Powieść czy speculum? Pan Podstoli Ignacego Krasickiego

Abstract

The authoress argues Piotr’s Żbikowski point that Pan Podstoli is an Enlightenment version of speculum or mirror, which is on of basic genres of parenetic literature. Krasicki does not show the process of becoming a perfect gentleman – landowner, but gives the finished model of an enlightened Sarmatian. Mr. Podstoli in this sense is a mirror in which he can view anyone who wants to imitate him, especially as the prototype of the hero character was real, Antoni Starzeński. The authoress shows that Pan Podstoli is a parenetic text, within the frames of a novel discursive. Krasicki, creating new varieties of the literary species (the novel) goes back to parenetic tradition of Old Polish literature. (Żywot człowieka poczciwego by M. Rej, Rozmowy Artaksesa i Ewandra, a discursive prose text by S. H. Lubomirski. The authoress also highlights the important role of narrative in combining elements of fictional and discursive.