The conviction that Polish modernism is characterised by a dual communication strategy — whose symbols, as Włodzimierz Bolecki writes, are on the one hand “texts” and on the other “voices” — has naturally directed the attention of literary historians not only to how utterances are constructed in relation to established forms of literary communication, but also to how they are shaped as direct records of expression that elude literary conventions.

In other words, the specificity of modernist literature — more precisely, the dialectic of its communicative strategies — has sensitised scholars to the entire sphere of writing referred to as the literature of personal documents, identified with epistolography and various forms of memoir writing as testimony to an individual’s experience of reality, reinforcing the authenticity of the message.

Since the 1970s, the term ego-documents has generally been used to describe this type of writing. It was first introduced by the Dutch scholar Jacques Presser in reference to biographies, memoirs, diaries, various autobiographical forms, interviews, and private correspondence. It was later popularised by historians such as Rudolf Dekker and Arianne Baggerman, who reflected on the use of these documents in historical research, and above all by Philippe Lejeune — co‑founder of the Association pour l’Autobiographie et le Patrimoine Autobiographique and author of the well‑known book On Autobiography. In the Polish context, it is worth mentioning the work of Małgorzata Czermińska, author of, among other studies, The Autobiographical Triangle: Testimony, Challenge, and Challenge.

The phenomenon of ego-documents is particularly attractive to the literary historian, as it opens up a perspective for tracing the interaction between two (out of four) discourses of modern literature: the fictional and the autobiographical. In a situation where — according to Ryszard Nycz — modern literature has been strongly influenced, among other factors, by intimate‑autobiographical prose, reflection on the presence of ego‑documents in the literary universe gains special significance.

We would therefore like to invite you to join us in the intellectual effort of discovering new areas of relations between ego‑documents and literature in its fictional discourse. We encourage contributions addressing the following topics:

• The letter as an ego‑document;
• Autobiographies and memoirs as spaces for shaping narrative identity;
• Ego‑documents as sources/inspirations for writers;
• Ego‑documents authored primarily by twentieth‑century writers – autobiographical strategies and their transformations;
• Reading literature through the prism of the writer’s ego‑documents;
• Ego‑documents in literary narrative strategies;
• When literature becomes an ego‑document, and when an ego‑document acquires literary status.

Colloquia Litteraria is a scholarly, peer‑reviewed semiannual in literary studies, affiliated with the Faculty of Humanities at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. Since 2006, it has been published in thematic issues devoted to various areas of literary scholarship and to interdisciplinary topics. The journal is indexed in: BazHum, CEJSH – The Central European Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, IC Journals Master List, and PBN – the Polish Scholarly Bibliography. Thanks to funding from the Ministry of Education and Science (within the “Science Dissemination Activities” module), five special issues containing archival articles from Colloquia Litteraria translated into English have been published.

Information on editorial requirements and additional elements for submitted articles is available on our website: www.czasopisma.uksw.edu.pl

Please send submissions to: m.saganiak@uksw.edu.pl

Associate Professor (dr hab.), University Professor Dorota Kielak

Associate Professor (dr hab.), University Professor Magdalena Saganiak