The book is composed of six drafts concentrated on the Tatar-Turkish bondage
in the literature of old ages (16th and 17th centuries). The first dissertation
entitled Old-Polish representations of Turks and Tatars as aggressors — from the
perspective of a sin shows how Polish literature, starting from Middle Ages to
the end of the Baroque, built a mental portrait of a “pagan” enemy that was
retained in the form of a given stereotype. Tatars and Turks were demonized by
means of infernal expressions, especially ascribing a Satan feature of arrogance
and aiming at annihilating Christians — to the people of God. The relationship
of enemies with the sphere of evil was expressed referring to mythology, Bible,
however theriomorphisms were used especially willingly, in the lead with
a comparison of enemies to wolves. Further on, a historiosophic conception
of Tatar-Turkish invasions as a realization of God’s plan of reprimanding and
redressing a sinful congregation.
The subject of interest in the next dissertation entitled A writer and bondage
— Maciej Stryjkowski, Bartłomiej Paprocki were two different points of
view of the phenomenon of bondage. The first of them was included in the
epic poem by Stryjkowski On the freedom of the Polish Crown. The poet who
travelled through the lands of the Ottoman empire as a participant of Andrzej
Tarnowski’s mission from 1574 to 1575 described how difficult experience
a bondage constitutes for whole congregations, in this case south-eastern Slavs
by Turks. A reflection on the location of nations that lost independence was to
constitute a warning for Poles who, according to the author, were also endangered
by the Turkish imperialism. B. Paprocki, on the other hand, in Wretched
history paid attention to the misery of individuals — people living on the south-
eastern borderland of the Republic of Poland, constantly harassed by Tatar
attacks and massively captured into captivity. Both authors paid attention to the
cruelty of enemies and human suffering. Similar threads of the old literature
concerning the tragic nature of the bondage were developed in the next article
Dehumanizing aspects of the Tatar-Turkish bondage. The interpretation of bondage
by old-Polish authors was presented as the state of an extreme humiliation
of a human being, degradation to the level of the labour force, “goods” and
“bestialization” (the metaphor of the “cattle” driven for sale). The very draft Przeważna legacyja by Samuel Twardowski.
The next dissertation An image of a knight liberator in the epic poem of the
second half of the 16th and 17th centuries concerns the problem of shaping a
specific “version” of an ideal of a knight whose duty and service was to free
jassar in the old-Polish works. The author quotes numerous examples proving
what a big rank was given to the possibility of freeing from the bondage in
the characteristic of rulers, leaders and knights by the authors. Some examples
show that this possibility to free constituted an important criterion even when
evaluating the strong (or weak) points of the Republic of Poland under the
ruling of a given king.
The topic of the knight is also continued in the text Marek Jakimowski —
a character of the 19th century literature devoted to a literary popularity of the
figure of a nobleman from Podole who came across the Turkish galleys after
the battle of Cecora in 1620. After a few years of bondage he reached the galley
where he was imprisoned and, having freed himself and his closest companies
of bondage returned to his homeland. Jakimowski’s brave action became the
canvas of many literary realizations in the 19th century. The last draft treats
about the motive of a miraculous liberation willingly used especially in the
religious literature (preacher’s examples) as well as works on secular issues,
above all for didactic purposes in order to shape mental attitudes of people of
the post-Trident era (the cult of Mary, and belief in God’s interference into the
fate of the citizens of the Republic of Poland)