Neo-Latin Poetry in the Kyivan Poetics: Ukraine in the European Latinitas

In this paper the Author illustrates a few Neo-Latin poetical compositions that are found in the poetics manuals of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (17th-18th century). They pertain to the genus demonstrativum (epideictic genre), one of the genres into which oratory and poetry were divided, and the genre that more than others allowed poets to represent human deeds and exemplary specimens of virtue that the pupils could and should follow. The importance of the genus demonstrativum becomes clear when one takes into account the main end of poetry in the Mohylan poetics, that is the education of pious men and loyal subjects. The author therefore analyzes a few panegyric poems that praise the person and the activity of Rafajil Zaborovs’kyj (1676-1747), one of the most generous benefactors of the Mohyla Academy in the 18th century. The analysis is particularly focused on the rhetorical strategies and the lexical tools adopted to carry out the praise of Zaborovs’kyj. The celebration of this eminent representative of 18th century Kyivan culture, as that of other eminent characters of the time, witnesses to the foundation of a new ‘Parnassus’ on the hills of Kyiv and to the insertion of the Kyiv-Mohylan Academy and Ukrainian culture in the European Latinitas.