Nauczanie kultury i pragnienie opowieści
Teaching Culture and Longing for a Story

Author(s): Andrzej Zieniewicz
Subject(s): Polish Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: literature; culture; teaching Polish as a foreign language
Summary/Abstract: The author points out the essential problem encountered by a contemporary reader and, therefore, also by a teacher of Polish as a foreign language. He indicates the difference between the museum culture (“unreadable things”) and the culture in touch (“interesting things that one could actually read”). This problem is defined in the context of communication catastrophe in the culture of the late 20th and the 21st century (deluge of populism, depreciation of styles and genres, competition of media). The author seeks to show how contemporary literature wants to get out of this communicational impasse and renew bonds with readers. He enumerates three ways in which literature tries to escape from the trap of losing contact with recipients. The first one is obliterating differences from other media (for example a desire to coexist with image, photography, television, the internet). The second one consists of a bold transgressing of the border between a happening and a description (different types of online narration participating in the events: reportages, self-presentations of authors during their creative process, internet contacts, fan groups). Finally, the third one involves leaving fiction for immersion, which means rejecting a realistic probability for a simply compelling story, no matter if it is non-fiction or fantasy. The author sees the above-mentioned attempts of renewing contact with readers also as possible ways to liven classes of Polish as a foreign language focused on teaching Polish culture to foreigners.

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