LOOKING AT ROMANTICISM EX CATHEDRA: THE LECTURES OF LUDWIK OSIŃSKI. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Paper discusses the reflection of the argument between Classicists and Romantics in academic discourse on the example of Ludwik Osiński’s lectures. The lectures in comparative literature that Ludwik Osiński gave at the University of Warsaw can best illustrate the academic significance of a polemic with new tendencies in culture, even though it is usually not expressed directly. In the paper the lecturer’s rhetorical strategies employed to refer to new aesthetics are investigated. Dialogical association between Romantic style and Osiński’s choice of examples, the judgments he made and concepts he used is described. Finally, the terms in which he articulates the relation between the old and the new in culture are examined. Seeing Osiński’s lectures in the context of the dialogue with Romanticism allows to consider it as a coherent and deliberate project.