Lucjan Rydel’s Bajka o Kasi i królewiczu — a work with two addressees?
The article focuses on a still unresolved issue — that of two different addressees of Lucjan Rydel’s Bajka o Kasi i królewiczu [A Tale of Kate and a Prince], which thanks to its “infantilised” artwork designed by Stanisław Dębicki in the 1904 edition, probably contrary to the book author’s intention, had its addressee changed and was included under the heading of children’s literature.
The author of the article aims at explaining the controversies — suggested by critics and literature scholars and present also in memories of book reading in childhood — surrounding the addressees of the work, its alleged erotic and sexual subtexts making it a work “not for children”.
The starting point is a study by Juliusz Tenner, who was probably the first to formulate a provocative thesis concerning the attitude of the main female protagonist of this fairy tale, seeing in it manifestations of “rapture and pathological ecstasy”.