Sienkiewicz for adults 4018-KONW82-CLASS
Sienkiewicz is too important an author for Polish culture to leave him to children and politicians. Secondary schools are gradually renouncing him - teachers may discuss one of Sienkiewicz’s novels. Reading of Sienkiewicz’s novels and novellas is planned in primary and junior high school, where his prose sits next to works by Małgorzata Musierowicz, Dorota Terakowska, Ursula Le Guin, John Tolkien, Andrzej Sapkowski. It is equally bad when Sienkiewicz is exploited in disputes over cultural policy, where he serves as an argument for proponents of combining literary education with a programme of patriotic upbringing.
The “Sienkiewicz for adults” project aims to overthrow the infantile and ideologized reception by highlighting the dangerous beauty of this writing, the seriousness of the problems it puts forward, and by unveiling various controversies recorded in the biography and oeuvre of the author of Without Dogma.
The main point, however, is to prove how essential it is to read Sienkiewicz seriously for the purpose of understanding the antinomy of contemporary Polish culture.
Type of course
Prerequisites (description)
Learning outcomes
Students will be familiar with the “wrong” reception of Sienkiewicz’s oeuvre, be able to analyse the ideological background of critical discourse, be able to build a controversial opinion on Sienkiewicz’s writing.
Assessment criteria
Being prepared for class, active participation in classes.
Bibliography
1. Henryk Sienkiewicz, Ogniem i mieczem (t. 1, r. XXVII; t. 2, r. XXIV i XXVII),
2. Henryk Sienkiewicz, Pan Wołodyjowski (r. XLIX - kaźń Azji).
3. Henryk Sienkiewicz, Walka byków, Dzieła, wyd. zbiorowe pod red. J. Krzyżanowskiego, Warszawa 1948–1955, t. XLIV
4. Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo vadis (t. 3, r. XXIII - scena, w której Ursus walczy z turem)
5. Urszula Benka, Święty sadyzm Sienkiewicza, „NaGłos” 1994, nr 14.
6. Elaine Scurry, The Body in Pain. The Making and Unmaking of the World, New York 1985 (rozdziały: „The Structure of Torture. The Conversion of Real Pain into the Fiction of Power”, s. 27-59; „Pain and Imagining”, s. 161-180)
7. Zygmunt Bauman, Ciało i przemoc w obliczu ponowoczesności, Toruń 1995
8. Michel Foucault, Nadzorować i karać. Narodziny więzienia, przeł. i posłowiem opatrzył T. Komendant, Warszawa 1993 (rozdział II: „Blask kaźni”)
9. Michel Leiris, Lustro tauromachii, przeł. M. Ochab, Gdańsk 1999.
10. Georges Bataille, Historia oka, przeł. T. Komendant, w tegoż: Historia oka i inne historie, tłum. T. Komendant, W. Gilewski, I. Kania, Kraków 1991.
11. „Polska Sztuka Ludowa. Konteksty” 2007 nr 3-4 (numer poświęcony Leirisowi i corridzie)
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: