The Gulag of Polish Poets. Shame and Guilt in Poetry Born from Traumatic Experiences

Abstract

Drawing on several poetic texts written in Soviet labour camps, this paper aims to identify and investigate the functions and determinants of moral emotions, with reference to the so-called evaluative self-conscious emotions (shame and guilt) and to the differences between them in terms of cognitive evaluation and regulation strategies. More specifically, the article deals with the role of these emotions on the cognitive processing of the traumatic event in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).