Handling the Touchy Subject. The Treatment of Author's Alleged or Actual Homosexuality in Polish Studies in History of English Literature

The paper presents the presence of English homosexual authors in Polish literary studies mostly aimed at students of history of English literature. From a review: "As indicated in the opening paragraphs, queer theory and broadly LGBTIQ approaches have been finding new homes as well as finally being given voices in publication. One such from Poland, edited by Dominika Ferens, Tomasz Basiuk and Tomasz Sikora, is the second in what is hopefully a series. It is suggested in the introduction to the slim volume Out Here: Local and International Perspectives in Queer Studies that it builds on its predecessor because more of its authors address the local context of Poland and Eastern Europe. This is obviously welcome in and of itself, but additionally so because viewpoints from Poland are rare more generally as a result of prejudice against Polish immigrants in Western Europe. Of the essays focused on Poland, Krzysztof Fordoński’s ‘Handling the Touchy Subject: Dealing with the Author’s Alleged or Actual Homosexuality in Polish Studies in the History of English Literature’ gives numerous examples where historical, contextual material for literature studies, apparently deliberately, has left out or misled readers on the subject of author homosexuality. Interestingly, the contextual texts in which information about the non-heteronormative desires of authors does appear are almost all in English, rather than Polish, meaning that the breadth of the picture is only ever likely to reach Polish university students who access English rather than Polish sources, and certainly not the wider Polish population whose access is limited by the lack of working knowledge of English (p. 36). Shamira A. Meghani, 'Queer Theory and Sexualities', The Years Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, The English Association, 2010