Śmiech postmodernistów

Abstract

The work refers to comedy as one of the most essential indicators of post-modernist literary output. Arguing with the views of researchers who, especially in the theory of postmodernist parody and pastiche, marginalise the role of the comic and ludic component, the author attempts to determine both its particular importance and its literary and cultural specificity. On the basis of some selected works (Gretkowska, Goerke, Gajdziński, Pilch) he proves that post-modernist comedy is determined by its intertextual character, transgression (including the poetics of the so-called ‘black humour’) and the tendency to join elements originating from various spheres of the culture of laughter.