| dc.description.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. | en_EN |
