Jakub Niedźwiedź

The Emblematic Turn in in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 2nd half of the 17th Century

Jakub Niedźwiedź

Jagiellonian University

The Emblematic Turn in in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 2nd half of the 17th Century

Keywords: emblems, literature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Polish-language poetry, Dominicans, Michał Woyniłłowicz

In 1683, a collection of emblems was created in the Dominican monastery in Vilnius: The Sheaf of Glory of the Angelic Doctor St Thomas Aquinas. The authors dedicated their work to the patron of the Lithuanian Dominicans, the voivode of Trakai, Marcjan Aleksander Ogiński. This beautifully designed manuscript, now kept in the Vilnius University Library, seems unusual, since in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania it was the Jesuits who were keen to use emblems widely for their purposes. However, the Dominican book and other collections of emblems produced in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at that time show that the emblematic imaginary permeated the literary culture of the country. Thus, the main purpose of my presentation is an attempt to answer a question: Can we speak of an 'emblematic turn’ in the literature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the second half of the 17th century? I will focus on The Sheaf of Glory, but I will also include other emblematic cycles by Mikołaj Mieleszko, Zbigniew Morsztyn, Aleksander Teodor Lacki, Pylyp Orlyk, and emblems from the Jesuit College in Orsha.