O mottach w cyklu wiedźmińskim Andrzeja Sapkowskiego. Wprowadzenie

Abstract

Having considered the views of the motto theoreticians who define it either as a foreign element in the text (S. Skwarczyńska) or an intertext (H. Markiewicz, T. Cieślikowska), the author discusses the functions fulfilled by mottos in the literary output of the writer of Saga o wiedźminie. She highlights the fact that, on the one hand, mottos are not a typical component of the fantasy convention, and on the other, their occurrence in Andrzej Sapkowski’s saga novel is very frequent. Thus the wizard series aspires to the status of highly artistic literature and Sapkowski is elevated as a scholarly author. The researcher emphasises the fact that beside authentic mottos whose origin is the cultural and literary cannon that is usually not mentioned explicitly by Sapkowski, there are many mottos in his works that are fictitious although related to the document poetics (diary, biography, encyclopaedia, academic analysis). Mottos serve the purpose of validating and documenting the fantastic world, however their mutual system and network of semantic relations contributes to their forming contradictory statements and logical paradoxes. In such context, the wizard series appears to be a game with the reader, on the one hand, and a participating voice in the discussion on the “truth” of history, on the other.