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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Personifikacja a cud w polskiej teorii epopei lat porozbiorowych

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In Romanticism, the employment of abstract concepts within an epic ‘miracle machine’ was arranged by means of personification. This was the case until Antoni Malczewski, a Polish Romantic poet, introduced free indirect speech which facilitated linking anthropomorphised abstractions with their ‘genetic subjects,’ i.e. experiencing characters. The ‘miracle machine,’ by definition, was intended to be a response to a changeable vision of the world determined by history. Yet, what can be observed in poems of the late eighteen and early nineteenth century is, though with varying intensity, the presence of mythological characters along with Christian supernatural creatures, natural phenomena as well as abstract notions attributed with human traits, and all this against religious miraculousness that blends with science fiction. In the early nineteenth century, theoreticians of epic put forward some proposals to improve the ‘miracle machine’ with a view to preserving its credibility. The proposals, similar to the theory of new mythology that originated in German Romanticism, ranged from the postulate to abandon the idea of picturing transcendence to the postulate articulating the necessity to create a community that approved of new metaphysical order built and developed by means of poetic devices.