Vertical gothic quixotes in Polish fiction of the 2010s : Tomasz Wiśniewski, Natalka Suszczyńska, Dorota Kotas and Wit Szostak

This article deals with the expansion of the culture of quixotry in Polish fiction of the 2010s. Although Tomasz Wiśniewski, Natalka Suszczyńska, Dorota Kotas and Wit Szostak, notable representatives of this new trend, on the whole make no reference to Don Quixote, their novels do display certain characteristic features of the quixotic discourse, i.e. the story is centred on a character with an unconventional perception of reality and the primacy of imagination in relations between the individual and society. The imagination that drives these novels moves both upwards, opening to the characters a prospect of vertical ‘Gothic’ ascent, and sideways, helping the characters to explore various ways of life and to adapt in the horizontal real world (cf. Dawid Kujawa, ‘Dzieci skitrane na tyłach katedry’ [Children hidden at the back of the cathedral], "Stoner Polski", 2022). In the texts of younger writers the vertical vector is often associated with the desire to transcend the condition of depressive precarity and the logic of the capitalist system).