Alegoria i namiętności. Kartka z dziejów krytyki literackiej w XIX wieku
Allegory and passions. Page in the history of literary criticism in the 19th century

Summary/Abstract: The starting point for the present essay is the controversy that arose in the 1840s between Edward Dembowski and Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. It pertained to the poetics of George Sand’s {Les sept cordes de la Lyre}, published in 1839 in the Parisian {Revue des Deux Mondes} magazine. The argument between the two Polish critics can be summarised in one question, frequently formulated straightforwardly in the contemporary critical writing of the epoch: what is the point of using allegory in the 19th century? What is more, in his article, Dembowski juxtaposed allegory and “fantasy”, essentially associated with the matter of subjectivity of a literary text, which topic was undertaken by Kraszewski. This essay aims to re-construct the Polish and French contexts, allowing us to understand both ends of the spectrum we use to evaluate the allegories in a literary work. The question about the point of using allegory by 19th-century writers is asked anew to extract from the modern historical-literary perspective themes important for understanding the 19th-century literary worldview, in which the tension between the conventionality and emotionality of the literary communication act is revealed.

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