Poetics as a Device

Abstract

The article refers to the discussion on the status of poetics, initiated by Dorota Korwin-Piotrowska in her book titled "Poetyka. Przewodnik po świecie tekstów" (2011) ("Poetics. A Guidebook to the World of Texts"). It goes without saying that Poetics is currently an interdisciplinary field combining such areas as cultural anthropology, philosophy, gender studies, the history of ideas, sociology, linguistics, rhetoric, psychology, cognitive studies and semiotics. The author emphasises the problem of “dispute”, as well as “transversality” between - perceiving texts as subjects or objects; - the notion of a masterpiece and the notion of text (which implies suspending the category of aestethics); - literary and colloquial language; imagination and empiricism; - knowledge and experience; - knowledge about culture and knowledge in culture; - science and literature. Referring to the formalist notion of “device”, the author points to the contemporary attempts to combine various conceptual apparatuses and procedures as conceptual analytical and interpretative figures.