Literatura a sympatia społeczna
Literature and Social Sympathy

Ludwik Krzywicki’s Article “Wędrówka idei” (“The Migration of Ideas”) against the Background of the Development of Theoretical Paradigms of Comparative Literature at the End of the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: This paper is a contribution to the study of the relationship between literature and sociology at the end of the 19th century in partitioned Poland. In particular, it explores the theoretical potential of Ludwik Krzywicki’s concept of “migration of ideas” for comparative literature studies. It explains the context of the interplay of literary criticism and sociology among the Warsaw intelligentsia and examines how the work of foreign anthropologists and sociologists of literature (Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, Charles Letourneau) was received in these circles. Even in the earliest sociologically based studies in the field of comparative literature, one can discern a postulate of functional connection between literature and what sociologists call “the social bond” and what in the debate of the time is often figured as “social sympathy.” The article reconstructs this line of reasoning and discusses the factors that led to its disappearance in the subsequent history of the discipline.

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