"Książę Wiśniowiecki Janusz" Samuela Twardowskiego na tle bohaterskiej epiki biograficznej siedemnastego wieku

Abstract

The book concerns a work that up to now has been neglected by criticics, written by S. Twardowski, an outstanding epic author of Old Polish literature. This inconspicuous epic poem, entitled Książę Wiśniowiecki Janusz is described in the thesis as a biographical type of a model of national heroicum. Due to small popularity of Książę Wiśniowiecki... the author presents the circumstances of its genesis (1636) and publication (1646), stressing the relation of Twardowski to Janusz Wisniowiecki’s patronage and his connection with the Daniel Vetter’s printers. The objective of the dissertation was a recognition of genological form of the poem. Consequently, it was put against the background of the antique epic poetry (Publius Papinius Statius’ model of epos), and confronted with a theory of modern epos worked out in the XVI and XVIIc. (among others, conception of Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio and ideas of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski). Twardowski’s views on epic poetry (including a biographical variant) were confronted with both European and Polish literary practice preceding Twardowski’s works, (e.g. achievements of Torquato Tasso, Luis Vaz de Camóes, Jan Kochanowski). Detailed analysis of Książę Wiśniowiecki... structure was conducted in relation to poetics of such literary kinds as epicedium, epithlamion, hodoeporicon, heroic epic biography. The use of such a metodology was necessary because of the complex form of the epos determined by syncretism characteristic for the baroque literature. Analysis of the poem revealed that it assimilated poetics of the literary forms mentioned above. However, its structure is determined by two intertwined literary orders: of biography and epos. The next issue considered in the work revealing of the biographical elements hidden in other poems of Twardowski (the author discussed Przeważna legacyja, Pałac leszczyński, and Władysław IV. Consequently, the author defined the position of Książę Wiśniowiecki... among other works of Twardowski. Książę... can be regarded as a specific starting point for monumental Władysław TV. In the last chapter of the dissertation the author reviewed other poems of the time, related to Książę Wiśniowiecki..., written by Jan Achacy Kmita, Paweł Zapartowicz, Walenty Odymalski, Samuel Leszczyński, Remigiusz Suszycki, and others, due to their structure, determined by two types of poetics — of an epos and biography. The results of the research reveal that in the XVII c. biographical epos was a rare kind of epic in literature written in Polish.