Listy z podróży Henryka Sienkiewicza jako wspólne pole badań językoznawczych i literaturoznawczych
Travel Letters by Henryk Sienkiewicz as a common ground for linguistic and literary research

Summary/Abstract: Henryk Sienkiewicz is the author of two reportage cycles: Listów z podróży do Ameryki (Portrait of America. Letters of H. Sienkiewicz) and Listy z Afryki (‘Letters from Africa’), which have been considered by Sienkiewicz scholars as the key works in his literary output and vital for the development of reportage as a genre. On the one hand, the paper reveals those issues and themes which are common for both linguistic and literary studies, but which are analysed with the use of the methodology typical of only one of the disciplines (such as the picture of steppe in Sienkiewicz’s American correspondence and in Trylogia (The Trilogy), reportage as a literary genre, the world depicted in Listy z Afryki). On the other hand, the paper pinpoints those issues that can be discussed only from a single perspective. For instance, the significance of biographical context and Sienkiewicz’s love for travel can be analysed from a literary perspective, whereas some linguistic-stylistic analyses and the verification of a thesis assuming the evolution of Sienkiewicz’ style can only be carried out in a linguistic perspective. Therefore, the aim of the study is to recapitulate the above-mentioned research areas, which shows the need for mutual inspirations and for a search for new ways of describing well-known research problems. The analysis leads to the conclusion that a mutual complementation of research gaps and a search for new interpretations appear to be a common (and necessary) task for the researchers of artistic texts, particularly those written by important literary authors.

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