mgr Kinga Skowron

 

The topic of my dissertation is: „The horror of rural spaces – folk horror and folk noir in Polish literature after 2000”

My research interests focus on contemporary Polish horror literature, particularly folk horror, as well as the presence and transformation of the Gothic motifs in contemporary Polish literature. Another significant area of my research concerns classic horror literature, with particular emphasis on the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. I am also interested in intermedial relationships between literature and new media, including video games. Furthermore, I examine how traditional literary motifs are reinterpreted and reconfigured in contemporary cultural texts situated at the intersection of literature and popular culture, such as metal songs lyrics.

My doctoral dissertation investigates the representation of rural space as a locus of horror in contemporary Polish folk horror and folk noir, focusing on selected novels and short-story anthologies published after 2000. The central research problem concerns how the literary construction of rural environments articulates social fears and individual and collective traumas through a distinctive repertoire of horror drawing on Slavic demonology, folk beliefs, rituals and customs. The study examines the defining characteristics of these literary formations, their relationship to established horror conventions, and the ways in which Polish folklore is reinterpreted within narratives of rural communities, alienation and the uncanny. Drawing on geopoetics, ecocriticism, psychoanalysis, memory studies and cultural studies, the dissertation also seeks to identify the factors that distinguish the Polish manifestations of folk horror.

The dissertation aims to establish a literary-critical framework for defining Polish folk horror and folk noir, identifying their characteristic conventions and examining the mechanisms through which rural space becomes a source of fear. Its central hypothesis is that folkloric motifs, elements of folk demonology and traditional customs function not merely as aesthetic devices but as means of articulating cultural memory and revealing the lingering presence of traumatic and conflictual pasts within rural landscapes. By comparing Polish texts with international examples of folk horror, the research seeks to demonstrate the distinctive features of the Polish tradition and clarify the relationship between folklore, spatial representation and the cultural construction of horror. The findings are expected to contribute to the development of contemporary Polish horror studies by offering a more comprehensive account of the genre’s conventions, its local specificity and its capacity to explore social exclusion, collective anxieties, intergenerational trauma and the complex relationship between communities, landscape and the past.