Immanuel Kant i cortegiana honesta jako sygnatury tekstowego świata Manueli Gretkowskiej

Abstract

The article presents a method which justifies using the term cortegiana honesta as a referential category, fitting within the possibility limits of the world of Manuela Gretkowska’s works. This category has not yet been employed by the literary criticism, but it was the critics of the national-catholic orientation that accused the writer of immorality, outraged that her books sold so well. Gretkowska provoked them with her eruditeness and consistent uncovering of the national myths, generated by the romantic paradigm. In Gretkowska’s works, the mysticism and eroticism subjected to this paradigm become grotesque. Attaining the effect of grotesque is facilitated by the philosophy of Kant, which Gretkowska employs with mastery in creating her own “self” in “Podręcznik do ludzi” (The coursebook to people). Kant’s usus elencticus allows the writer to keep the distance both from the presented world, and the experienced world, while the border between the two seems blurred and allows her to retain her identity. It guarantees efficient exploration of the hyperreality, in which female creativity consists in confirming her own identity in a simulated, unstable but constantly uniformed enclave.