Z dziejów kaznodziejstwa „czasów saskich”. Strategia literacka Franciszka Kowalickiego w tomie Post stary polski (1718)

Abstract

The works of the Jesuit Franciszek Kowalicki (1668–1730), comprising the collections: Katedra kaznodzieje niedzielnego (Sandomierz 1725), Kaznodzieja odświętny (Sandomierz 1721, 1725), Pustynia w raj delicyj duchownych zamieniona (Sandomierz 1732) and Socyjusz kaznodziei odświętnego (Sandomierz 1728) deserve presentation and characterisation. What draws particular attention in Kowalicki’s work, however, is the collection of sermons Post stary polski, published in 1718 at the Jesuit college in Sandomierz. The author of the present study has made two sermons from the Post stary polski the subject of his reflection. The aim was to characterise these works and to grasp their purpose, as well as the way they functioned within the literary tradition and to highlight their role in the intellectual culture of the epoch. The analysis focused on the Kazanie wieczorne na wtorek zapustny and the Kazanie wieczorne o koronie cierniowej, revealing Kowalicki’s literary strategy. The author of this article undertakes a reflection on the presence of conceptual treatments in the sermonic prose of Franciszek Kowalicki. The definition of concept in Baroque literature is taken after Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski, who in his treatise De acuto et arguto argued that three types of concepts can be distinguished in poetry. One of them is the concept understood as “empty” and “vacuous”, i.e. one that only on the surface resembles the point, but in fact is only its verbal layer. The analysis of the presence of conceptual measures in Franciszek Kowalicki’s prose has made it possible to formulate remarks of a synthesising nature. Post stary polski is above all an example of the wear and tear of certain forms of literary expression and a symptom of the aesthetic transformations taking place at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries.