A Hundred Years of Avant-Gardes

The Literary Experiment in Poland and Beyond 1917-2017
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-90-04-73037-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 46, 440 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 807 g

Reihe: Avant-Garde Critical Studies

For many Central-European countries, the inter- and post-war periods marked the beginning of their statehood and entailed the laying of the foundations for literary language itself. Experimental tendencies became a laboratory of bold and ambiguous visions of the world, inspiring many artists to join in the process of rebuilding their communities. Unlike other parts of the world, in Poland experiments thus conceived were not just about contesting bourgeois habits and forms, or testing the boundaries of social and aesthetic conventions. On the contrary, revolutionary-oriented circles supported the building of new centres of intellectual life, joined the cultural mainstream in the broadest possible sense, and, with time, became an important point of reference for the entire panorama of literary and artistic life.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Bazarnik, Katarzyna

Karpowicz, Agnieszka

Sroka, Honorata

Chorzewska-Rubik, Paulina

Kornhauser, Jakub

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Introduction: the Literary Experiment in Poland 1917–2017

1 Pranas Morkunas’ Morphophonological Poetry: Futurism, Dada and Politics Emiliano Ranocchi

2 Fundamentally Simple and Strictly Phonetical Spelling: the Orthographical Experiments of the Warsaw Futurists Marta Rakoczy

3 The Ear and the Eye: Visual Strategies of Avant-Garde Sound Poetry Beata Sniecikowska

4 ‘Littérature’ – le meilleur papier hygiénique du siècle: 75HP. and the Pursuit of Innovation and Syncretism in Romanian Avant-Garde in the 1920s Olga Bartosiewicz-Nikolaev

5 Experimenting with the Experiment: Engineering Re-invented in Multisensory Works by Franciszka and Stefan Themerson Beata Sniecikowska

6 Between a Poem, Happening and Performance: Jirí Kolár’s ‘Destatic Poetry’ Zaneta Nalewajk-Turecka

7 The Book as a Material Object: the Concept in Owe Hyperbook in the Central European Neo Avant-Garde Jakub Kornhauser

8 Let the Poem Happen: the Sound in the Poetic Experience of the Yugoslav Avant-Gardes Magdalena Boguslawska

9 Poetical and Institutional Nomadism: Figures of In-betweenness in the Hungarian Neo-Avant-Garde Mónika Dánél

10 From Graphic Scores to Score-Poems: Notational Experiments of the Polish Neo-Avant-Garde (Boguslaw Schaeffer – Witold Wirpsza) Piotr Bogalecki

11 Literature under the Knife and Eraser: Three Case Studies of Erasure Poetics (Racine – Foer – Mokry) Krzysztof Hoffmann

12 The Political Nature of Life-Writing Experiments Honorata Sroka

13 Literary Readymade? Experiment as Social Critique Agnieszka Karpowicz

14 Found Poems: from Anti-poetry to the Art of Subversion Jerzy Jarniewicz 15 Encased History: Herta Müller’s Experimentation with Language, Image and Book Form in Der Wächter nimmt seinen Kamm Katarzyna Bazarnik 16 Experience of Distension, Materiality and Transparency: Zenon Fajfer’s DOWN as an Experimental Work of Liberature Przemyslaw Koniuszy

17 De-touched by the Writer: Zenon Fajfer’s Odlot as an Experiment in Space Katarzyna Biela

18 Vodka, Pizza and Alexa: Strategies of Appeal in Experimental Literature in Poland and Slovakia: From Liberature to AI Poetry Mariusz Pisarski

19 Poetry in the Social Media Interfaces Paulina Chorzewska-Rubik

20 Rainer, Playable Literature for the 8-Bit Atari: Technical Report on the Realization of a Digital Experiment Piotr Marecki, Krzysztof “Kaz” Ziembik and Tomasz “Tbxx” Boksa

21 Stalk-Stanzas: the Organic Nature of Experiment Marta Baron-Milian

22 An Experiment in Sign Language: Can There Be Experimentation in Sign Language Poetry? Marcin Demianiuk

Index of Names

Über Autor(innen)

Katarzyna Bazarnik, PhD (D.Litt.) is professor in the Institute of English Philology of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Her research interests include materiality of literature, experimental and avant-garde writing, and Irish studies. She has published on James Joyce, B.S. Johnson, and liberature, an intermedial literary genre, combining text with the material form of the book (Lat. liber) into an integral whole.

Agnieszka Karpowicz, PhD (D.Litt.) is professor of the University of Warsaw, Poland. She is a specialist in literature and culture and member of the Centre for Avant-Garde Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and Modernitas, the Maison des Sciences Humaines of the Université libre de Bruxelles.

Honorata Sroka, PhD is a literary scholar focused on both avant-gardes and archival studies. She holds a postdoc position at CEFRES Prague. She is also the PI of the grant “The Archive of the Avant-Garde. Interpretations of the Franciszka and Stefan Themerson Correspondence” – funded by the National Science Centre, Poland.

Paulina Chorzewska-Rubik, PhD is a literary scholar specializing in the connections between literature, new media, and internet culture. She is the principal investigator of the grant “Poem on the Web: Web Philology – The Example of Tomasz Pulka’s Creative Work (2005–2012),” funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, and affiliated with the University of Warsaw.

Jakub Kornhauser, PhD is assistant professor at the Faculty of Philology, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He is a literary scholar, poet, translator, essayist, editor and performer. He is the co-founder of the Avant-Garde Studies Center at the Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University.