Powers of the Novel – Eight Decades Later

Abstract

The title of the text refers to the famous work by Roger Caillos Powers of the novel [French 1st edition – Puissances du roman. Paris: Editions du Sagittaire, 1942; Polish transl. – Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo UG, 2008]. The author makes an attempt to answer why the predictions of this genre exhaustion have not come true, and how nowadays one can classify a novel avoiding an overly narrow understanding. To do so, she refers to the biological taxonomy and the category of clade, and also to the phenomenon of anamorphism in painting. In addition, she considers the role of the novel in so-called fictionalization of life, and the dissemination of the category of narration in modern culture. Referring to examples from the works by Olga Tokarczuk (Empuzjon. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2022), Jacek Dukaj (Imperium chmur. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2020) and Tomasz Różycki (Ijasz. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2021; Złodzieje żarówek. Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2023), the author shows how the contemporary Polish novel combines various contradictions, including realism and fantasy, high culture and pop culture, seriousness and fun.