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The subject of this article is commentary as a fixed component of an active reading of a literary work during past centuries, inextricably coexisting with the text. It has been discussed in many aspects: 1) there exists a great diversification of form of commentaries in the writings of past centuries; 2) its basic function remains unchanged – a reading guide, an efficient tool of consultation of the learned author with a reader; 3) its aim is to explain the content of the work in order to enable students to interpret it in many aspects; 4) commentary in the form of a lecture contained various explanatory notes; 5) some of the above mentioned forms of expression provided a foundation for the content commentary.Throughout centuries, commentary was undergoing extensive changes, from a lecture offering multifaceted interpretation of a literary work, an independent text similar to the contemporary monographic statement, to a brief, „typical” commentary from an editor.
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This paper offers an analysis of literary commentaries printed in one of the most interesting editions of Andrea Alciato’s Emblemata – the 1583 edition, which was annotated by Claude Mignault (1536–1606), scholar-humanist and professor of law at the University of Paris. Commentary – while remaining outside the genre structure of an emblem – was an integral part of the philological endeavor which significantly broadened the reception of Alciato’s Emblemata. This article shows the historical context of annotated editions of the Italian scholar’s work as well as the horizon of erudition, the scope and architectonics of Claude Mignault’s annotations.
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The first part of this article concerns the authorship of annotations to Horace’s Pieśni wszystkie Horacjusza przekładania różnych and Tacitus’ Dzieła wszystkie translated by Adam Stanisław Naruszewicz. The second part focuses on distinguishing, characteristics, and exemplification of types and functions of endnotes/footnotes to political poems published in occasional prints during the Enlightenment. It mainly concerns the works from the Four-Year Sejm period as they most fully exemplify this type of texts. The author of the article points to various editorial problems. First and foremost, they concern literary and scholarly works, which were particularly significant for the community tradition and culture. Such publications required the authors-translators of that time to be familiar with earlier sources and studies, as well as a suitable preparation of these texts for a Polish reader. Further, the considerations concern the original shorter texts which were created spontaneously at that time in response to events in the country and published in singular occasional prints. They were authored by known, less known, or, oftentimes, anonymous writers – participants of the public life. This paper also addresses the placement, form, and style of endnotes/footnotes as important components of the editorial framework of literary works in contemporary research papers and critical editions from the second half of the 18th century.
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The subject of considerations in this article is the editorial history of the „additions in prose” to Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz’s Śpiewy historyczne, published in 1816. The first three editions, prepared in cooperation with the author, allow us to argue that historical commentaries constitute an integral part of this collection. However, next editors did not always include this constituent of the editorial framwework. One of the reasons for their decisions was Joachim Lelewel’s review, in which he expressed criticisms about Niemcewicz’s faithfulness to historical truth in that volume. As early as in 1835, the editor decided to include that review in his edition of Śpiewy historyczne in order to correct the author’s inaccuracies. In later editions, we can also note other practices: changing the alternate arrangement of songs and additions in prose, as used by the author, and replacing it with the division into two distinctintly separated parts, the omission of Niemcewicz’s historical comments (as outdated or due to economic considerations) and replacing them with other explanatory notes. Recalling these editions leads the author to the conclusion about the need for a new, critical edition of Śpiewy historyczne.
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The topic of this article is the functioning of annotations in Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński’s most important scholarly work: Wiadomości historyczno-krytyczne do dziejów literatury polskiej ( 1819–1822). A n a nalysis o f c riticisms a bout i ts s tructure, i ncluding different types of annotations, prompts the author to consider these annotations thrugh the prism of Ossoliński’s personality as a scientist. The object of analysis, beside Ossoliński’s dissertation, become: the count’s theoretical arguments about pursuing research and his correspondence. An important context regarding the role and structure of annotations in Ossoliński’s work is Dictionnaire historique et critique by Pierre Bayle (1697). The author of the article not only indicates formal resemblances between the Polish and French works but also argues that they stemmed from the similarities in the scientific disposition of Bayle and Ossoliński.
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This study concerns the first edition of the „historical song”, a peculiar poem by Wincenty Ignacy Marewicz entitled Nefelonikones, urywki z ociemicielstwa. Zbiór osobliwych obrazów z dzieł dawnego świata…, which was published in Paris in 1836, fourteen years after the author’s death. A part of this article concerns the persons who could have participated in preparing this edition. The print has a rich editorial framework that includes a Latin epigraph and a prose introduction, a verse address from the editor to the reader, an introduction by the author, and commentaries from the editor. The editor’s annotations vary in character. They include strictly informational or informational-supplemental notes and annotations regarding the writing technique. The most interesting are the commentaries from the second category, of amplifying character, as they often indirectly characterize the editor himself. The comments added to the content notes, the way the annotation is formulated, and its stylistics reveal the commentator’s attitude toward the concepts evoked in Marewicz’s work, the situations and events he was describing and evaluating.
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This article discusses authorial annotations introduced by Antoni Edward Odyniec to two writings that were: Listy z podróży and Wspomnienia z przeszłości opowiadane Deotymie, published in the 1870s and 1880s. References, although they constitute a small percentage, are their important part. Penned by a skilled story-teller, they become an additional tool, supplementing the conscious artistic endeavors in the main text. Primarily, they have an important function at the factual level: they are useful in the reconstruction of biographies of persons mentioned in the recollections, they supplement information, provide more precise dates and comment on the described events. On the other hand, as far as the author’s persona is concerned, annotations have a task to aid in the construction of the narrator/author’s own image for future generations as Adam Mickiewicz’s a friend from youth, creating an omnipresent myth about their close relations. Thus, Antoni Edward Odyniec’s annotations demonstrate a certain level of artistic awareness and the writer’s skillful game with the reader, which the historians of literature usually deny the author of Listy z podróży and Wspomnienia z przeszłości opowiadane Deotymie. However, based on the analysis of his annotations, one could argue that he was a capable prose writer and a conscious artist.
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The annotations in Norwid’s writings reveal a tension between the rhetorical and the lyrical, characteristic for his works. On the one hand, conventional explanations and philological commentaries (occasionally erroneous due to the poet’s lack of knowledge or memory), initiating the conventions proper to the rhetorical function of docere, fit into the tradition of a classical erudition. On the other hand, their associativity and hermetism, demanding increased attention from a researcher, impose specific Norwidian perspective of the intertpretation of reality. They reveal the authorial „I” and become lyrically and personally charged. In this context, it is worth mentioning particularly the commentaries that – being at odds with Norwid’s principle of „omissions and understatements” – appear to be redundant to the main content. The uniqueness of many of the annotations by Norwid also lies in the fact that they frequently explain very little objectively and hence require explanatory notes themselves, thus prompting an increased intellectual effort in a reader. Therefore, they can be read, to a certain extent, as parallel to the content of the poem Ciemność, among others.
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