Literatura

Tom 25 (2019)

Stanisława Baczyńskiego teoria kryminału

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Stanisław Baczyński (1890–1939), was the first Polish (and one of the first in Europe) literary critics to reflect on the popular genre of the criminal novel, and to look for the genesis and role of its transformation in social development. In the book Criminal Novel (1932), he points directly to the possibility of the novel’s influence on construction of a hero in social views and moods. There is a link between the development of a democratic state and a criminal novel. A popular novel can help a citizen adapt to a new reality, a less classy and more democratic one. Moreover, in a modern society it performs a catharsis function, “it is a cure and, at the same time, an entertainment”.
Baczyński’s attitude towards the criminal novel was not Marxist, but it was the result of an avant-garde way of thinking, the result of the belief that a modern reality can be expressed in art only if the form of the artistic creation is changed. He believed that the artist who creates art of a new style fulfils a socially important task. Criminal fiction having a fast-paced plot, not very elaborate psychologism, and presenting the structures of a modern, democratic country, should make life eas-ier for its readers who live in the 20th century.