Can Poetics be Forgotten? Towards the Studies of Classic Literature

Abstract

The author of the article discusses the very act of reading and understanding of the classic texts. He points to the inaccurate (and, in his opinion, threatening the integrity and intentionality of messages) strategies of reading the old literature based on methods proposed by the modern methodologies. The author postulates insufficiency of such an approach, referring to the words of Alsdair MacIntyre, who emphasised the historical thought in the field of the history of ideas, and to the words of Quentin Skinner, who suggested contextualising the message by analysing the intentions and motivations behind the literary work. By referring to the researchers, the author promotes poetics as one of the tools which serve to understand the intentionality of speech acts and messages of the former ages. At the same time, the author provides examples showing the application of historical poetics in the process of comprehending old Polish texts.