"Chłopiec z Georgii" Erskine'a Caldwella - między groteską, ironią i urokiem opowieści z Południa

Abstrakt

The aim of the essay is to present a special “episode” in the work of a mature writer, the text addressed both to young, teenager and adult readers. A good example proves to be the prose by Erskine Caldwell, Georgia Boy (1943). Previously Caldwell created Tobacco Road (1932), God’s Little Acre (1933), Journeyman (1935) and Trouble in July (1940).

It seems important that Caldwell became close to Polish readers in the second decade of the twentieth century when it was “fashionable” to read this type of American literature, exposing the brutal and miserable life of the “black” South. But novels created between 1932 and 1940 are texts addressed to a mature reader. Stories mentioned above are full of brutality and violence. But the collection of short stories Georgia Boy seems to be different.  Caldwell shows there his positive and full of sensitivity attitude to common people and their humble, not complicated lives.

It would also be interesting to examine from this special perspective, comparing artistic biography of the author with the creation of the narrator in prose dedicated not only to young people as Georgia Boy seems to be. Caldwell is also a writer whose masterpieces have had a particular impact on the perception of the literature of the twentieth century of the generation of  Polish readers, who are nowadays elderly and well-educated people.