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offered in the works and personae of Lord Byron and William Wordsworth. It will arguc that thesc famous Romantic-era figures offer notably different means of solving the fundamental problem of autonomous selfhood in a burgeoning market society, but that the remarkable usefulncss of both can be discemed in their contemporary famę and influence, and in the persistence of these strategies or postures over time.

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Teresa Dobrzyńska ( Warszawa, IBL PAN)

Identity and Integrity of the Subject Gained Thmugh Choice of Values and Participation in Dialogue.

Humanistic debates of the last decades have noticed that the catcgory of ‘subject’ has been split. The person is conceptualised nowadays as a configuration of non-coordinated. or outright uncontrolled and contradicting impulses flowing out of human consciousness and subconsciousness; the individual identity of person has been called into ąuestion as well. The person has lost its individual distinction as it became necessary for them to appear in newer and newer functions and cnter into a gamę with culturally established conventions (typical of one or different national cultures), and as it has revealed its inveterate proneness to put on masks. Modem literary-science methodology has also contributed to a complication of the person’s association with the lyrical utterance: the single subject associated with the literary work has been split into a series of roles (empirical author; internal author - the subject of creative action; lyrical T/character). The sender of a literary text has lost the distinctiveness or autonomy of his/her voice, as s/he is gnawed by a sensc of deja vu (deja lu) - namely, a scnsc of rcpeating the known compositional struci u res and reproducing the conventions and pattems known from the past. Scholars representing the postmodem current (such as Ortega y Gasset. Hugon Friedrich. Jonathan Culler; in Poland. Ryszard Nycz and others) refer to a “de-personalisation of the central forms of modern artistic creative work" and a “decomposition of human identity”.

Humans tend to be subjected to diverse extemal influcnces, encounter a variety of existential problcms, are cxposcd to the impact of social situations and historical evcnts; at the same time, the human being endeavours. in a dramatic fashion, to preserve its (his/her) integrity and identity, or suffers the loss of these qualities. as s/he yields, and is vulnerable to. the pressure of the circumstances.

The article seeks ways out of the deadlock and premises for a morę optimistic look on the status of the subject in our contemporary culture. Attempts of this kind havc been madę in the

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