Published: 2021-02-15

Dictionaries of cliches or the paradoxes of a critical view of society 19th century and its discourses

Joanna Rachwalska von Rejchwald Logo ORCID

Abstract

The article problematizes the form of the “para-dictionary” used by the authors of stereotypical collections in the 19th century (Flaubert, Rigaud, Bloy). The meaning of these numerous published collections, the outbreak of the nineteenth neo-encyclopedicism, is not limited to narrowly understood didacticism and bourgeois criticism of “bȇtise”. The form used in them is based on the paradox that determines its uniqueness. The starting point for studying this paradoxical form is the semantic tension between ossification, repetition, symbolized by the stereotype and literary character of these “para-dictionaries”, which through irony, humor, linguistic gloss, original selection are examples of creative transformation “ossified”, which is the opposite of originality and repeated. In the twentieth and twenty-first century, the use of the “para-dictionary” form leads to the redefinition of certain genres, as is the case with Genette’s innovative autobiography.

Citation rules

Rachwalska von Rejchwald, J. (2021). Dictionaries of cliches or the paradoxes of a critical view of society 19th century and its discourses. Romanica Silesiana, 16(2), 105–114. https://doi.org/10.31261/RS.2019.16.10

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Vol. 16 No. 2 (2019)
Published: 2021-05-28


ISSN: 1898-2433
eISSN: 2353-9887

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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