The stylistic shape of human conversation with God in the prayers of David’s Psalter by Mikołaj Rej

The article deals with issues connected with chosen stylistic characteristics of prayers in the paraphrase of David’s Psalter by Mikołaj Rej. The analyses aim to determine the stylistic features of the prayer and to point out the features which give it a unique character. Rej’s prayers are kept in the poetics and conventions of a psalm. They make use of the biblical imagery, at the same time complementing the preceding psalms. Emotional epithets, accumulated through synonymous attributes, play an important role in the stylistic shape of the text. Rej uses means characteristic of the elevated style: evaluating epithets, numerous periphrastic expressions and distinguished metaphors of the biblical origin. On the other hand, Rej’s writing witnesses visible instances of crossing the boundaries of the familiar biblical style. The analyzed texts often assume a conversational character and each request is expressed in an individual, spontaneous way by means of different syntactic structures and emotive lexicon.Publikacja finansowana przez Dziekana Wydziału Filologicznego Uniwersytetu Łódzkieg