From a Gothic Text to a Neobaroque Cinema: Wojciech Jerzy Has’s Adaptation of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
From a Gothic Text to a Neobaroque Cinema: Wojciech Jerzy Has’s Adaptation of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the journey of the gothic novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) by James Hogg (1770-1835) from the repertoire of Scottish Romanticism to the neobaroque film adaptation Osobisty pamiętnik grzesznika przez niego samego spisany (1985) by the Polish filmmaker Wojciech Jerzy Has (1925-2000). The film demonstrates Has’s anamorphic position and emphasizes the crucial role of the gothic text’s neobaroque aesthetics in illuminating Polish cultural and political conflicts in 1986 when the film was released. Has rearticulates contradictions structuring the puritan-provincial mind depicted by Hogg and launches a critique of factional fanaticism.

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