Princes, Peasants, and Other Polish Selves: Ethnicity in American Literature

By Thomas S. Gladsky

This book is a case study of the way in which ethnic identities are created and shaped by literature, focusing on the American image of the Pole from the 1830s to the present. Using a vast range of writings, some well known and others long neglected, Thomas S. Gladsky shows how the 19th-century view of the Pole as kindred spirit or beau ideal was supplanted by other literary models - anarchist, peasant, proletarian, antisemite - and culminated in the present-day idea of ethnicity as the heart of Americanness.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870237756
• ISBN13: 9780870237751
• Release Date: July 1992
• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.3"