Imagining a Polish Cinderella

The process of accommodation of classic fairy-tales into new historical and cultural frameworks is a well known fact, and has been widely analyzed and studied in various national contexts. On the other hand, the ‘nationalization’ of the iconographic tradition in a given cultural environment has so far been given less critical attention. In my paper, I would like to discuss the evolution of Polish illustrations of Cinderella in order to identify their similarities and differences with regard to the universal iconographic tradition. In particular, I am interested in exploring two issues: firstly, the dynamics of the interaction between the stories of a ‘nationalized’ Cinderella and ‘Polish’ images that accompany them; and secondly, diachronic transformations or the perpetuation of a national iconography considered as an autonomous phenomenon, independent from the texts of the tale. The following visual elements hasl been taken into consideration: contents: clothing, houses, location; selection of depicted scenes; recurring compositional schemes; realistic vs metaphorical approach to the represented text.