Wspólne drogi literatury popularnej i komparatystyki kulturowej

It has been two decades since Słownik literatury popularnej edited by Tadeusz Żabski and the monography of Anna Martuszewska on the meaning of popular literature were published, and we are today pleased to notice that “the third kind” has not only provided space for scientific discourse, but has also become one of the leading objects of reflection and didactics in the academic world. Despite constant efforts to build coherent and possibly capacious methodological apparatus to study popular literature, it is still hard to find a universal key to conducting research in this scope. This certainly is a consequence of reaching out to various disciplines and instruments developed by various methodologies, enforced by broad spectrum of influence of popular literature: from the text itself to all kinds of artistic forms (graphic arts, comics, cinema, media, new media) and cultural practices (ritualization, theater, performance). One of the research proposals is cultural comparability, enrooted in the American school of comparative study, which analyses the text within its entire cultural image. The point of interest is the moment of “reading” literary, cultural phenomena as well as other human activities in the world, based on their interactions. Comparability uses tools developed on the grounds of post-structural literary studies to confront the text with other cultural narratives, thus opening it in a discursive manner to other than literary interpretative contexts, which manifest their creative power and vitality.