Estranging the Novel: Poland, Ireland, and Theories of World Literature

Katarzyna Bartoszyńska's first monograph, Estranging the Novel: Poland, Ireland, and Theories of World Literature, opens with a brief overview of the sociohistorical affinities between Poland and Ireland: “Both are countries on the peripheries of Europe, largely Catholic, with lengthy histories of political oppression and traditions of exile and immigration” (1). From a literary standpoint, both cultures are known for their “proud poetic heritage” as well as their “robust national theater,” and—a detail that will become important for Bartoszyńska's argument later—“a seemingly underdeveloped nineteenth-century novelistic tradition” (1–2). At first glance, then, Estranging the Novel might appear to carve out a space for Polish and Irish novels within two literary traditions that have prioritized the lyric and dramatic. Yet instead, Bartoszyńska's comparison of Polish and Irish novels relies on a two-pronged argument about form and genre. First, Bartoszyńska argues that there has been a dearth of formalist criticism in interpretations of...