„Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki” jako powieść przejścia
“Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki” (“Adventures of Nicolaus Doświadczyński”) as a Borderline Novel

Summary/Abstract: The authoress of the paper treats Ignacy Krasicki’s work “Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki” (“Adventures of Nicolaus Doświadczyński,” 1776) as a borderline form between the romance and the epopee on the one hand, and the modern novel on the other hand. The borderline manifests itself in the various complications of the plot and narration, while its most vivid expressions are the mythical remains that allow to project the life of Nicolaus on the patterns developed by Odysseus (Telemachus), Robinson Crusoe, and Don Quixote. A discrete reference to the mythical makes it impossible to reduce the novel’s realism to formal realism (in Ian Watt’s view) and thus, as suggested by Tomasz Pokrzywniak, to mimetic imitation of historical reality, or to a biographic formula, as Teresa Kostkiewiczowa conceives of the problem. It can be assumed that the 18th c. reader received the novel’s myth indirectly, as a living truth. The authoress also marks the shift of the research field in reference to the old novel; previously, the old novel was seen as an example of a realistic attack on literature, while today attention is paid to a widespread introduction of fictionality as a mode of telling the story (fictionality solidified by probability rules) that substitutes the convention of a regained authentic (a manuscript).

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