| Abstract: | In the doctoral dissertation entitled "The spaces of confession. The geographic-Lutheran identification of Jerzy Pilch's prose", the author attempts to interpret and analyse the prose of Jerzy Pilch, one of the most important contemporary Polish writers. The main methodologies used in the dissertation are contemporary research on the category of space in literary studies, with particular reference to geopoetics, auto/biography and Lutheran thought. Two groups of Pilch's texts have been distinguished in the paper. The first group is represented by columns, journals and extended interviews, in which the author appears as himself. On the other hand, in the second group there are novels and short stories, where the literary impersonations of the writer appear. This division makes it possible to notice both the similarities and differences in creating the constructed reality, and to confront these two seemingly different ways of narrating. In the first part of the dissertation, entitled "Me – earth", starting from a reconnaissance of the category of space in humanistic thought and its contemporary version – geopoetics - and the history of Cieszyn Silesia, the author focused on the images of these lands in Pilch's work. Theoretical and historical contexts help to show the region in three perspectives – as real, (un)real and imagined space. It all adds up to an original, literary image of Cieszyn Silesia, which was a special place for the writer. The second part of the dissertation entitled "Me – luter" focuses on the auto/biographical threads in the writer's work, the key to which is Lutheranism and its old form called 'luterstwo' in Polish. Referring to the research devoted to the categories of the author and the biography in literary theory, by referring to the Evangelical-Augsburg faith (i.e. religion and ethics formed on its basis) and the Lutheran history of Cieszyn Silesia, the author of dissertation presents various realisations of the author's "I" in Pilch's works. On this basis, the main thematic areas covered in his literary auto/ biography were distinguished and analysed, and their implementation was examined through the analysis of the main - authorial - characters appearing in novels and short stories. The adoption of such a research strategy leads to the interpretation of the writings of the author of 'The Diary' as a special auto/bio/ geography, which becomes the key to understand the literary confession of the writer from Wisła. |