Orphan Girl: The Olesnicki Episode: One Body with Two Souls Entwined: An Epic Tale of Married Love in Seventeenth-Century Poland (Volume 85) (The ... in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series)

A page-turner featuring one of literature’s earliest female protagonists. Written in 1685, Transaction or the Description of the Entire Life of an Orphan by Way of Plaintful Threnodies, often referred to as Orphan Girl , is a valuable, long-lost, seventeenth-century poetic text that documents women’s writing in the early modern period. In this autobiographical account, Anna Stanislawska speaks confessionally and unsparingly about her life, from her infancy to her widowhood and withdrawal from the world. Stanislawska was an incomparable memoirist, revealing the depths of her private life in a manner not to be matched until modern times. O ne Body with Two Souls Entwined brings together this spirited poetic account with an in-depth introductory and literary commentary by Barry Keane. Together the book offers a remarkable piece of scholarly, translational, and dramaturgical work and puts it in context amid the backdrop of Polish history. Following on from "The Aesop episode", where Anna Stanisławska (1651-1701) in poetic verse relates the traumas of her later marital bondage to a deranged husband, a bondage from which she heroically manages to free herself, this episode sees the poetess recounting what was a hoped-for felicitous future. For soon after her divorce, Anna is courted by the handsome Jan Oleśnicki, a candidate outstanding in his vigorous suitability, his venerated lineage, and his determination to win his bride. However, this is an age of tears and personal calamities; and war, broken faith, and Stanisławska's resolve to maintain agency over her life will ultimately lead to marital conflict. Heartbreakingly, before the lovers have achieved some semblance of accord, callous Misfortune visits herself upon them. This spirited poetic account is also accompanied by an in-depth introductory and literary commentary "The second of three parts of the unique verse epic account of her three marriages, this one, successful but brief, to famed military hero Jan Zbigniew Oleśnicki, by Polish author Anna Stanisławska"-- Provided by publisher Cover Title Page Contents Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction Orphan Girl: The Oleśnicki Episode Commentary Bibliography Index Series Page