Dialog w staropolskiej literaturze popularnej - między potocznością a polifonią dyskursu

Abstract

The present article concerns the determinants, role, and function of dialogue in the popular literature of former times. The research material consists here of the early Renaissance humorous text (some researchers say it comes from the late Middle Age) entitled: Rozmowy, jakie miał król Salomon mądry z Marchołtem grubym a sprośnym, a wszakoż, jako o nim powiadają, bardzo z wymownym, z figurami i z gadkami śmiesznymi (Conversations Wise King Salomon Had With Marchołt, the Coarse and Vulgar, Yet, So They Say, Very Well-Spoken, With Very Amusing Figures and Riddles). The proposition of description, put forward here, allows us to depict the features of the ancient unofficial culture, focused as it is on the features of colloquiality thought of as a way of perceiving, experiencing, and describing the world. This problem may be the most adequately represented by the metaphor of the „power of colloquality” reflected in a specific conceptualisation of the reality, and, above all, in its peculiar way of valorising it (represented by Marchołt), particularly in the clash with the official (scientific) interpretation of the world (represented by Salomon). The juxtaposition of two types of rationality seems here to be the foremost cognitive, and, in a sense, also aesthetic, problem which determines the uniqueness of this kind of writing. Marcholt’s peculiar popular philosophy, expressed, inter alia, by means of reproduced texts (proverbs, riddles) is exalted here, as opposed to the axiological system and the way of perceiving the world characteristic of the official, „learned” culture embodied in the king Salomon. Dialogue is only a superficial form, which, paradoxically, is laying bare the lack of the interlocutors’ mutual understanding, and it is, in fact, only an arbitrary shape constituted by means of various kinds of speech genres. It may be concluded that the fundamental ideological message of a text, and its stylistic form, serves the supreme purpose — the ludic function manifesting itself mainly through the acceptance of the point of view consisting in a reversal of the official, and universally respected, values. In a word: we should be talking about the poems of this sort in the category of poetics à rebours, a poetics that appreciates colloquiality as a cultural and communicative category and a source of the generic polyphony of discourse.