Abstrakt: | Jan Tomkowski is well-known as the creator of literary historical compendia marked with an
individual stigma, and also as a practitioner and theoretician of the essay. However, he devotes
much attention to the novel in his literature-specialist works, essays and prose miniatures, and
published his own books in this genre. In article, the authoress ponders that subjective quality
of the scholar’s approach to novels as well as she considers what, according to him, is the specific
of these novels which is characterized by the long duration, regardless of social transformations,
changes of conventions or the market. She deliberates, what sense could have the notion of canon
today, and also regards the tension between Tomkowski’s fondness for classic masterpieces and
his interest in uncanonical subjects and literary strategies. Interpreting philosophically the two
key themes of European novel, indicated by him, she analyses their manifestations in his own
realizations of the genre as well as intertextual games among his novels, essays and miniatures.
Last but not least, she puts a question after the scholar, what for to write and read (ambitious)
novels and what is their future. |