The theory of paedeia in literary axiology

Abstract

The book consists of nine chapters. In the first one, the understanding of the term paedeia in the literary and paraliterary field is specified, giving an insight into different term comprehension methods. The origin of the paedeian trend in research, literature and culture is also presented in this chapter. The person of the child is pointed out both as a creator and subject of the play. Apart from that, the literary signs of paedeia noted here become the subject of the study is subsequent parts of the book. The main, second chapter serves the purpose of describing and analysing the formal and literary aspects of paedeia in the poems. In this chapter, the initial thoughts on the paedeia types and their mutual relations are presented. The typical ones appeared as early as in the poems of Maria Konopnicka, the precursor of paedeian poetry. That is why there is also a presentation of the paedeian rule discovered in her poems – scenarios for play; and then in Jan Brzechwa’s “new fable”, as well as in other poems by modern poets. The signs of paedeia are also shown in the poetic works for the young generation. The initial description of these signs ends with the comparative analysis of the selected non-paedeian poems in the aspect of their quality in comparison to the paedeian ones. The analyses and initial reflections are a premise and a basis for creating an algorithm of connections and structures of various types of paedeia in children’s poems. It was created on the basis of interpretations and analyses of numerous poems which were selected and presented in the form of anthology of the paedeian poetry – from Konopnicka to Kern, which appears in the Annex to this study. Research on the theoretical bases of the paedeia signs in the poems allowed us to estimate the quality of the children’s poem in an objective way. It shows that the poem meant for the child can only be considered good if there is a paedeian rule present and, what also seems to matter is the arrangement of the paedeia types. The description of the formal extent of the paedeia signs in the poems is shown in the taxonomy of paedeia, consisting of the paedeia types (mimicry, alea, ilinx and agon) in various configurations (contaminations) in chapter eight. The notional basis that was used to define the eight kinds of paedeia is also exposed, as well as an attempt is made to use the paedeian theory for poem evaluation. Paedeia as a rule determines the genologic aspect of the poem, its shape (or model), poetical means, point of view, coherence mechanisms, etc. The more noticeable and clear the rule in a literary work, the more perfect the poem, the more satisfying to the young recipient, because it entertains and educates at the same time. In the last chapter, the use of the paedeia theory is exemplified with Kern’s poem Pierwszy. The studied theory, based on the paedeian research, allows us to specify the description and characterisation of the poem and define the axiology of the most part of children’s literature. It is also a kind of the foreground for the study of the paedeian discourse based on the poems selected for the analysis.