The article is concerned with the present state of folklore. There is a fundamental difference between what folklore really meant when it existed and what it means nowadays, in the era of global media. Original folklore was connected to a specific type of local culture and community relations, whereas currently it expresses a false commercial identity. Additionally, the article examines the risks involved in building an ideology or a political agenda on folklore and folklorism on the examples of nazism and communism, which were both based on social and nationalist myths of traditional culture.

The article discusses the phenomenon of children’s folklore in the age of the Internet, especially with respect to the forms of communication that the Internet facilitates. Children’s folklore has always been connected with the evolving philosophy of childhood. The turn of the turn of the twentieth century marks the emergence of serious studies in children’s oral and textual folklore. This kind of creative output has been recognized as a subcategory of children’s literature (J. Korczak, J. Brzechwa, J. Tuwim etc.). Nowadays the theory of anti-pedagogy (R. Dahl) seems to be the most closely related to children’s folklore.

Although the term ‘folklore’ was invented in the epoch of romanticism, romantic literature was not objective toward traditional rural culture. Artists, writers and musicians included elements of rural culture (songs, proverbs, etc.) in their works, trying to prove that the folk tradition expressed national values. In such Polish texts as Zamek kaniowski or Dziennik podróży do Tatrów by Seweryn Goszczyński, folklore is subordinated to the romantic conventions. This is why such literary works cannot be considered as records of folklore, but instead as cases of romantic stilization.

The emergence of the study of folklore as a discipline at the end of eighteenth century caused important changes in literature, theatre and art. Folklore became a source of new themes and contributed to the renewal of poetic language. But the romantic interest in folk culture also revealed a variety of literary, cultural and political misconceptions, the most easily discernible in numerous works of lesser, if not altogether questionable, literary quality.

Romantic writers believed in the inspirational power of folklore, hoping to invent a true national culture with mystical undertones. This conviction, however, veiled artistic failures and political disappointments.

The new book about Stanisław Czernik (Wacław Przybyła, Stanisław Czernik. Człowiek i pisarz, Ostrzeszów 2010), the founder of the poetic group called „Okolica Poetów” (The Area of Poets) provides a pretext to discuss twentieth-century poets and novelists, who were born in rural areas and, in their works, were concerned with the life of peasants. The articles offers an overview of the difficult situation of Polish peasants in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Whereas such writers as Marian Czuchnowski or Stanisław Młodożeniec treated their works as vehicles for political agitation, Stanisław Czernik advocated „authenticity” as a primary literary aim. As editor and leader of a literary group, Czernik contributed significantly to the strengthening of the rural trend in Polish literature (W. Myśliwski, E. Redliński, J. Kawalec).

The article focuses on the presence of Ukrainian folklore and culture in Leśmian’s writing on three text levels: thematic, lexical and compositional. A specific example is the influence of bylines of Kiev’s cycle on Leśmian’s poems from the cycle Pieśni kalekujące. The article presents the modifications of Ukrainian folklore motifs in the poetic and prosaic works by Leśmian with reference to the versions of corresponding topics in Polish and Russian literature from romantic and modern period.

The article discusses the specificity of Curpian folk poetry as modern regional literature on the basis of the war poems by Leszek Bakuła and Mieczyslaw Czychowski. Both poets incorporate in their works various inspirations deriving from folk culture, such as the references to magic and dance or to the symbolism of trees (pine and birch). In their poetry, this context enables a shift from a typical war narration to the contemplation of Curpian folk horror. Bakuła refreshes the regional variant of horror, whereas Czychowski introduces new artistic models of terror into the folk narration. As a result, Bakuła’s poetry remains a representation of horror loci, while Czychowski’s illustrates a new type of terror, called horror mundi or horror vacui.

The article deals with selected short stories by Zygmunt Haupt. Folkloristic motifs, used in the texts, shed light on the relationship between the narrator, named Nietota, and his sister, thus enriching the psychoanalytical context. For example, they enhance the subject of loss: the death of the sister at a young age evokes deep melancholy in the narrator. Furthermore, certain elements of folklore suggest the presence of an incestuous passion in the brother. This passion, connoting a social taboo, is repressed, but its articulation is possible through folkloristic associations.