Hydra czy hybryda? Liberatura jako gatunek (jednak) literacki
A Hydra or a Hybrid? Liberature as a Literary Genre (After All)

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of the article is to locate liberature within a greater historical and theoretical framework, and to propose an understanding of liberature as a genre. For many years, materiality of literature has been excluded from literary studies, finding its shelter either in library and information studies or among editors. Recently, this tendency has been changing rapidly, as the variety of studies and theories on electronic literacy, new media literacy or the visual aspects of widely recognised works do not cease to prove. Liberature is no exception in this matter. It is argued that the increasing interest in liberature, along with its reception, provides a fertile ground for reading it as an independent genre. With this assumption in mind, the very notion of genre should no longer be perceived as a fixed collection of bounding rules and categorising devices, but rather as the dialogic and creative space aiming at influencing and referring to other texts. In this sense, such a position of liberature, already recognised in Polish literary criticism, might genuinely serve its predominant purpose to explore the refreshing and effective methods of reading, which apply— but are not limited—to the germinating liberary tradition. In fact, they may stimulate new interpretations of diverse preceding texts, whose both materiality and visuality have been repressed.

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