„Historie przyszłości” Mickiewicza i kwestia dystopii

• Authors: Jerzy Fiećko

Title variants

EN

Mickiewicz’s “A History of the Future” and the question of dystopia

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The author aims to identify elements of dystopia in three unfinished manuscripts by Mickiewicz which were published in one volume entitled A History of the Future. The article first examines the terminological difficulties associated with differentiating between the notions of “anti-utopia” and “dystopia”. It then proceeds to discuss aprose work by Mickiewicz which exists only in the form of a summary written by Antoni Edward Odyniec, a friend of the poet. The analysis of Odyniec’s depiction leads to a conclusion that Mickiewicz was writing an innovative work according to the poetics of science fiction, a genre largely unknown at the time, a work which would predict the directions of Europe’s development in the areas of ethics, politics, civilization and technology. It is impossible, however, to determine the potential significance of dystopian factors in that work. The largest number of dystopian features was found in the second fragment of A History of the Future which describes the final stage of aPan-European revolution against monarchal order. The last fragment of A History of the Future, which predicts the course of a political coup in France, is connected in the present article not so much with the poetics of dystopia as with the genre of “political fiction”.

Keywords

PL

Adam Mickiewicz; romantyzm; antyutopia; dystopia; historiozofia; fantastyka naukowa; fikcja polityczna

EN

Adam Mickiewicz; Romanticism; anti-utopia; dystopia; historosophy; science fiction; political fiction

• Publisher: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
• Journal: Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo
• Year: 2014
• Issue: 4(7)
• Pages: 333-344

Dates

published

2014-06-02

Contributors

author

Jerzy Fiećko

• Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu