(Un)masking Bruno Schulz

Whatever critical scalpel one selects for dissecting the literary works of Bruno Schulz (1892-1942), there will always be a certain degree of textual resistance which cannot be broken. Or in other words, taking off one of Schulz’s many masks, one will probably never avoid the impression that a new mask has emerged. This book contributes to the three most typical critical strategies of reading Schulz’s works (combinations, fragmentations, reintegrations) – being fully aware, of course, of the relativity of each particular approach. In addition, the book sets out to explore all of Schulz’s creative output (i.e. his stories as well as his graphic, epistolary and even literary critical works), as one of Schulz’s main goals was exactly to cross artificially set up boundaries between, among other things, different artistic media of expression. The book for the first time brings together leading Schulzologists (Jarzębski, Robertson, Sproede) and their prospective successors (Augsburger, Gorin, Kato, Suchańska-Drażyńska, Underhill, Wojda), established Polish academics (Dąbrowski, Markowski, Skwara, Weretiuk) and their foreign counterparts (De Bruyn, Gall, Meyer-Fraatz, Schulte, Zieliński), scholars primarily working on other authors (Anessi, Śliwa, Żurek) and those focusing on other art forms (Sánchez-Pardo, Watt). The editors’ introduction offers an overview of seven decades of Schulzology. The book is of interest for both readers with a general interest in (world) literature and/or a particular interest in Polish and Jewish studies.

"These essays shed additional light on Schulz’s body of work, provide a productive means of expanding on older themes, and open up a breadth of new questions and possible roads of academic inquiry. In sum, this volume forms a Schulzology compendium that sets a new standard in any language for the study of this enigmatic author." – Ewa Wampuszyc, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in: Slavic and East European Journal 57/2 (2013), pp. 324-6
"[…] there is an unusually high percentage of quality essays with innovative approaches […]. We should expect that the collected essays in this volume will set the standard for Schulz studies in English. We can also hope that it will have an impact on the Polish-language sphere." – Jessie Labov, The Ohio State University, in: The Russian Review 71/3 (June 2012), pp. 509-10