Stories of False Messiahs. Jacob Frank's Jewish Heresy and its Reflection in Polish Literature

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to document the history of Frankism, a Jewish heretical religious movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, in Polish literature. Besides giving basic information about Jacob Frank, the founder of Frankism and a self-proclaimed Messiah (little-known in Czech awareness), we will focus on three different creative approaches to the 'false Messiah topos' (in the prose of Julian Stryjkowski, Aleksander Wat and Olga Tokarczuk).

Keywords

• Jacob Frank
• Frankism
• Jewish messianism
• false Messiah topos
• Polish literature
• Julian Stryjkowski
• Aleksander Wat
• Olga Tokarczuk