Studia Językoznawcze

The article presents the linguistic creation of Wokulski’s feelings (the main character of The Doll) towards an aristocrat Izabela Łęcka. Bolesław Prus realises this task mainly through Wokulski’s utterances and the descriptions of his thoughts as well as the narrator’s and other characters’ comments. There are two ways of presenting the creation of Stanisław’s feelings – one of them idealises love and the woman, the other, realistic, depicts Wokulski’s commonsensical deliberations on love. The idealization of love is expressed due to the stylistic devices typical of neoclassical, sentimental and romantic poetry such as metaphors, comparisons, hyperboles and metonymies. There appears a signifi - cant number of abstract nouns and verbal forms as well as numerous constructions with the lexeme happiness. The commonsensical deliberations are based on negatively marked metaphors, verbal forms, abstract nouns and terms. In a masterly fashion Bolesław Prus utilizes the richness of linguistic devices was to create a realistic view of the complexity of the main character’s feelings towards the woman of a different social class.