The Pedagogy of Pastiche, or What Ignatius Loyola Would Have Liked in Grzegorz Uzdanski’s “Nowe wiersze sławnych poetów” [“Famous Poets’ New Verses”]

Abstract

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The article “Pedagogy of Pastiche, or What Ignatius Loyola Would Like in «New Poems of Famous Poets» by Grzegorz Uzdanski” aims at reflecting on literary stylization which function is not parodistic but critical.

THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The author analyses contemporary pastiche, placed in the theoretical frame of metamodernism (contrasted with postmodern forms). The second research problem is the possibility of making an analogy between literary studies inquiries and the findings of Ignatian pedagogy. Therefore, the analyses and interpretations are carried out by the hermeneutic method of close-reading (in the interpretative parts) and by comparative methods.

THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The paper is divided into five parts. The introduction is followed by a theoretical part containing a description of cultural transformations in the contemporary world (including an attempt to diagnose the situation after postmodernism). Then the author interprets selected poems by Grzegorz Uzdański. They become a contribution to the considerations on the search for subjectivity, identity, understanding the past or ways of dealing with the crisis, which turn out to be surprisingly similar to the methods proposed in the school of Ignatius of Loyola (an attempt at such a parallel is made in the fourth part of the text). The text ends with conclusions and an outline of perspectives for further research.

RESEARCH RESULTS: The author shows how contemporary poetry introduces representations of cultural transformations taking place under the influence of media (possible to be connected with metamodernism). He also finds points of commonality between the cognitive-educational goals of pastiche and the holistic orientation of Ignatian spirituality and pedagogy.

CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The compilation – only partial due to the lack of a common religious-spiritual plane – shows the possibilities of a non-metaphysical reading of secular texts, which in the “structure of sensitivity” resemble spiritual search.