JAKOWSKA Krystyna

Born on 24 June 1938 in Wilno (Vilnius); daughter of the lawyers Wojciech Dąbrowski and Janina, née Prüffer. In 1945 she was subject to population transfer and repatriated, to use the terminology of the day, settling with her family in Torun. She was a pupil at the Nicolaus Copernicus Grammar School in the city. After completing advanced secondary education in 1956, she studied Polish philology at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (UMK) in Torun. In 1961 she graduated with a master's degree, writing a dissertation on Karol Irzykowski's experimental novel Pałuba. Her study was supervised by Prof. Artur Hutnikiewicz. She was subsequently appointed assistant at the Department of Interwar Literature at the Institute of Polish Philology (which in 1999 became the Institute of Polish Literature) at UMK. She made her debut in 1962 in the monthly "Twórczość" (no. 11) with the short essay "Pałuba" – Gombrowicz – Sartre. She continued to collaborate with the periodical until 1968. She also published reviews and articles in "Pomorze" (1962-65) and "Kultura" (1965-69). She moved to Warsaw in 1965 while continuing to work at UMK in Torun. Her researched focused on applications of literary theory in analyses of interwar prose. She was awarded a doctorate in 1968 for her thesis Z dziejów ekspresjonizmu w Polsce. Wokół "Soli ziemi" Józefa Wittlina (On the History of Polish Expressionism: Józef Wittlin's "Salt of the Earth" and its Context). It was supervised by Prof. A. Hutnikiewicz. In 1983 she was awarded a habilitation degree for her book Powrót autora. Renesans narracji auktorialnej w polskiej powieści międzywojennej (The Return of the Author: The Revival of the Auctorial Narrator in Polish Interwar Novels). She was a member of the Adam Mickiewicz Literary Society from 1984, chairing its Torun Branch from 1985 to 1987. She joined the Warsaw Branch in 1998 and became a member of the Society's Editorial Commission. She was appointed professor at UMK in 1991, while in 1993 she was made state-appointed professor. She published studies and articles in the journals "Pamiętnik Literacki" (contributing regularly in 1992-1993 and 2002-2003), "Polonistyka" (1993) and "Przegląd Artystyczno-Literacki" (1996). She left UMK in 1998 to take up a post at the Department of the History of Interwar and Contemporary Literature at the Institute of Polish Philology at the University of Białystok. Between 1999 and 2009 she was head of the Department and she continued to collaborate with it after retiring. She married the engineer Stefan Jakowski in 1965. They have three children: Zygmunt (b. 1967), Anna (b. 1969) and Janina (b. 1971). She lives in Warsaw.