Anna Łebkowska

Henryk Markiewicz on theory of the novel
The article presents Professor Henryk Markiewicz as the outstanding theorist of the novel, the author of many publications devoted to narration, plot, fictional characters and also other issues referring to the role of time and space in the narrative works. The author gives particular attention to the book The theories of the novel abroad.
It is a compendium impressive in extend and scale that presents historical review of the western theories of the novel from antiquity to modern times.

In the article, the author presents a map of the main trends associated with the problem of Europe and European identity which are of particular importance for the broadly understood modernism. In this context, the novel by Roman Jaworski „Wesele hrabiego Orgaza” (The Wedding of Count Orgaz), whose main topic is a critical analysis of the then dominant tendencies to heal the prematurely withered Europe, occupies an important place. It is these very issues that constitute the main topic of the article. In Jaworski’s novel, the attempts to rescue Europe were presented in a grotesque light; this is noticeable particularly in the projects of modernity: treated here as illusory intellectual, ordering constructions whose aim was to alter history; (mainly the principle of collection, clean slate – tabula rasa etc.). The element of the catastrophic, so characteristic of this novel which is combined here with the awareness of the extinction of all values, is transformed into an argument over the issue whether these values would have a chance to survive.

This article is focused on the interpretation of the changes made by Tadeusz Różewicz to the cover of a single Twarz trzecia poetry volume. The volume – offered to Jerzy Kwiatkowski and bearing an extensive dedication – contains changes and corrections introduced by the poet in individual works, which will also be analyzed. The main aim of the research will be both the analysis of the revealed creative process and the interpretation of the author’s lack of acceptance for the paratext of the finished work.

In this article – which is an answers to questions posed in a survey – I analyse Thomas Pavel’s understanding of the history of the novel. I juxtapose his propositions with contemporary trends within literary history, emphasizing his substantial contribution to research of fictitious worlds and the literary persona. I underscore the evident intellectual affinities with the theory of Charles Taylor. Furthermore, I also examine the question of the ethics of reading from diverse standpoints (Daniel Defoe’s novel serves as an example), recognizing that if there are any affinities that we can speak of at all, in this case, then they would point to theories of Martha Nussbaum rather than to the views inspired by Derrida, Rorty, or feminist criticism. I focus on the selection criteria adopted by the scholar, who is less concerned with the twentieth-century novel – especially the self-referential kind – and concentrates less on various crises of values but is instead more inclined to explore novels grounded in common moral beliefs, that is those possessing “a literary safety system.” Consistency of the adopted research perspective allowed the researcher to approach the genre’s history in an innovative way.

In the paper dedicated to prof. Jerzy Jarzębski I deal with the transformations in ex- perimental narrative in contemporary prose, especially with ways of using pronouns and gender forms. I concentrate on the interpretation of novels written by Zbigniew Kruszyński, Olga Tokarczuk and Jacek Dukaj, whose shared main feature are the relocations of grammatical forms of the text. Mixed narrative forms (pronouns “we” and “you,” reflexives, transformations of the neuter gender etc.) open new possibilities of worldview and self-identity.