“Critical” and Empathetic Realism: Modernist Writing Projects (of Prus and Others)

Abstract

The review concerns Ewa Paczoska’s book Lekcja uważności. Moderniści i realism (Warsaw 2018), which is an innovative attempts at interpreting the new model of realism in the Polish and foreign prose from the turn of the 20^th century, which constitutes an important stadium in the history of modern culture and literature. Paczoska’ offers an insightful presentation of the change processes which affected the understanding of reality and the ways of its textual (re)construction in the (early) modernist novel. According to Paczoska, criticism and empathy defined the cognitive and creative strategies of contemporary authors. Paczoska’s analysis focus mostly on the works of Bolesław Prus, Henry James and Virginia Woolf – authors whose work and poetic awareness paved the way for the development of the 20^th-century modernist novel.