Historia literatury w przebudowie
Literary History under Redevelopment

Summary/Abstract: This article contemplates the situation of history of literature in a post-structuralist and post-deconstructivist era, in our time of commonly heralded crisis of the modern humanities paradigm (as regards cognition, history, and the subject). This situation renders literary historians obligated to think over the basic ontological and theory-cognitional assumptions, forming the discipline’s foundations. The first issue here is one of a humanistic nature of the subject of study (literary utterance) and its cognition method. The second is to make a reference to the discussion of several recent years concerning interpretation of the literary work and investigation into its meanings. Another question concerns literary-historical consequences of considerations on how to understand history and historicism, and on the very possibility of constructing a discourse on the past. The interrelated questions would concern the understanding of the categories of change and continuity in literature; the nature, course and conditions of temporal literary changes. Lastly, the issue occurs of the relation between literary discourse and other types of cultural discourses. By making reference to certain hermeneutic inspirations (particularly, Paul Ricoeur) not having been sufficiently reflected upon on the literary study soil, the Author suggests some literary history building options that would transgress the aporiae of a post-modern era in this area, whilst respecting the autonomous nature (being justifiable as to the essence) of literary history’s subject of investigation which is peculiarly situated within temporality and within a cultural area being shared with other discourses.

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