To read (a classic) in a bent sinister way. On Stefania Skwarczyńska's theory in the context of the contemporary genre studies

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present Stefania Skwarczynska’s genre theory in order to show its inspirational character for the contemporary genre studies. The scholar’s works, predeceasing threads of theories enclosed in works of M. Bakchtin, G. Genette, helped to form the way genres are present in different interpretative methodologies today, for example in architextual readings of texts, tracing of various genre’s places within cultural spaces and also of their role as signs of times in which one or another becomes popular or dominating.