Język Polski
English
Polish prayer poetry in the Middle Ages
Piotr Nowaczyński
Abstract
Although researchers differ about the matter, it can generally be stated that the Medieval prayer poetry date back to the fi rst decade of the 16th century. The author of the paper is exclusively interested in the general features of the genre and its poetics, manifesting itself in the way it utilizes the lyrical subject, the addressee and it organizes the content of the poem. Hence, the paper qualifi es within the realm of history of literature, in its aspect of genre studies.
The analysis undertaken in the paper help defi ne certain defi ning features of the prayer poem:
1. All the poems focus around the Ecclesiastical feasts, which leads the author to adopt a division of the poems into those that refer to Mother Mary, Christmas, Passion and Easter, the Holy Spirit and Corpus Christi. This division ignores the main evolutionary trends in Medieval Polish poetry.
2. Medieval prayers are mostly addressed to Mother Mary, as the Mediatrix of Grace; to Jesus – the newly born and the crucifi ed; and partly also to the Holy Spirit. Poems directly addressing God the Father are extremely rare.
3. Medieval prayers stretch between the mind and the heart. Nonetheless, irrespective of which extreme they actually take, they constantly refer to the Articles of Faith, such as the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Birth, the human-divine nature of Christ, His redemptive death, resurrection, gifts of the Holy Spirit, etc.
4. Medieval prayers are visibly devoid of individuality and this lack of a personal aspect diminishes the artistic value of these poems.
5. The generality and the indeterminacy of the lyrical subject is also refl ected in the feebleness of the intercessions expressed in the poems. They all seem to end with a request of a good death.
All in all, one can notice that Medieval prayer is closely related to the course of the Ecclesial calendar, mostly directed towards Mother Mary and Jesus Christ, subservient to the purpose of promoting the Articles of Faith, monothematic as regards the requests made by the authors, mostly addressee-oriented and representing a onesided conception of a human being.
Keywords:
Polish literature, Medieval prayer poetry, genre studiesDetails
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