MYKOLAI TSIKHOVYCH COUNTER-REFORMATION LITERARY ACTIVITY: TOPICS AND INTERTEXT

Abstract

The article analyzes Mykolai Tsikhovych counter-reformation prose, the main issues of controversy with the reformers as well as the relationship with other works of the time are given. Attention is paid to biographical and religious factors shaping polemicist’s creativity. Intertextual aspect is presented in the light of the Teofil Rutka’s works. Mykolai Tsikhovych counter-reformation works are based on the Petro Skarha’s recommendations as well as Ignatius Loyola’s teaching and are in tune with the other representatives of the Catholicism. The writer preferred not theological explanation but rhetorical persuasions taken from the previous literary period and decorated with the Baroque elements. His style is distinguished by emotiveness, is full of irony, antinomies, anaphora etc. One will notice theological irregularity, palilogy, a certain amount of literary imitation on the example studied by him “thirty causes of distraction from Arianism”. Therefore, it is necessary to draw a conclusion about the writer’s artistic identity and his theological typification inscribed in the general counter-reformation megatekst.