2.3: In the Dialogue. Literature as Spaces of Encounter
Literature is not a closed archive of texts or merely a subject of interpretation. It is a space where different discourses describing the world meet freely – from biology and life sciences, through religious reflection, to fantasy, games, and climate fiction. For us, reading literature means the freedom to move between epochs, media and methodologies, which we select according to the questions posed by the text itself and its cultural context.
Reading literature in this way allows us to see texts as records of civilisational, philosophical, and artistic changes. Contemporary literature is thus a mirror reflecting the fears, tensions and experiences of today’s world and literary studies prompt us to reflect on the human condition in the face of global crises. The starting point is an analysis of the impact of environmental changes and the growing sense of threat to the biosphere on the ways of reading, interpreting and evaluating cultural texts. We also pay attention to stylistically new literary genres, including texts addressed to children and young adults, which we discuss with regard to both the cultural context and the material conditions: the publishing market, book circulation and shifting reading protocols.
One of our important points of reference is Romanticism, considered as a movement with European and borderland dimensions. An analysis of its reception from the 19th to the 21st century – conducted as part of the project Romanticism: Europeanism and Cultural Borderlands and covering, among others, modernist painting and the works of Bruno Schulz, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, and Tadeusz Konwicki – allows us to trace the durability of Romantic ideas and the ways in which they have been transformed.
Another important area of reflection is the relationship between literature and natural science. References to the theory of evolution, reflection on the Anthropocene and new ways of thinking about the relationship between humans and nature yield new interpretations of 20th and 21st century novels.
Literary research conducted at the Faculty has a direct impact on the way the humanities are understood and practised. Research projects encourage the reading of literature in connection with the problems and methods of other fields of knowledge. Particular importance is attached to developing the ability to create and interpret metaphors as tools of cognition. In an era of climate crisis and profound social change, it is impossible to maintain the division between researchers and “the rest of society”, or to separate the subject of research from the researcher. At the centre of reflection are three key challenges of the present day: the crisis of institutionalised science, threats to the natural environment, and the value of academic work motivated by curiosity, responsibility and intellectual courage.
How was literature read at the turn of the 20th century?
Research on the culture of the turn of the 20th century shows that only read together literature and literary criticism let us capture the experience of modernity. We need to interpret Modernist fiction – e.g. the works of Stefan Żeromski – and to analyse Modernist criticism – say, by Karol Irzykowski – to grasp the way literature was then read, evaluated and understood. From this perspective, literature and criticism co-create spaces of encounter and debate on values, on the role of art, and on rapidly changing society.
Sienkiewicz – classic literature revisited
Project Henryk Sienkiewicz. Presence in 20th-century Polish culture. Polishness and modernity. Reception and New Interpretations presents the work of the author of The Trilogy as a dynamic part of modern culture, rather than a group of texts from the canon. The research focuses on how Sienkiewicz was read, interpreted and used in the 20th century – in literature,
education, cultural institutions and debates on Polishness. This example reveals how literary classics are evoked in the disputes about modernity, identity and community and how their meaning changes along with the historical and social context.
↑ Sophocles (c. 496–406 BC) was an outstanding playwright who lived in the 5th century BC. He introduced a third actor to the stage, which changed the classical form of drama (photo: M. Kaźmierczak)
↓ Interior of the Faculty building at Nowy Świat 69 (photo: M. Kaźmierczak)