This article aims to show how the theme of education is developed by Eliza Orzeszkowa in herworks of fiction from the early 1880s. Two novellas from the cycle Z różnych sfer [From DifferentSpheres], namely Bańka mydlana [Soap-Bubble] and Widma, serve as a pretext for reflecting uponthe discussion about women’s education in which Orzeszkowa partakes, challenging the most significantstatements of the era. She does that because she notices the threat to the aesthetic and socialproject of positivist thinkers and realistic writers, the threat posed by the philosophy of individualismand self-determination.
2_Apart from Kundera and Barthes, I look at the work of Camille Flammarion, from the same point of view. His work concerns the line dividing life and death and also life and afterlife. The reason for choosing Flammarion was the duality of his position, as a celebrated scientist as his time, who also wrote 'academic' pieces about the afterlife. He wrote his quasi-scholarly works on a purely literary ground plan, even if he insisted that he was writing a report that had nothing to do with literature. This example demonstrates just how convincing literature can be when lacking a recognizable literary form. This may lead us to question whether literature (in its concealed illusory form) is the very principle of madness or vice versa.
The essay begins by asserting that fi ction is persuasion—subtle, indirect, undogmatic, nevertheless it has designs on the reader and is a mode of communication. The example of Jane Austen gives particular illustrations of persuasion as a subject, including self-persuasion (in Emma); the easy persuasion of an unresisting subject (in Sense and Sensibility); and diffi cult and unwelcome persuasion (in Persuasion).
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Esej rozpoczyna się od stwierdzenia, że fi kcja jest perswazją – subtelną, niebezpośrednią, niedogmatyczną, a mimo to mającą wpływ na czytelnika i będącą formą komunikacji. Twórczość Jane Austen przedstawia perswazję jako temat w trzech odsłonach: perswazję wewnętrzną (w Emmie); łatwą perswazję wobec podatnego odbiorcy (w Rozważnej i romantycznej); oraz perswazję trudną i niepożądaną (w Perswazji).
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