Between the “Real” and the “Ideal”: Criteriaof the Comparative Thought in Maurycy Mochnacki’s Critical Writings,

Maurycy Mochnacki’s comparative thought is to be seen in the context of pioneering refl ectionsconstituting the modern, post-Kantian comparative approach. To evaluate Mochnacki’s contribution,one cannot limit it to opposing national and foreign literatures or the universal and classicalversus the regional and Romantic. Mochnacki developed concepts and methods that madeit possible to analyze and understand Romantic-era works without referring to classical criteria andrules, which were successively repeated in normative poetics while becoming less and less relevant.His extensive, innovative comparative analyses of Romantic works were very original in the Polishcontext. He employed concepts of “reality” and “ideality” borrowed from German philosophy as themain criteria of comparative readings.