Białostocka strona. Balladyny i romanse Ignacego Karpowicza okiem historyka literatury przedpotopowej

Abstract

The title evoking two masterpieces of the Polish Romanticism as well as the commentaries given in public by the author himself make it natural to ask about his attitude towards the Romantic heritage, literary and beyond - especially as far as the revisionist and ironic strains of Juliusz Słowacki's Romanticism are concerned. The interpretation undertaken from the angle of a literary historian well read in Romanticism has shown the explanatory background of the Karpowicz's novel, i.e. controversies provoked on the watershed between the 18th and 19th century by the dire straits of historical discontinuity experience and its detrimental social and cultural effeets. The metaphor of deluge in the figurative language of the age referred to the demise of last remains of the Polish sovereignty. In Karpowiecz's Balladynas and Romances the figure proved useful also as a means to denounce ever-expanding pop culture of nowadays.