Agnieszka Czechowicz
Terminus, Tom 21, zeszyt 3 (52) 2019, 2019, s. 269 - 285
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843844TE.19.019.11199“Sacred, great and difficult work”. Comments on the Genological Contexts of Wacław Potocki’s Nowy zaciąg
In this paper, an attempt is undertaken to determine the genre of Wacław Potocki’s Nowy zaciąg, a meditative poem about the Passion of Christ, one of the numerous works that belong to the seventeenth-century biblical epic. In the literature on the subject, this poem is traditionally called a “messiad” or “biblical epic”, but in the epic tradition, there are no models for such a structure, stylistic and rhetorical conventions of narrative, and the way in which the epic action is developed in this work. The aim of this study is, therefore, to prove that classifying Nowy zaciąg as an epic is a mistake and to indicate the appropriate literary frame of reference, that is the group of texts which significantly influenced Potocki’s poetic thinking about the Passion of Christ. This referential frame consists of texts that represent not only meditative literature but also ecclesiastical oratory prose.