Fragmentaryzm i cykliczność wobec powieści historycznej. O Powieściach piastowskich Karola Bunscha

Abstract

The article weights the problem of reconstructing the past from fragmentary sources. As a part of a historical experience, fragmentation is a typical feature of a cydical construction. The cyde aims at presenting the reality as a whole and thus corresponds with an epos. The three categories: fragmentation, cyclic scheme and epos are the means of presentation in historical novels. The materia l under discussion are The Piast Stories by Karol Bunsch. They expose the role of the narrator as a historian and a writer oscillating between historiography and imagination. A structure similar to that of an epos is noticeable in the novels on the Piast beginnings of Poland. As to the books on later events, the author faces more of documentary materiał. Consequently, history resembles a record office in which it is easy to get lost. That is why Bunsch's cyde, intended to present the Polish history as a whole, becomes a "victim" of a historical order of events. This order is fragmentary and based on incomplete documentation.