Mutacje apokryfu
The Mutations of an Apocryphon

Author(s): Danuta Szajnert
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: apocrypha;apocryphicity;canon;revising;revriting
Summary/Abstract: The book addresses the issues of the literary apocryphon, i.e. transgeneric, polymorphic literary form with special critical potential, based on specific intertextual relations, more strongly than others in-volving such categories as canon and authenticity (differently under-stood), as well as value and source. Biblical apocrypha are considered to be the genological intertext of this form. In the first chapter I pre-sent various modern uses of the term “apocryphon” and I emphasize the relation to the variously understood canon, which is crucial for any apocryphal text. Also I propose my own understanding of apocryphici-ty and I distinguish between its three basic forms. In the second and third chapter I focus on what perhaps most strongly stimulates the in-vention of the creators of the literary apocrypha in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is a disagreement with the axiological and worldview en-tanglements of canonical, but not only biblical pre-texts anymore: the possibility of revising the literary canon. The fourth chapter deals with fictional autobiographies assigned by the authors to well-known real characters. The role of canonical pre-texts in these apocryphal, al-leged autobiographies is played by non-fictional texts: biographies and other documentary sources. Here, too, I pay special attention to the potential of this type of literary apocrypha, which is subversive to the images consolidated in official utterances.

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