The work entitled: Jerzy Ossoliński: an orator of the Polish Baroque makes use of
the results of the renewed, in recent years, interest in rhetoric. It deals, by means of the
rhetorical theory, with the traditional subject of rhetoric, i.e. the oratorical prose. The
basic aim of the present dissertation is to gather and describe the rhetorical legacy of
Jerzy Ossoliński (1595—1650), a famous Latin and Polish orator, known in the 17th c.
as “the Polish Tully”. Over 40 of his orations have been, after a fundamental generic
analysis, classified under various types of the Old Polish oratory, which enabled the
author to observe the conventions, patterns of thinking, and stylistic experiments
discernible in these texts.
The first chapter shows Ossoliński as a Latin orator known primarily from his
foreign embassies. His 1633 speech in the capacity of a legate to the Pope Urban VIII
became immediately a model of the ambassadorial speech (cf. the manuals of rhetoric
by M. Radau and J. Kwiatkiewicz) and it awoke an interest that went far beyond the
requirements of the current circumstances, becoming part of the collective consciousness
and of the legend of that famous Polish embassy to Rome. The author’s analysis
of that speech focused then on showing it as an element of the whole ingress and the
propagandist inpact of the embassy. The scheme of the ambassadorial speech as such
is also presented, and the way it was creatively implemented by Ossoliński, followed by
a description of the oratorial art that this outstanding specimen of the Baroque oratory
is an example of.
The chapter entitled In the "theatrum" of the Republic brings together, by means
of referring to the Parliamentary ceremony, various examples of the Parliamentary
pronouncements by Ossoliński. His show pieces (i.e. speeches delivered to welcome
the Speaker of the House, replies to such speeches, orations on the occasion of transmitting
the Great Seal) are oart of the normal course of Parliamentary sessions, but
they provide the events taking place on the Parliamentary stage with an idealising
aspect. The speeches in question repeat certain ideologically marked schemes, and, at
the same time, they demonstrate the orator’s increasing tendency to look for new, unusual,
and spectacular means of expression. The chancellor Ossolińskie political speeches (proposals for the throne and votive speeches) are endowed with aesthetic qualities,
even though they were also highly successful with respect to the chancellor’s
political purposes and they frequently appealed to certain constant elements of the
Sarmatian (i.e. old- Polish) mentality.
The third chatper is devoted to the funerary orations and to the little known
nuptial speeches preserved in manuscript. In them the chancellor shows himself to be
a typical advocate of the generally accepted patterns of behaviour and of social
didacticism coloured with the Sarmatian ideology. He resorts, nevertheless, to some
means of defamiliarising his heroines by comparing them to figures from European
romances.
In the last chapter entitled In the direction of a legend, the author leaves the floor
to the prince and his contemporaries. Through an analysis of numerous occasional
speeches dedications, orations etc. we obtain a portrait that is completely different
from, Ossolinski’s “black legend”, a portrait of a politician and a great orator who left
a trace on the collective consciousness as a propagator of the glory of Sarmatia
(i.e. Poland) during the 1633 Roman embassy, and as somebody who (in the words
of one of his panegyrists): Gentem nostram admirationi, se ipsum immortalitati consecravit
(made his nation an object of admiration and made himself immortal)
