Obcy, inny, głupi. Figura wioskowego głupka w wybranych utworach Tadeusza Nowaka
Alien, Different, Foolish. The Figure of a Village Fool in Selected Works of Tadeusz Nowak

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the figure of a village fool as an outsider in folk culture and the typology of this kind of creation in the works of Tadeusz Nowak in relation to the contemporary research on otherness. At the core of the exposition, there is the silhou- ette of an individual marked by disability and alienated from the community, which through an undefined form of essential distinctiveness is something that escapes clear classification and undermines the structures of cultural division between the foreign and the familiar, teetering on the border of these two meanings. Subject of the analysis involves issues that delve into the problem of otherness of a mentally disabled char- acter in the face of the archetypical cultural codes, phenomenological initiations, and ethical systems. The methodological background is based in the concepts drawn from the writings of Bernhard Waldenfels and Zygmunt Bauman, which – although not ad- dressing rural culture – provide directions for reflecting on contemporaneity as well as engaging with the interpretations of the figure of the village fool in folk culture at multiple levels and the transformed realizations of this motif in Nowak’s work.

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