Sienkiewicz’s Bodies : Studies of Gender and Violence

Abstract

Sienkiewicz’s Bodies focuses on the work of the most popular Polish writer from the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. It discusses the surprising success of Sienkiewicz’s writing in relation to the dissection of optimistic illusion that takes place during a reading of its cruel prose. Sienkiewicz is seen as something more than a juggler of genius in narrative prose. This conservative writer, like the modernists, knew that there was no longer any way to construct a representation of reality in a morally non-contradictory fictional discourse. The energy of his narratives and his linguistic drive disturb the order of narrative and expose the heteronomy of a superficially unified style, thus generating fissures, but never ruining the architecture of the text.