In the last phase of Franciszek Karpiński's life as a writer (the first quarter of the 19th
century), he practically gave up poetry and concentrated instead on writing memoirs. This article
tries to find out to what extent his autobiographical work, especially his Historia mego wieku
i ludzi, z którymi żyłem [A History of My Century and the People with Whom I Lived],
is influenced by an attitude characteristic of the sentimentalism of the previous century. As this
analysis shows Karpiński's narrative exhibits both a sensitivity much indebted to Rousseau's
autobiographical method and skilful shifts of tone, from satire and irony to various shades of
melancholy. For sentimentalist aesthetic and poetics the continual manipulation of tone is a means
of alerting the reader to the world's complexity. As in the novels of Lawrence Sterne, that
complexity is experienced by way of careful observation of fragments of reality, defined by the
subjectivity of the observer and the truth of his emotions.
keywords in Polish:
historia literatury polskiej, oświecenie, proza, pamiętnikarstwo, sentymentalizm, Franciszek Karpiński
keywords in English:
history of Polish literature, the Enlightenment, prose, memoirs, sentimentalism, Franciszek Karpiński
number of pulisher's sheets:
0,8
affiliation:
Wydział Polonistyki : Katedra Historii Literatury Staropolskiej
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