The role of the press in shaping literary competence of the youngest readers in the post-partition period

Abstract

The aim of the text is to analyse the shaping of the press youngest readers’ literary competence in the era of partitions, which was especially difficult for educational institutions. Periodicals for children at that time not only developed patriotic feeling and attitudes towards the nations and a state, which lost its sovereignty. Due to the dramatic situation of education and progressive russification and germanization, the press took an active part in education and constituted a teaching aid for popular then home schooling. The key term in the article is a literary competence, understood as a set of predispositions conditioning “a contact with the work”. Some components of this competence were closely discussed, namely: the scope of knowledge about the works and their authors passed in magazines for children; ways of developing sensitivity to the literary text necessary to receive the work, its understanding and interpretation; ways of implementing the reader to creative creations of their own text.