Dorota Kozicka
A b s t r a k t
This article discusses the concept of the canon in Polish literary criticism in the 1990s, the 2000s, and the 2010s. The author discusses contemporary social and critical debates and different definitions of the canon employed in them and shows the contexts and repercussions of redefending (disassembling, reconstructing) the literary canon. Bearing in mind the fundamental fact that the understanding of the canon translates into the way of thinking about literature and the role /obligations/possibilities of literary criticism, she analyzes both the goals and the ways in which the concept of the canon is used. She also analyzes the circumstances in which the canon, as a point of reference, was replaced in discussions and texts devoted to literary hierarchies and/or literary criticism by the mainstream and other categories which were better suited to describe the heteronomous nature of the literary field.