Elogium in some Ukrainian Rhetorical Treatises from the late 17th and the first half of the 18th Centuries

Abstract

The article gives evidence that elogium existed in the Old Ukrainian literature on the theory level (it has been discussed in at least fourteen handwritten Ukrainian textbooks of rhetoric from the late 17th and of the first half of the 18th centuries). They were mostly a reflection on elogium as a Baroque literary genre, sometimes elogium’s short and witty style (stylus elogiaris) was described. Elogia, historical and panegyric, existed both in the written and oral forms. Two senses of that term are sometimes indicated. Elogium in a broad sense meant praise or encomium, and in the narrow sense it was close to the Jesuit model of the genre. The examples given in textbooks, usually religious elogia, or texts offered to outstanding figures in ancient or modern times, refer (taking into account literary polemic with the Jesuits) to the ancient elogium or they are written following the pattern of the Jesuit elogium.