The selected period of Polish literature is undoubtedly focal in the development of modern nationalism in Poland, as it contains the years of struggle for survival under foreign rule. Romantic poetry and its idea of national messianism is at the core of this study (Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and Krasinski). It considers the role played by the notion of great, pre-partitioned Poland (it had included Lithuania, Belorus, and Ukraine) in the development of the idea of "Polishness" in the course of the nineteenth century.

Stanislaw Eile is Professor of Polish Literature at the University of London.