The volume From Modern Theory to a Poetics of Experience contains a wide selection of essays, which were published during past decades in academic journal Teksty Drugie and were widely appreciated as significant contributions to the ongoing debate on principles and methods of literary studies. Articles gathered in this collection represent the main schools, tendencies and perspectives applied in contemporary criticism, including the most recent developments and the older traditions, which previously influenced our field. Their chronological succession seems to indicate certain direction of this development, which has moved literary studies from text-oriented, purely scientific procedures to more contextualized, interpretative approaches, labeled here as «poetics of experience».

Contents: Janusz Slawinski: What Remains of Structuralism? - Michal Glowinski: Literary Studies and Cultural Studies - Wlodzimierz Bolecki: Questions on the Subject of Literary Studies - Anna Burzynska: Does Literary Theory Still Exist? - Andrzej Hejmej: Comparative Cultural Studies: Interpretation and Existence - Ryszard Nycz: From Modern Theory to a Poetics of Experience - Michal Pawel Markowski: Economy and Representation - Edward Balcerzan: The Mono- and Bi(multi)lingualism of Literary «Worlds» - Stanislaw Balbus: The Extinction of Species - Zdzislaw Lapinski: Fictional v. Lyric Identity - Danuta Ulicka: On the Epistemological Function of Literature and Literary Studies - Danuta Szajnert: Intention Versus Invention: An Ethical Dilemma? - Grzegorz Grochowski: Images in Texts: Iconic Signs in Multi-code Text Structures - Elzbieta Rybicka: From a Poetics of Space to a Politics of Place: The Topographical Turn in Literary Studies - Malgorzata Czerminska: Places of Autobiography: A Geopoetic Proposition - Anna Lebkowska: How to Embody the Body: On the Dilemma of Somatopoetics - Dariusz Sniezko: The Written and Spoken Word: History and Literature - Dariusz Skórczewski: Postcolonial Poland - an (Im)possible Project - Jan Kordys: Language, the Brain, Ecstatic Religious States, and Artistic Output.