The KOR and the Revivals of Romanticism in the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

The study synthetically presents the phenomenon of “the renewal of Polish Romanticism” by literary researchers at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s and addresses manifestations of this process and references to the Romantic tradition in “Zapis” and “Krytyka”, two of the most important journals produced in the community of the Committee for Social Self-Defence KOR, among others in texts by Adam Michnik, Jacek Kuroń, Stanisław Barańczak. In the last part of the study the author poses a question about the Romantic and positivist dimension of the political activities of the KOR as an organisation opposing totalitarian rule.