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Ivan Saverchanka Aurea Mediocritas. Publishings and Literature Culture in Belarus: Renaissance and Early Baroque Minsk. 1998. 319 pages. In Belarusian. Hardcover. Published by Tekhnalogiya Publishing, Minsk, Belarus |
Scientific novelty and significance of this work provide a new perspective for studies in Belarusian literature of the late Renaissance and early Baroque. In many respects this scientific work has no analogy in the Slav history of literature. What distinguishes it is a general theoretical approach to earlier literary monuments and their historical and cultural comprehension. This study presents a complex analysis of all the volume of polemic and publicistic literature in old Belarusian, church Slavonic, Polish and Latin that flourished in the Great Duchy of Lithuania during the second half of the XVth -- the middle of the XVIIth cc. The main result of the work lies in a well-grounded interpretation of many-sided ideological fighting between representatives of different historical, cultural and religions trends and in a new treatment of complicated spiritual seekings of the then intellectuals, such as A.Valan, M. Litvin, A. Rotundus, S. Budny, V. Ciapinski, M. Radzivil-Chorny, K. Filaliet, P. Skarha, B. Herbest, V. Surazski-Maliusycki, Arciomi, L. and S. Zizanij, L. Karpovic, M. Smatrycki, A. Muzylouski, A. Filipovich, S. Kosau, I. Paciej, L. Kreuza, J. Rucki, A. Sialiava, I. Marachouski, K. Trankvilijon-Stauravecki and others.
Thanks to the study of 300 manuscripts and more than 700 publications the author can show the scale and profundity of the synthesis of various rich antique, West-Roman, Greek and Byzantine traditions in publishings and literature culture as a whole in the Belarus. The unknown or forgotten earlier works, discovered by the author, form an innovatory character of this research. One of the author achievements is a detailed literary analysis of several anonymous philosophical and theological works, such as "On Icons, Cross and God's Prise", "Letters against the Luthers", "Questions and Answers", etc. The new interpretation of the theoretical treatises of A. Rotundus, A. Valovich, R. Chadkievic, L. Sapieha helps to outline the main social doctrines in Great Duchy of Lithuania at times preceding the Statute of 1588. The clue to many-sided polemic literature, issued in connection with the formation of the Union of Bierascie, discovered by the author, press all the native mediaevalism to a new level. It is in this research where legal and church aspects of the Union of 1596 were systematized and elucidated for the first time. The study of theoretical problems of anthropology and ethics (gnosiology, anthropocentrism, providentialism), that interested old Belarusian writers and thinkers, is absolutely new for the national history of literature.
The scientific investigations and publishing of the book are carried out at support of the Belarusian Republican Foundation for Fundamental Research, Open Society Institute, and the Yanka Kupala Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
Click here to read the book's Table of Contents in Belarusian
Publisher's Mailing Address: 43 Magilyouskaya Street, Room 210, Minsk BY-220007, Republic of Belarus
Telephone: +375 (17) 227-19-40. Fax: +375 (17) 221-77-40. E-mail: firm@techna.belpak.minsk.by
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