy that hampered the inflow of Western popular genres. In the 1990s, after the fall of Soviet regimes East of the Iron Curtain, the new capitalist book market in Poland was filled with fantastic works by North American writers. The role of periodicals in each decade differed accordingly, even though Polish fantastic fiction occupied a peripheral location in either case. The study is based on an array of historical data gathered from periodicals themselves, scholarly publications, reading surveys, club brochures, anthology introductions, writers’ memoirs, award nominations and laureate lists, and so forth. The acquired body of quantitative information is then applied to examine the significance of periodicals in selected areas, such as introducing new genres, building the strong position of translations from North American prose, and shaping the careers of Polish writers. Furthermore, several key critical texts are analysed to highlight the evolving literary tastes underlying these processes.
REFERENCES
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Bourdieu, P. (1996). The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. California: Stanford University Press.
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