The Last Grenada: The Różycki Bazaar Myth in the Polyphonic Documentary Novel "Dzieje Bazaru Różyckiego" (History of the Różycki Bazaar)
The Last Grenada: The Różycki Bazaar Myth in the Polyphonic Documentary Novel "Dzieje Bazaru Różyckiego" (History of the Różycki Bazaar)

Author(s): Leszek Nurzyński
Subject(s): Cultural history
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: myth; narration; polyphonic documentary novel; Laboratory of Reportage; history of the Różycki Bazaar
Summary/Abstract: The author analyses the relation between the mythical narration and the polyphonic documentary novel, which in turn is grounded in oral history documents. The main object of the paper is to present the outline of the history of the Różycki Bazaar on which the "Laboratory of Reportage" – operating at the Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies, University of Warsaw – has been working. The voices of hundreds of testimonies, constituting the narrative, are seen to be not only carriers of a myth. These voices appear to be a mythical narrative themselves. In order to corroborate such a thesis, it is necessary to answer the question whether the documentary form of the narrative, meant to reach the uttermost level of objectivity, merely tells a myth and whether its mythopoetic function is not in conflict with the necessity for a truthful account of events. Finally, can the narrative created on this basis represent the common element for a community, since its main objective is to register the state of the group’s self-consciousness? Principal theories used in this paper are Northrop Frye’s conception of myth and Hayden White’s narrative schemes.

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