Czy potrzebna jest nam nowa teoria literatury?

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 1960-ties, literature has appeared in its altered communicative situation in comparison to the centuries of its history. This otherness has been shaped by the more and more conspicuous presence of mass media and mass culture. Theoretical reflection on literature, however, either disregards this alteration or applies notions and terms which in the area of intensely developing media theories are used in a different manner (“virtual reality”, “possible worlds”, “intertextuality”, “hypertext”, “fiction” and “simulation”). The present paper postulates the necessity to revise the traditional theoretical-literaiy perception in view of the alterations both in the author’s position (“author’s death”), and the recipient’s position (increase in the recipient’s involvement in the ultimate formulation of the literary work). The alterations are described with reference to the emergence of Internet as a powerful medium, and dominance of audiovisual transfer affecting the awareness of all participants in social communication. The author of the paper puts emphasis on the fact that the most serious alterations have taken place in the sphere of reflection on text comprehension, as well as on the notions of fiction, narration and metaphor (as structures of the world cognition), as well as on the subject of discourse and the literary character. The necessity to introduce new definitions of these notions is associated both with the interpretation of individual works and the establishment of literaiy syntheses, and the demands put forward by modem education.