The Poetics of Evoking (Dis)Honesty in the Short Story The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain

The article refers to the axiological paradigm of (dis)honesty (the notion taken from Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s analysis) capable of being one of the dedicated devices of the poetics of evocation. The point of reference for these theoretical reflections is Mark Twain’s short story entitled “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”. The writer’s presentation of the still up-to-date and relevant axiological paradigm of (dis)honesty is at the hub of the deliberations,which aim to ascertain what constitutes the origin of its uniqueness and the freshness of its display. Primarily with the help of the concept taken from Roman Ingarden’s “catalogue” of aesthetically valuable qualities (“the ‘novelty’ variant”), and also drawing on the philosopher’s reflections devoted to one of the two ontological dimensions of the construction of a literary work (phaseality), an attempt is made to identify the specificity of the epically visualised phenomenon of (dis)honesty, and determine the methodological character of the poetics of evocation, necessary for this purpose