Here and Now: Literature. Use, Feel, Experience

Abstract

The article discusses arguments in favour of the importance (or irrelevance) of literature in social life and that appears with a psychological dimension in the work of J. H. Miller, Pierre Bayard, Michał Paweł Markowski, Ryszard Koziołek and, above all, Rita Felski (in her book Uses of Literature), dealing with the most important currents and trends in theoretical reflection on literature in the last quarter century. The author of the article finds the affective turn and the study of relations between life and literature within the context of the domination of discourse by other (new) media not based on writing to be a particularly important encounter in the re-evaluation of literature’s meaning. The author’s close and critical reading of Felski’s Uses of Literature involves a) discussion of the theoretical inclinations and problems that generate individual aesthetic categories; b) application of the American scholar’s proposed aesthetic categories to the interpretation of particular prose, poetic and essayistic works by Zofia Nałkowska, Inga Iwasiów, Justyna Bargielska, Dorota Masłowska, Szczepan Twardoch and Andrzej Leder.