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Abstract

A collection of historio-literary dissertations entitled On the edge of masterpieces concerns genre, stylistic and thematic transformations taking place in prose texts in the 20th century. It was the literary forms from margins and “outskirts” of classics that turned out to be the most expansive within the century. Genological antecedents of these changes trace back to the literature democratizing during the 19th century. The very processes were presented in the volume in question on the example of the evolution history of such genre types as the so called part-issue novel (representing partially science-fiction trivial literature of entertaining and commercial function exclusively and a realistic prose picture (the so called physiological sketch) of a poetics restored by Marek Nowakowski (in the series of After-views and Necropolis) as well as Janusz Anderman (Photographs). Several chapters deal with ideological functions of literature because the 20th century was called the century of ideology. Such functions of fiction were strongly voiced in many cities and moments being the quintessence of totalitarian systems. The analyses of a communist utopia and its vision of history are connected with these phenomena in the novel by Bruno Jasieński. Socrealistic messages found their extension in neoproductive Polish propaganda novels from the 1960s and 1960s and in the Slovak proposition of the popular novel reinforcing the legend of a communist revolution in 1944. The material novum constitutes chapters on unprofessional writers’ work. It is a conscious methodological decision of the author. Although the texts in this group are situated in the outskirts of classic works, they are marked by uncommon literary values. That is why they are promoted as one’s own low rank discoveries. They do enrich the already known repertoire of literary conventions. An army folklore of the Polish lancer Wojciech Gieca combines in fictionalized memories the tradition of Sarmatian folk-tale with battle scene painting right from the prose by Isaac Babel. What attracts the attention in the historical document is an unpretentious humanistic attitude of a young lady and doctor later on, Anna Federbusch-Ophir who survived Holocaust. Her memories can be confronted with a prose masterpiece, Medallions, by Zofia Nałkowska, the novelty of which is described in one of the chapters in this book. The overview of topics dealt with in the book is supplemented with the analyses of works by prose writers of several generations who, referring to the literary tradition in a radically different manner, present important issues of national awareness of the second half of the 20th century (Jan Józef Szczepański, Marek Nowakowski, Janusz Anderman). All dissertations included in this book are connected with the texts situated in the context of codes and canons of the Polish and general literature, and, at the same time, directed towards overcoming tradition and leaned towards the popular literature. In such a way the author presents the processes of combining the main stylistic trends: the genres of the high-artistic and avant-garde literature with the mass culture. A historical and theoretical aspect of the current changes of the literary culture is described in the whole book. The conclusion is composed of the last two chapters reconstructing the contemporary situation of the masterpieces in the light of the opinions of literary critics and aestheticians.