The new sources to literary and bibliological researches on the old literature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the light of contemporary methodologies

Abstract

The article presents the new sources which allow to broaden the existing research on the old literature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The cited examples reflect contemporary literary and bibliological methodologies. Bibliologists use a functional method and apply a research directive called the “book culture” to (among others) the Vilnius monastic communities. Geopoetics and geocriticism reveal the significance of the space, places of remembrance or geographic names. Applying this method to the work of Daniel Naborowski or Boguslaw Kazimierz Maskiewicz’s diary enables to show the specifics of these author’s approach to some more or less known places on a map of the Kingdom of Poland and especially the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Structuralist method, used both by the literary critics and bibliologists, based on the analysis of literary-publishing frame was presented through two examples: the Lviv manuscript containing occasional poems dedicated to the Birże Radziwiłł family and the previously unknown, unique print of the translation of some David’s psalms by Salomon Rysiński. In the article it has been also highlighted the importance of rhetorical research and indicated the possibility of using unknown orations which show the oratory culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.