Ideology as Literature. Polish Literature in a European Handbook (on the Examples of Literatures of Europe. History of the European Literature) By A. Benoit-Dusausoy and G. Fontaine)

In the article the Author presents the place of the contemporary Polish literature in the European literature manual History of European Literature. The book seems to be inherently conflicted between its aim as a manual, i.e. a didactic tool allowing one to control the object of his intellectual interest and the declarative aim to redeem the voice to all European “minor literatures”, including the Polish one. In effect the Polish literature as presented in the manual appears to be ideally heroic (the Author shows it by analyzing the chapter concerning the Polish writer Tadeusz Konwicki), therefore disabling any possibility to present that particular literature in a more complex way: forced emancipation of the “minor literature” has become an ideology and an oppressive force. Taking all that into consideration and basing on his comments on some other Polish literature manuals published abroad (among others by Curtius, Bloom or Marinelli), the Author presents his proposition of reading them as an inherently and immanently ideological texts, whereas the ideology or institutionalization is not a tool of valorization, but simply a way of rendering the ideology as a complex of textual signs.

ISSN: 1733-165X

Article Title	Type	Size
Wolski	[pdf]	[568 KB]