THE LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL CONTACTS IN THE 17TH CENTURY AND THE SERMON DISCOURSE OF ANTONII RADYVYLOVSKYI

Abstract

The study examines the sermon discourse as a new discourse practice brought about by the language and cultural contacts in the 17th century in the Polish-Lithuanian State. The Polish texts by Piotr Skarga, Tomasz Młodzianowski, Franciczek Dzielowski and others exerted an impact on the lexis, type of text creation, communicative and stylistic features in the Ruthenian sermon in the 17th century. That impact prompted Antonii Radyvylovskyi to employ some Polonisms and Latinisms in diffeent parts of his sermons. The article traces lexical variability and its language and cultural ‘functionali-ty’ in the early book by A. Radyvylovskyi, one of the most famous preachers of the 17th century. The paper compares functioning of Polish and Latin (through Polish transmission) lexemes characterizing the discourse dimension of the 17th century lan-guage and cultural interference in the manuscript, the edited text, and the published book Vinets Khrystov (The Wreath of Christ). The number of such lexemes turns out to be the biggest in the manuscript by A. Radyvylovskyi, which demonstrates the level of language interference in the sermon discourse. The study analyzes the substitutions of Latinisms and Polonisms introduced by the editor of the collection Vinets Khrystov (The Wreath of Christ) who offered his corrections and amendments to the text. The substitutions made by the editor were taken into account in the printed book that was a prerequisite for its appearance in 1688. On the editor’s recommendations found in the manuscript, the published book retained substitutions of some Latin and Polish words with Church Slavonic ones. Such substitutions were caused by the change of the socio-cultural situation in the 1680s; however, those substitutions were just few apparent elements, which, actually, did not change the language of the sermon (kazanie), used in the 17th century. The language and cultural intersections of Polish and Ruthenian preaching practices increased the spatial (the Polish-Lithuanian State) and temporal (17th and 18th centuries) spread of the collection of sermons by Antonii Radyvylovskyi. In the 17th and 18th centuries, his books were actively spread and became popular readings for those speaking the Ruthenian language, which is proven by the availability of his books in the library of the Holy Trinity Monastery in Vilnius, the library of Wroclaw and others.