The role of literature in Ryszard Berwińskiʼs “Studies in Folk Literature”

This article examines the problem of the significance of literature, not just folk literature, in Ryszard Berwiński's Studies in Folk Literature from the Historical and the Scholarly Perspective, published in Poznań in 1854. This subject was largely marginalized in discussions of this magisterial work because of what could seem as the author's inordinate preoccupation with demonology. This article looks again at his approach, which deserves a reappraisal. The discussion is divided into three parts. The first part examines the terms used by Berwiński to describe folk literature and texts that are connected with it in various ways, which for him and other 19th‑century researches constituted the essence of folklore. The second part focuses on those types of texts Berwiński regarded as crucial for the study of the sources of folk belief, while the third reviews his vision of the cultural and social role of literature in the 19th century. Together, these analyses reconstruct Berwiński's view on the functioning of literature in folklore studies and, more broadly, in the processes of the creation of a communal identity.