The fi rst part of the study is based on historical genetics. It examines the issues of the page over a long period of time and places it within the evolution of a written culture. In light of this past, the second part off ers an integrated view of functions whose sequence creates the possibility of a genesis: a manipulable material object – a medium at the interface of thought and trace – a unit that measures the writing stages – a space where words and graphics interfere with the production of meaning. The conclusion points to another dimension of history: the future.

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of “collaborative creative process,” understood as cooperation between more than one causal subject. Various historical examples of co-creativity are considered, starting from the situation in which the author takes into account the advice of a proofreader to the formal co-creation of two (or more) writers. Refl ection on the collaborative specifi ty of the creative process goes beyond literary issues, referring also to the specifi city of other arts, especially architecture.

The article attempts to outline the history of French genetic research upon 18th-century manuscript collections. Contrary to the stereotypical view of the 18th century as a period when manuscripts were allegedly destroyed in order to hide evidence of the painstaking execution of the fi nal version of a work, this epoch did leave us manuscripts, frequently full of corrections, which suggest that the Enlightenment thought and literature kept searching and experimenting. The Enlightenment philosophical and political concepts had undergone many stages before they adopted the shape we are familiar with. Thanks to the existence of their preliminary, draft versions, enlightenment novels, theatrical plays and poems provide an opportunity to observe the whole process of creation. The fascinating workshop of enlightenment drafts and subsequent versions of written works shows an area of literary and philosophical work marked by aesthetic and ideological confl icts, which shook the authors in their process of artistic creation.

How can one study the genesis of a text written straightaway which would lose its authenticity value if it were corrected? Such a text is the evidence of a practice, so that transforming it into a work (especially a published one) is likely to impoverish and disfi gure it. This article intends to show that if Genetic Criticism has little  eeway, it still has room to maneuver: preparatory notes and editing on the same day, intertextual situations (reading notes, correspondence quotations, etc), analysis of the progressive transformations of the diary’s rhythms, the diarist’s writing about rereading, recopying his journal… Past this point, the diary becomes either an  utobiography (a selection or composition of the diary by the author him/herself) where Genetics has ample room to perform, or a publication.

This article regards the possibility of applying genetic criticism methods to the analysis of philosophical manuscripts. The cases mentioned include manuscripts by Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Arthur Schopenhauer.

How can we conceive of applying genetic criticism to a theatrical work, since drama is characterised by its inherent mutability and necessary incompletion? How can we analyse the genesis of a play which only becomes real on the evening of its performance? How can we defi ne the genesis documents when we know they are unstable, heterogeneous and ephemeral by defi nition? A requisite condition: the persons involved in stage direction as well as theatrical archives should be encouraged to preserve the fragile traces of the birth of a performance (logbooks, administration notebooks, rehearsal records, sketches for the sets, and so on). This study outlines a framework wherein the complex, dynamic relationship between the construction of a text and that of its performance can be exploited.

This article is devoted to a new editorial concept presented by Marek Troszyński. A question is posed as to what extent the concept changes the established image of Samuel Zborowski – the play written by Juliusz Słowacki, which belongs to the canon of Polish Romanticism.