Summary: | Polish soldiers and British women – carnivalesque encounters during the Second World War
Hitler’s attack on Poland on September 1, 1939 and related to this British declaration of war two days later suddenly made two countries (Poland and Britain) which knew little, if anything, about one another allies. Polish soldiers, representing all military branches, came to the British Isles. While in collective memory the military effort of the Second World War occupies prominent place, it is also worth paying attention to the time which soldiers spent off the battle fields as it may deliver valuable information on cultural exchanges. After all, during the last war not only two nations, Polish and British one, but also representatives of two different cultures met. One example of these cross-cultural encounters were the relations between British women and Poles, the soldiers of the navy, army and air force. The article presents these relations in the context of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival. The present author argues that war, in certain situations, acquired the characteristics of Bakhtinian carnival. The analysis is based on the published Polish combatants’ wartime accounts of the war period.
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