Trojański koń panegirystów. Studium staropolskiej popularności pewnego toposu
The Trojan horse of panegyrists – a study of the Old Polish popularity of a certain topos

Summary/Abstract: This article is a first comprehensive monographic study of the topical comparison to the Trojan horse, discussing its origins and its most important panegyric uses in Old Polish orations and poetry. Today, when the phraseologism ‘Trojan horse’, associated with treachery, false gift, or internal enemy, is unambiguously pejorative, the positive connotations of 16th- and 17th-century texts may seem incomprehensible. Meanwhile, old authors commonly imitated Cicero’s formula (De oratore II 22,94), who likened the school of the famous speaker Isocrates to the Trojan horse, from whence many illustrious Greeks emerged. The numerous examples collected in the article prove that this comparison was commonly used in Polish literature until the end of the 18th century in three main contexts, i.e., to praise a humanist and teacher (e.g., professor of the Krakow Academy Szymon Kociołek, the bishop of Kraków Samuel Maciejowski), to praise a university (e.g., the Kraków Academy) or school (e.g., Jesuit colleges), and to praise an illustrious family (originally royal, princely and magnate families, with time the comparison began to be used in praise of minor noble families). The article also discusses the obscene reinterpretation of this topos.

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