Eliminacja wątków religijnych w polskich baśniach ludowych w latach 50. XX w. na przykładzie twórczości Hanny Januszewskiej

Abstrakt

The elimination of religious themes was a requirement of the 1950s in Poland. The rule of a competition organized by the Ministry of Culture and Arts for literary development of fairy tales was to introduce into them some elements typical of folk tales, and not – of fairy tales, namely their religious elements. The fragments of censorship reviews by GUKPPiW, which are quoted in this paper, also show a negative perception of religious elements in fairy tales in the 1950s. Censors stressed in their opinions that the contents for children should have mainly an educational role: “We are not against fantasy in principle provided it has some realistic educational value”. Conducting a thorough analysis of the number of religious elements in fairy tales before World War II and immediately after it, the work by Hanna Januszewska serving as an example, allows for a clear observation of the progressive elimination of religious themes. These re-emerged only in the second half of the 1970s.