IMAGINATION IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF LITERATURE

The idea of imagination as an indispensable condition assumed by a humanist corresponds to the idea of narrative competence as one of the conditions for the anthropological ordering of reality. The epistemological model rooted in philology, philosophy, history and cultural anthropology is constituted by the procedures of perceiving and imagining things that cannot be directly observed but also by the procedures of producing a relatively coherent image of the world. It is meaningful that Andrzej Mencwel, the author of the idea of anthropological imagination, refers to the same long-existent indicators that form the literary image of the world. Although the two areas of cognitive activity have different aims and functions, they seem to be linked by a set of projects called the anthropology of literature. If we regard the anthropology of literature as a collection of individual projects that open the possibility for the emergence of a distinct branch of knowledge in the future, we need to assume that both function and understanding of the 'anthropological imagination' can vary with respect to every single project.