Eliksir i trucizna. Nostoi i geokrytyka powrotu

Abstract

This article examines the motif of return as a spatial category in narratives in which the region occupies a central position. The region is understood not merely as the setting of events but as an actant that actively participates in the production of meaning within the fictional world. The discussion begins with the concept of the endoallogenic perspective, situated within the framework of geocritical multifocalization. This perspective describes a mode of perceiving the region characteristic of protagonists shaped by a given place and subsequently transformed through their experience of the world beyond it. The article explores different models of return that result in the reintegration, reinterpretation, or disintegration of space. By comparing these models, it presents the region as a space endowed with its own memory, tensions, and fractures, which may be either healed or intensified by the return of the protagonist. In this context, return emerges not as the resolution of the narrative but as a critical moment that reveals the dynamic relationship between the protagonist, place, and the narrative order of the fictional world.