Momenty jednorożca. Memetyczne konteksty pewnego marzenia

Abstrakt

The article discusses the issue of the unicorn in contemporary culture. Unicorn’s popularity nowadays is puzzling, to explain it author reached into the history of this species, which shows that people’s desire of unicorn were so strong, they tried to construct this animal on their own during medical experiments or forgery.
This legendary animal is not a metaphor, at least not only. The issue does not based at the meaning, which was more changeable than some speciefied physical features. The problem is more complicated if we consider the fact, that these physical features characterize animal, which never existed. Author’s thesis present the unicorn as a mem or memplex. The unicorn’s gen does not exist as biological phenomenon, but the concept of this mythical animal survive over 2000 years, what is even more resistant than genetic code, but the mem is susceptible to modifications as well. The text show how the image and meaning of unicorn have changed over the centuries to indicate, which mems were the strongest and survived in popular culture.