Critical study of major literary and cultural paradigms, starting with the revaluations of the often misunderstood Sarmatian culture and the memory of it in the 19th century, moving on to the Romantic paradigm and its (dis)continuations, and ending with the strongest counter-proposals for Polish mentality, identity, and self-identifications (such as the Enlightenment, Positivism, and the Inter-war struggles for modernization).