The Story of Apolonia Tochman or the Rise of the American Myth of a New Joan of Arc

Barzycka-Paździor, Agata

doi:2450-8462

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The Story of Apolonia Tochman or the Rise of the American Myth of a New Joan of Arc Barzycka-Paździor, Agata

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The Story of Apolonia Tochman or the Rise of the American Myth of a New Joan of Arc

Acta Poloniae Historica T. 131 (2025), Gender, Emotions, and Historical Process ; Varia

Barzycka-Paździor, Agata

Polska Akademia Nauk. Komitet Nauk Historycznych ; Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla ; Fundacja Instytutu Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk ; Nowakowska, Elżbieta : Translator

Fundacja Instytutu Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk ; Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Warszawa

2025

p. 175-201

Kraków Uprising 1846 ; Spring of Nations (Revolutions of 1848-1849) ; Polish emigration ; Poles in America ; myth of the woman warrior ; Polish people - United States - 19th century ; Poland - emigration and immigration - 19th century

The article presents the problem of the creation of historical myths using the example of the story of Apolonia Jagiełło Tochman (c. 1825–1867), an alleged participant in the Kraków Uprising of 1846 and the Hungarian Spring of Nations, who came to America with a group of Hungarian insurgents in 1848. Faced with the difficulty of separating fact from myth in her biography, it addresses the problem of the origin of the heroic myth of Apolonia Tochman, whose name is still included in many Anglo-Saxon studies devoted to legendary and historical women warriors. Treating the myth as an unverifiable and ‘immobilised’ formulation that is supposed to say something about the world, as a category of symbolic or factual truths, it attempts to answer the question of whether Tochman’s heroic myth was a product of conscious self-creation, particular interests or social needs and what was the phenomenon of Tochman’s American popularity embraced by American presidents and compared to Joan of Arc, the semi-legendary Catalina de Erauso or the Hungarian heroines of the 1848–1849 revolution.

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