Introduction of the Prose for Young Readers to the World of Modernist Conventions (in Wonderful Tales by Adolf Dygasiński)

Abstract

Adolf Dygasiński is a writer who can be called a witness of the transformation that began in literature at the end of the 19th century. His work, for most part, was connected with positivism, and it is described as such by the critics. But the fantastic prose addressed to young readers that he created clearly departs from this scheme. Wonderful Tales are examples of positivist trends that are broken by the conventions of modernism. Their author is recognized as a pioneer because the literature for children and young people had not yet been dominated by the new aesthetics and ideals that began to inspire both artists and the consumers of art in the 1890s. The analysis of various fairy tales written by Dygasiński and published in a book of poems departs from the existing conventions. This is expressed in the changes of the hero’s personality, partial transformation of the structure of the tales and the world presented, as well as the revaluation of certain ideas. Wonderful Tales are, therefore, a valuable source of knowledge about the crystallization of the phenomena that have become representative for modernist literature.