Przysłowia jako źródło wiedzy o osiemnastowiecznej kulturze duchowej Polaków (na przykładzie Nowego dykcjonarza Michała Abrahama Troca)

This paper brings observations of the spiritual world of the eighteenth century participants of the Polish culture, which was reconstructed based on nearly 800 proverbs noted down from Nowy dykcjonarz (New dictionary) by M.A. Troc. The analysis of the paroemias registered in the dictionary serves the purpose of reconstructing the community reflection about the world, about the attitude to moral principles and system of values, to beliefs, attitudes towards the God and people, to judgments about the style of life, art, language, law, etc. Proverbs, which are the object of the discussions in this text, are evidence of the tradition and culture, where universal contents are coded, and a testimony of a given time – an epoch when they originated and the period when they formed the living substance of the Polish language, namely the second half of the 18th century. Due to their cliché nature, proverbs are carriers of conventionalised, not seldom stereotypical, information and therefore they reflect the thinking patterns that are most established in the cultural code. Owing to that, the cultural message contained in these short, yet not seldom meaningful, texts is a valuable supplementation of the information coming from other textual, historical, cultural sources.