Eleonora Terleckienė

Fighting Zoilus: Envy and the Author in Baroque Literary Culture

Eleonora Terleckienė

Vilnius University

Fighting Zoilus: Envy and the Author in Baroque Literary Culture

The figure of Zoilus as an angry, unjust, and incompetent critic was popularized by the Roman poet Martial’s epigrams. Short poems titled ad Zoilum or in Zoilum were often added to books as supplementary texts and were regarded as part of the Renaissance tradition, following a common structure and recurring epithets. Epigrams addressing Zoilus in books published in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are comparatively rare; however, their appearance may be considered even more significant. I argue that in seventeenth-century publications, epigrams dedicated to Zoilus and placed alongside the main text allow us to grasp the tension between the author and his real or implicit critic. Concentrating on a few examples – namely Kazimierz Stanisław Olewnicki Witakowski’s Flight of Stetkiewicz’s Arrow (Lot strzały Stetkiewiczowskiey, 1676, Vilna) and Mateusz Ignacy Kuligowski’s Laughing Democritus, or the Laughter of the Christian Democritus from This World, Divided into Three Stages of Human Life (Demokryt Smieszny, albo Smiech Demokryta Chrzescianskiego z tego świata na trzy częśći życia ludzkiego wieku rozdzielony, 1699, Vilna) – I will show how these paratextual elements function in the books in question. In addition, I will discuss an example from the manuscript tradition: the poem Relation on the Entry and Exit of Samogitia from Swedish Rule (Relatia Zmudzkiego weyscia y wyiscia ze Szwedzkiey Opieki, 1657) by Mikołaj Kazimierz Szemiot. I argue that, if we take into account the address to Zoilus, the whole poetic text can be interpreted as a response to envious criticism. The purpose of my paper is to show how the tradition of Latin Antiquity was adapted to the time and needs of Baroque literary culture.