Prose as Verse. Rhythm and Rhyme in Mikołaj Rej’s Żywot człowieka poczciwego

Abstract

This paper seeks mainly to indicate the mutual relations between rhythm and rhyme and their function in the rhetorical shape of the prose of Mikołaj Rej’s “Żywot człowieka poczciwego”. The analysis focuses on the similarity of formal means, out of which Okszyc constructs the syntactic and lexical layer of his works. The author discusses the issue of rhyme that is present not only in the external and editorial aspect of the text, but also in the profound parenthetic aspect of the treaty. She turns our attention at the syntactic shape of the rhythmic course of sentences, the presence of rhetorical figures that play similar functions. The question of the prosodic factors and their influence on the rhythmic aspect of Rej’s prose. Then the question of rhyming has been discussed in the work of Rej. The author questions the present views on the eminently medieval character of Rej’s poems, and makes attempts at their new interpretation in the context of the whole of the “Żywot”. She indicates, however, also the relations between prose and the medieval art of ars dictandi and the influence of the renaissance, in fact antic, theory of rhythm.