Pretekst, aktualizacja, parabola. Rozrachunki ze współczesnością i rozważania o problemach uniwersalnych w kostiumie oświeceniowym (w literaturze polskiej lat 1956–1989)
Pretext, Update, Parable. Final Analysis of the Present and Considerations about Universal Problems in the Costume of the Enlightenment (in the Polish 1956–1989 Literature)

Summary/Abstract: The term “parable” in reference to the 20th century literature is ambiguous. It is used to name the pieces the plot of which generates or transfers a conventional code from tradition, referring to more general meanings, as well as to those in which “the hidden meaning of a ‘pseudohistorical’ piece is its real reference” (Anna Nasiłowska). In the Polish literature after the year 1956 referring to Enlightenment, the parabolic in the first meaning is characteristic of works that recall the tradition of the Western Enlightenment. In some pieces it is allowed to speak of two meanings. Entering into polemics with the utopian thinking of the Enlightenment, they simultaneously turn to its East-European realisations, thus also contain an element of update. However, if the piece’s structure plot is made exclusively of Polish history or literature, then associations with the present dominate. Yet, in works that invoke Polish history as well as in those that offer a rather mental aspect of the Age of Reason, dark colours prevail. Authors who in those times looked for points of reference for present problems, instead of the Age of Enlightenment presented rather a picture of the Age of Darkness—the gloom of human soul and equally gloomy figments of human mind in the social and political dimension.

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