Paradoks i ironia w metaliterackich i metakrytycznych wypowiedziach Stanisława Barańczaka
Paradox and Irony in Stanisław Barańczak’s Metaliterary and Metacritical Statements

Summary/Abstract: The subject of the present paper is the rhetoric of paradox and irony in Stanisław Barańczak’s late literary critical achievements. The paradox proves specially privileged rhetorical trope in his 1980s critcism and is used as an effective tool in describing problems of linguistic literary culture in the Polish People’s Republic. Irony, by contrast, is a basic mode of an essay dated 1990s which polemizes with standardised unilateral language of interpretation. The two rhetorical mechanisms turn out to be subject to the imperative of responsibility for the word – the context the author formulates for investigating their meaning. Moreover, the self-parodistic essay “Who really were “the two steady gentlemen” or: the front of the fight for ifs, or: Sławiński finally amended” encourage to question for a deeper sense of autoirony and “casting under suspicion” even one’s own critical language.

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