Literary Theory in the Eighteenth-Century Grand Duchy of Lithuania: From the Classical Tradition to Classicism
Literary Theory in the Eighteenth-Century Grand Duchy of Lithuania: From the Classical Tradition to Classicism

Summary/Abstract: The article is aimed at introducing the peculiarities of the literary theory in the eighteenth-century Grand Duchy of Lithuania. To show these peculiarities, it begins with an overview of the main rhetoric and poetics of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, which illustrate the theoretical thought of the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The theses set out in these works had been taken up, developed, and modified up until the middle of the eighteenth century, which signalled the beginning of the Enlightenment and changes in literary aesthetics. The majority of the works on poetics and rhetoric of the period discussed were written by French and German Jesuits (only very few were penned by the Protestants or the Piarists) and were used in the colleges of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as textbooks intended for the classes of poetics and rhetoric. These works indicate a lively reception of the European literary theory.

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