- Università degli Studi di Milano
Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere
Piazza S. Alessandro, 1
20123 Milano (ITALY) - (+39) 2 503 13626
- Polish Literature, Old Polish literature, Medieval And Humanistic Philology, Medieval and Neolatin Texts, Neolatin Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and 19 moreCultural Studies, Anthropology, Italian-Polish Cultural Relationships, Travel Writing, Cartography, History of Cartography, The Other in Western literature, Renaissance Humanism, Humanism (15th-17th c.), Philology, Codicology, Critical Edition, Codicology, Critical Editing, Translation of Poetry, Representation of Others, Codicology of medieval manuscripts, Polish Studies, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and History of Diplomacy(Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Italian-Polish Cultural Relationships, Travel Writing, Cartography, History of Cartography, The Other in Western literature, Renaissance Humanism, Humanism (15th-17th c.), Philology, Codicology, Critical Edition, Codicology, Critical Editing, Translation of Poetry, Representation of Others, Codicology of medieval manuscripts, Polish Studies, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and History of Diplomacy)edit
Tom poświęcony problematyce tłumaczenia tekstów dawnych. Autorzy artykułów i wywiadów: Araszkiewicz Aleksanra, Bielak Alicja, Bylewska Dorota, Cetera Anna, Franczak Grzegorz, Kamiński Piotr, Kordyzon Wojciech, Kuc Natalia, Lam Andrzej,... more
Tom poświęcony problematyce tłumaczenia tekstów dawnych.
Autorzy artykułów i wywiadów: Araszkiewicz Aleksanra, Bielak Alicja, Bylewska Dorota, Cetera Anna, Franczak Grzegorz, Kamiński Piotr, Kordyzon Wojciech, Kuc Natalia, Lam Andrzej, Masłej Dorota, Mrowcewicz Krzysztof, Pawełczak Maria, Pietkiewicz Rajmund, Pifko Anna, Sadzik Piotr, Wojtkowska-Maksymik Marta, Wójcicki Jacek, Wróbel Łukasz.
Autorzy artykułów i wywiadów: Araszkiewicz Aleksanra, Bielak Alicja, Bylewska Dorota, Cetera Anna, Franczak Grzegorz, Kamiński Piotr, Kordyzon Wojciech, Kuc Natalia, Lam Andrzej, Masłej Dorota, Mrowcewicz Krzysztof, Pawełczak Maria, Pietkiewicz Rajmund, Pifko Anna, Sadzik Piotr, Wojtkowska-Maksymik Marta, Wójcicki Jacek, Wróbel Łukasz.
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Research Interests: Postcolonial Studies, Propaganda & Indoctrination Studies, Political propaganda and Literature, Time of Troubles, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and 6 moreOld Polish literature, History of Muscovy, Muscovite Russia, 17th c. Muscovy, Palczowski Paweł, and Paweł Palczowski, “Kolęda Moskiewska” (1609)
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"Petrarchs Griselda story - the Insignis obedientia et fides uxoris, a version of the last novella of Boccaccios Decameron - is the poets one and only translation from vernacular into Latin. The tale is notable in the way that it has... more
"Petrarchs Griselda story - the Insignis obedientia et fides uxoris, a version of the last novella of Boccaccios Decameron - is the poets one and only translation from vernacular into Latin. The tale is notable in the way that it has spread into all European literatures, with a huge number of translations and free renderings. The vitality and continued transmission of the Griselda story - which is one of the basic characteristics of a chapbook (Volksbuch) makes it a natural benchmark to define tastes in popular literature of readers of times gone by, from the 16th century to modern times. The evolution of the Petrarch tale in Polish re-tellings which is the theme of this study has until now been only partially analysed, since it has generally been regarded only as a literary echo from Boccaccio, even though the Petrarch version has been the direct or indirect source for all Polish Griseldas.
The first chapter examines all the relevant structural and semantic displacements, involving either the plot or the features and functions of characters, introduced by Petrarch in his interpretation of Boccaccios original, and which have had an impact on subsequent literary reworkings. In the fundamental quest for accurate historical-literary systematization, we have focused on questions of bibliological and textual-philologic criticism sources, genetic relationships between different texts, interactions with German and Russian versions. Petrarchs original text, which makes up the Appendix of the work, designed to support such an approach, is accompanied by a critical apparatus of Latin variants belonging to the Polish branch of the Insignis obedientia genealogical chart.
Chapter II is entirely concerned with the diffusion of Petrarchs story among Polish humanists. The Latin text was known in Poland from around 1433, and was widely disseminated, within a vast corpus of orations, epistles and epigrams of contemporary Italian humanists; and the seven Polish manuscripts of 1440-1460 offer a well-defined version, unknown to scholars and editors of the Petrarchan work.
Chapter III focuses on the historical-literary contexts of Polish recastings of the tale, imitated directly or indirectly from Petrarchs version. Particularly notable is the anonymous Historyja znamienita ( ) o Gryzelli, from c.1551, the first novella in Polish literature, which is here carefully re-examined on the basis of a newly found copy, which offers an earlier version than the one hitherto known. Moreover, the discovery of a 19th century chapbook edition of the Historyja allows us to evaluate the vitality of the prose style of old Polish fiction.
The final chapter concentrates on the literary genetics and typological factors. Having surveyed in detail the terminology of literary genres, applied in modern studies to old Polish fiction prose and poetry, specifically including the Griselda stories, we advance a typology, based on the immanent poetics of each single analysed work and taking into account the types of novella plot and characters. This typology could reflect in the most comprehensive way the evolution of the Griselda story in Polish literature."
The first chapter examines all the relevant structural and semantic displacements, involving either the plot or the features and functions of characters, introduced by Petrarch in his interpretation of Boccaccios original, and which have had an impact on subsequent literary reworkings. In the fundamental quest for accurate historical-literary systematization, we have focused on questions of bibliological and textual-philologic criticism sources, genetic relationships between different texts, interactions with German and Russian versions. Petrarchs original text, which makes up the Appendix of the work, designed to support such an approach, is accompanied by a critical apparatus of Latin variants belonging to the Polish branch of the Insignis obedientia genealogical chart.
Chapter II is entirely concerned with the diffusion of Petrarchs story among Polish humanists. The Latin text was known in Poland from around 1433, and was widely disseminated, within a vast corpus of orations, epistles and epigrams of contemporary Italian humanists; and the seven Polish manuscripts of 1440-1460 offer a well-defined version, unknown to scholars and editors of the Petrarchan work.
Chapter III focuses on the historical-literary contexts of Polish recastings of the tale, imitated directly or indirectly from Petrarchs version. Particularly notable is the anonymous Historyja znamienita ( ) o Gryzelli, from c.1551, the first novella in Polish literature, which is here carefully re-examined on the basis of a newly found copy, which offers an earlier version than the one hitherto known. Moreover, the discovery of a 19th century chapbook edition of the Historyja allows us to evaluate the vitality of the prose style of old Polish fiction.
The final chapter concentrates on the literary genetics and typological factors. Having surveyed in detail the terminology of literary genres, applied in modern studies to old Polish fiction prose and poetry, specifically including the Griselda stories, we advance a typology, based on the immanent poetics of each single analysed work and taking into account the types of novella plot and characters. This typology could reflect in the most comprehensive way the evolution of the Griselda story in Polish literature."
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This paper focuses on one particular aspect of the way in which 16th-century Polish authors ghostmapped the European East: the semantics assumed by the choronym "Russia" in Renaissance cartography which reflected the long-lasting rivalry... more
This paper focuses on one particular aspect of the way in which 16th-century Polish authors ghostmapped the European East: the semantics assumed by the choronym "Russia" in Renaissance cartography which reflected the long-lasting rivalry between Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy for the possession of the territories of the former Kievan Rus'. After a brief sketch of the theoretical and historical framework, I provide an overview of European cartographical texts, from Beneventano to Waldseemüller and Mercator, influenced by the Polish ghostmappers of Muscovy-Wapowski, Miechowita, and Strubicz-who tried to narrow the toponym "Russia" to the lands controlled by Poland and Lithuania.
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The “Brain’s Tyre” in a “Faint Light of Progress”: The Pitfalls of Syntagmatic and Indirect Translation on the Example of the Italian Version of Bieguni (Flights) by Olga Tokarczuk This paper is devoted to the Italian translation of... more
The “Brain’s Tyre” in a “Faint Light of Progress”: The Pitfalls of Syntagmatic and Indirect Translation on the Example of the Italian Version of Bieguni (Flights) by Olga Tokarczuk This paper is devoted to the Italian translation of Bieguni by Olga Tokarczuk, entitled I Vagabondi. As the author argues, it is a kind of patchwork translation, partly translated from the original language, partly from the novel’s English version (Flights). The Italian translation of both source texts, Polish and English, contains a full range of typical syntagmatic translation errors, consisting in mechanically reproducing the structures of the source language (word-for-word translation) without delving into the meaning of the translated text. The author analyses at first, on selected examples, translation errors from the Polish source text, distinguishing between lexical errors and dictionary equivalents, including those impeding the fluidity of the target text, false friends, calques, misinterpretatio...
Polotia recepta. A Map of the Principality of Polatsk: Texts and Pretexts of the Power Dispute This study discusses an important aspect of a political message conveyed by Stanisław Pachołowiecki's map, published in 1580 by G.B Cavalieri's... more
Polotia recepta. A Map of the Principality of Polatsk: Texts and Pretexts of the Power Dispute This study discusses an important aspect of a political message conveyed by Stanisław Pachołowiecki's map, published in 1580 by G.B Cavalieri's printing house in Rome as part of The Atlas of the Principality of Polatsk-Descriptio Ducatus Polocensis. The message in question is one of the paratexts, presenting a detailed historical note on Polatsk and the Principality. The main goal of the study is to prove a double hypothesis, first that the note on Polatsk was a key argument legitimising the rule of Stephen Báthory-contested by Tsar Ivan the Terrible-not only over the small territory under dispute but over the whole Great Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and second, that the decision to aim the first Polish-Lithuanian military offensive in the 1577-1582 war at Polatsk was motivated by political rather than military or strategic considerations. In section I, preliminary assumptions, theses and research methods are presented. Then, in section II, the context of the propaganda campaign, as Pachołowiecki's map ideological framework, is introduced. This is followed by a critical analysis of the historical note, based on Polish and Ruthenian-Lithuanian sources (III.1). The next section (III.2) demonstrates that Polatsk held a central place in the Muscovite political discourse. Having proclaimed himself a heir to the throne of the Great Duchy and to the crown of Poland, Ivan the Terrible seized the land of Polatsk, and the efficient Muscovite diplomacy started to assert the tsar's alleged dynastic claim to Lithuania and Poland. In this way, the manipulated history of the "recovered Polatsk", Polotia recepta, argued to be a historical part of Lithuania, can be seen as a reply to the Muscovite discourse of power drawing on dynastic claims to a non-existent duchy, and the key matter is the legitimisation of elective monarchy as opposed to hereditary one. Having discussed the theatrical and iconic form of the Polish triumph over Ivan the Terrible (III.3), the author highlights the long life of the political myth of the Polatsk statehood and its significance for today's Belarusian identity discourse.
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The “Brain’s Tyre” in a “Faint Light of Progress”: The Pitfalls of Syntagmatic and Indirect Translation on the Example of the Italian Version of Bieguni (Flights) by Olga Tokarczuk. This paper is devoted to the Italian translation of... more
The “Brain’s Tyre” in a “Faint Light of Progress”: The Pitfalls of Syntagmatic and Indirect Translation on the Example of the Italian Version of Bieguni (Flights) by Olga Tokarczuk. This paper is devoted to the Italian translation of Bieguni by Olga Tokarczuk, entitled I Vagabondi. As the author argues, it is a kind of patchwork translation, partly translated from the original language, partly from the novel’s English version (Flights). The Italian translation of both source texts, Polish and English, contains a full range of typical syntagmatic translation errors, consisting in mechanically reproducing the structures of the source language (word-for-word translation) without delving into the meaning of the translated text. The author analyses at first, on selected examples, translation errors from the Polish source text, distinguishing between lexical errors and dictionary equivalents, including those impeding the fluidity of the target text, false friends, calques, misinterpretation errors as well as omissions and additions. He focuses next on analogous errors produced in the indirect translation from English, sorting separately the lexical and interpretative errors resulting already in the English intermediate text and reproduced in the Italian translation.
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The Philology of a Map. Studying Old Cartography Using the Method of Textual Criticism: the Case of Toponymy of the Map of the Principality of Polotsk by S. Pachołowiecki from 1580. The aim of this paper is to make an experimental... more
The Philology of a Map. Studying Old Cartography Using the Method of Textual Criticism: the Case of Toponymy of the Map of the Principality of Polotsk by S. Pachołowiecki from 1580.
The aim of this paper is to make an experimental application of textual criticism (the stemma method or Lachmann's method) in the analyses of early-modern maps. It is supposed to verify whether, and to what extent, the means developed by philologists to establish how texts were transmitted in medieval codices, can be applied to study the transmission of geographic knowledge on early-modern maps. The author postulates that well-tried procedures should be used in studies of textual parts of old maps. They allow the formulation of filiation hypotheses. These procedures consist of collating extant texts and detecting mistakes that indicate, connect or divide individual branches of tradition.
The subject analysed is the toponymy appearing on the map "Descriptio Ducatus Polocensis" (The Description of the Principality of Polotsk) by Stanisław Pachołowiecki, engraved in Rome by Giovanni Battista Cavalieri in 1580 and on maps stemming from the same archetype. The author compiles a complete index of toponyms and hydronyms in transliteration and transcription, identifies them and provides the names in Belarussian, Russian and Polish. He also annotates each of them with a short topographic-historical description. Taking into consideration the state of the art regarding mutual relations between cartographic works drawing on Pachołowiecki’s map of the Principality of Polotsk, he proposes a hypothetic stemma depicting the genealogy of the toponymic image of the Principality of Polotsk on 16th and 17th century maps. The analysis also includes four other relics: a manuscript map of Stanisław Sulimowski from 1580, a printed map "Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae, Livoniae et Moscoviae decriptio" (A Description of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Livonia and Muscovy) by Maciej Strubicz from 1589; "Lithuania" by Gerard Mercator from 1595; and the so-called Radziwiłł’s Map of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from 1613.
Based on the analysis of the toponymic corpus of all these maps, Franczak proves that Pachołowiecki’s printed map from 1580 did not have a direct effect on the later cartographic works. Such an influence was, however, exerted by its manuscript original, which shaped the image of the Lithuanian-Muscovite borderland in European cartography of the 17th and 18th centuries through the maps of Sulimowski and Strubicz.
The aim of this paper is to make an experimental application of textual criticism (the stemma method or Lachmann's method) in the analyses of early-modern maps. It is supposed to verify whether, and to what extent, the means developed by philologists to establish how texts were transmitted in medieval codices, can be applied to study the transmission of geographic knowledge on early-modern maps. The author postulates that well-tried procedures should be used in studies of textual parts of old maps. They allow the formulation of filiation hypotheses. These procedures consist of collating extant texts and detecting mistakes that indicate, connect or divide individual branches of tradition.
The subject analysed is the toponymy appearing on the map "Descriptio Ducatus Polocensis" (The Description of the Principality of Polotsk) by Stanisław Pachołowiecki, engraved in Rome by Giovanni Battista Cavalieri in 1580 and on maps stemming from the same archetype. The author compiles a complete index of toponyms and hydronyms in transliteration and transcription, identifies them and provides the names in Belarussian, Russian and Polish. He also annotates each of them with a short topographic-historical description. Taking into consideration the state of the art regarding mutual relations between cartographic works drawing on Pachołowiecki’s map of the Principality of Polotsk, he proposes a hypothetic stemma depicting the genealogy of the toponymic image of the Principality of Polotsk on 16th and 17th century maps. The analysis also includes four other relics: a manuscript map of Stanisław Sulimowski from 1580, a printed map "Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae, Livoniae et Moscoviae decriptio" (A Description of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Livonia and Muscovy) by Maciej Strubicz from 1589; "Lithuania" by Gerard Mercator from 1595; and the so-called Radziwiłł’s Map of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from 1613.
Based on the analysis of the toponymic corpus of all these maps, Franczak proves that Pachołowiecki’s printed map from 1580 did not have a direct effect on the later cartographic works. Such an influence was, however, exerted by its manuscript original, which shaped the image of the Lithuanian-Muscovite borderland in European cartography of the 17th and 18th centuries through the maps of Sulimowski and Strubicz.
Research Interests:
Stanisław Pachołowiecki’s Atlas of the Principality of Polotsk from 1580 – a Transcription and Translation This paper contains a transcription (modernized according to the norms set out by Academia Latinitati Fovendae) and a Polish... more
Stanisław Pachołowiecki’s Atlas of the Principality of Polotsk from 1580 – a Transcription and Translation
This paper contains a transcription (modernized according to the norms set out by Academia Latinitati Fovendae) and a Polish translation of titles, inscriptions and Latin explanations, from eight cartographic relics that constitute The Atlas of the Principality of Polotsk, of Stanisław Pachołowiecki (1580).
Keywords: history of cartography, atlas, Stanisław Pachołowiecki, Stephen Báthory, Tomasz Treter, Giovanni Battista Cavalieri, Polotsk, Koziany, Krasne, Sitno, Sokol, Susza, Turovla, Livonian War
This paper contains a transcription (modernized according to the norms set out by Academia Latinitati Fovendae) and a Polish translation of titles, inscriptions and Latin explanations, from eight cartographic relics that constitute The Atlas of the Principality of Polotsk, of Stanisław Pachołowiecki (1580).
Keywords: history of cartography, atlas, Stanisław Pachołowiecki, Stephen Báthory, Tomasz Treter, Giovanni Battista Cavalieri, Polotsk, Koziany, Krasne, Sitno, Sokol, Susza, Turovla, Livonian War
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The subject of this edition is a forgotten 17th-century Polonicum: a Latin panegyric in hexameter by Antonio Querenghi entitled Ad urbem Romam in adventu Serenissimi Vladislai, Poloniae Principis (To the city of Rome on the occasion of... more
The subject of this edition is a forgotten 17th-century Polonicum: a Latin panegyric in hexameter by Antonio Querenghi entitled Ad urbem Romam in adventu Serenissimi Vladislai, Poloniae Principis (To the city of Rome on the occasion of the arrival of His Most Serene Highness Vladislaus, the Prince of Poland). The work, published in 1625 in Rome, was noted in bibliographies of S. Ciampi and K. Estreicher as anonymous. This is because the only copy known of the first edition until recently, preserved in the holdings of Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, was deprived of the title page. The discovery of a second, complete copy in the collection of Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome allowed us to identify the author, namely the Padovan humanist Antonio Querenghi (1546–1633), who from 1605 served as the pope’s personal secretary (cubicularius), prelate and referendary of both signatures. The closest relation Querengi developed with Maffeo Barberini (Urban VIII), the “pope-Cicero” and patron of poets and artists, at whose side he stayed until his own death. On 19 January 1625 he graced with his panegyric the Roman visit of Prince Vladislaus Vasa, the later King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Vladislaus IV. The prince arrived in Rome on 20 December 1624, after an eight-month journey around Europe. Vladislaus, who tried to travel incognito, was received with all the honour due to the successor to the Swedish throne with the title of electi Magni Ducis Moschoviae (the elected Grand Duke of Muscovy). In the minds of the inhabitants of Europe, his person was also inextricably associated with the double triumph over the “schismatic” Muscovy, and above all with fending off Turks at the battle of Chocim (2 September–9 October 1621). Vladislaus spent the fortnight from 20 December 1624 to 2 January 1625 in the papal capital and took part in the celebration of the Jubilee. On 17 January he arrived there again after a short trip to Naples and left the city after only three days. Yet it was the latter short stay in Rome that the grandest reception in honour of the Polish Prince was held. On Sunday, 19 January, after a private audience with Pope Urban, at which only the closest curial dignitaries (with Querenghi probably among them) and officials from Vladislaus’ retinue were present, a sumptuous dinner was given with a concert afterwards. In the panegyric written for this occasion, Querenghi praises Vladislaus’ triumphs over “Muscovy twice defeated” (he meant armed attempts of the prince to the tsarist throne in the years 1610–1619) and over “the Thracian (i.e. Turkish) enemy,” the army of sultan Osman II. The ideological pivot of the poem is the pope’s planned general military expedition against Turkey: Urban VIII anoints the Polish Prince as the commander in chief of the upcoming crusade and a defender of Christianity. Vladislaus appears to be a new Hercules choosing the difficult path of Virtue, filled with renunciations and leading to eternal fame. In the panegyric apostrophe, the poet appeals to the Christian prince to follow the example of the mythical hero by taming the “godless monsters” (monstra impia) and taking upon his shoulders the weight of the world resting theretofore on the shoulders of the Italian Atlas – Pope Urban. Ad urbem Romam constitutes an excellent example of Querenghi’s stylistic manner shaped in the neo-Platonist spirit of hermetism, which made the poet create labyrinthine and enigmatic texts for the exclusive use of a narrow circle of exegetes. This manner resulted in a discrepancy, starkly visible through the refined hexameters, between two irreconcilable textual (and thus essentially linguistic) facts, one arising from historic discourse and the other generated within conventionally antiquisating, petrified, panegyric hyperbole. Namely, between Vladislaus who, abashed, retreated from Muscow and spent the battle of Chocim sick in his own tent, and the new Hercules who puts to rout the schismatic-pagan monsters threatening the Western civilisation.