Abstract

This article describes the use of romantic elements in Orbitowski and Urbaniuk’s criminal novel, Tancerz. It also shows how the authors of the pop-cultural story enrich the plot, language and poetry thanks by referring to Romanticism. I draw attention to the multiplicity of solutions that, on the one hand, lead to the simplification of meanings, but, on the other, encourage the reader to undertake a literary game that fosters a critical attitude towards the romantic tradition accused of symbolic violence. I show that the reader’s involvement in pop-cultural play based on intertextuality, especially the poetics of rewriting famous romantic texts and equally famous romantic roles, serves in the crime novel to echo old traditions and to undermine the stereotypical notions of Romanticism by scandalizing the portrait of Adam Mickiewicz. Using the iconoclastic tendency, Tancerz favors the process of freeing the reader from the language and fantasies shaped by Romanticism.