There Is No Salvation Outside Poetry? A Few Questions For Zofia Król
Zofia Król, Powrót do świata. Dzieje uwagi w filozofii i literaturze w XX wieku (Return to the World. A History of Attention in Twentieth Century Philosophy and Literature), Warszawa 2013
The unhappy diagnosis of the human condition experienced in the space of history and various philosophies through numerous losses, disruptions, disenchantments and alienations, whether drawn (as in Zofia Król’s work) from the writings of George Steiner (the broken contract between word and thing) or from that of Michel Foucault (the “divorce” of words and things), can bring about and provoke diverse strategies of dealing with the world without foundations or the possibility of self-expression. (...)
The Gray Ordinariness of the Bourgeoisie
Franco Moretti, The Bourgeois. Between History and Literature, London-New York 2013.
When we think of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie, we have two pictures to consider – the furious activity of modern entrepreneurs using every possible means in order to multiply their property, but also the quiet life of the urban middle class, its many ethical rules, its ascetic lifestyle and moral strictness. (...)
Along the Margins. Leonard F. Lisi’s Marginal Modernity
Marcin Jauksz
a b s t r a c t
Leonard F. Lisi, Marginal Modernity. The Aesthetics of Dependency from Kierkegaard to Joyce,
Fordham University Press, New York 2013
In Duino in 1913, as Rainer Maria Rilke was beginning work on his elegies and finishing The Notebooks of Male Laurids Brigge, he underwent a singular experience. (...)
Geoculture(?)
Cezary Rosiński
a b s t r a c t
Elżbieta Rybicka, Geopoetyka. Przestrzeń i miejsce we współczesnych teoriach i praktykach literackich
(Geopoetics. Space and Place in Contemporary Literary Theory and Practice), Universitas, Kraków 2014
Thanks to the work of Elżbieta Rybicka, use of the term “geopoetics” has been active in Polish literary scholarship for at least several years, chiefly because of the article “Geopoetics (On the City, Space and Place in Contemporary Literary Theory and Practice)” included in the book Kulturowa teoria literatury (Cultural Literary Theory). (...)
Poetics as Praxis of Attentive Reading
Elżbieta Winiecka
Dorota Korwin-Piotrowska, Poetyka. Przewodnik po świecie tekstów (Poetics. A Guide to the World of Texts),
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2011
A discussion on the status and future of poetics as a basic area of literary studies has been going on without interruption now for many years. (...)
A Body of Poetics
Jerzy Madejski
Adam Dziadek, Projekt krytyki somatycznej (Plan for a Somatic Criticism),
Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, Warszawa 2014
The new book by Adam Dziadek displays all of the dilemmas and aspirations of contemporary poetics. The title Plan for a Somatic Criticism (Projekt krytyki somatycznej) has a somewhat familiar ring: in the early 1990s, Maria Janion announced her Plan for a Phantasmatic Criticism (Projekt krytyki fantazmatycznej),1)M. (...)
Good Old Reading
Paweł Graf
Terry Eagleton, How to Read Litearature,
New Heaven 2013
Terry Eagleton’s book How to Read Literature could not have come out at a better time. The sense of fatigue from the ethical and cultural studies discourse that has dominated in recent years, that minimalized the value of literature itself and the art of being a good, attentive reader in favor of an emphasis on the pragmatic and social concerns of literary interpretation, called for some sort of reaction. (...)