Krytyk literacki jako optymista

The article aims to characterize literary criticism as a sign of cognitive and ideological optimism. A claim has been made that every critical and literary act articulates expressis verbis (or implicitly pictures) a project of a desired model of literary communication, the exchange of cultural assets, or even the structure of the society. The above project legitimizes evaluations provided by the critics and changes postulated (positive projects, polemics or catastrophic diagnoses), which in the eyes of their authors appear to be both intentional and legitimate, but – above all – workable and possessing positive influence on the functioning of the literary life (or even the whole community). To support the above argumentation, statements of such literary critics from various periods and cultural circles have been provided: The Iksowie Society, Johann Gottfried Herder, Franciszek Salezy Dmochowski, Kazimierz Brodziński, Teodozy Sierociński, Michał Podczaszyński, Maurycy Mochnacki, Michał Grabowski, Théophile Gautier, Aleksander Świętochowski, Eliza Orzeszkowa, Bolesław Prus, Włodzimierz Spasowicz, Irena Krzywicka, Stanisław Brzozowski, Zenon Przesmycki, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Jan Błoński, Jerzy Kwiatkowski, Adam Zagajewski, Julian Kornhauser, Tomasz Burek, Elaine Showalter, Krystyna Kłosińska and Przemysław Czapliński.