THE PROVINCE IN THE MOST RECENT POLISH AND GERMAN LITERATURE AND IN THE CONTEMPORARY POLISH AND GERMAN LITERARY CRITICISM (Problem prowincji w literaturze polskiej, niemieckiej i serboluzyckiej)

The article presents an analysis of the topos of the province in Polish and German literature after 1989. In spite of different historical and literary sources, the turning point of the fall of the Berlin wall marks the beginning of the surprising career of this literary figure which, according to the authoress, is connected to the postcolonial profile of the literatures after the breakthrough. The topos of province in literature studies and literary criticism has different functions: as an affirmation and source of national identity (the Polish 'borderland' and German West Prussia) and a test of its anti-community, postmodern character (in Stasiuk and Tokarczuk's works) and a tint of Western German quasi-identity. The proposed model for the understanding of the texts of the region is focused around the person of the narrator and the categories of the (anthropological) point of view.