Images of the noble cultural community in “David’s Psalter” by Mikołaj Rej Cover Image

Reminiscencje szlacheckiej wspólnoty kulturowej w „Psałterzu Dawidowym” Mikołaja Reja
Images of the noble cultural community in “David’s Psalter” by Mikołaj Rej

Author(s): Danuta Kowalska
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe
Keywords: Mikołaj Rej; David’s Psalter; sociolect of the nobility

Summary/Abstract: “David’s Psalter” by Mikołaj Rej is a prose paraphrase of The Book of Psalms whose main aim was to make the biblical text approachable to a 16th-century recipient. The pursuit of the concretization contributed to the continuous interference of the translator in the semantic and stylistic layer of the text, the change in imagery and the ‘exchange’ of reality. This cleared the way for the appearance in the Polish translation numerous images of the noble cultural community. They are present in both the plan of the stylistic layer: references to the system of values common for the nobility (rusticity, national service, the belief of the superiority of the nobility), and in the plan of the language: the inclusion in the text of the elements of 16th-century language etiquette typical of the sociolect of the nobility, as well as the lexicon and the phraseology known from the everyday speech of the nobility.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 60
  • Page Range: 139-152
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Polish