„Jezubitowie od Ignata Loyolczyka”. Or on the Power of Stereotypes in Polish Language Dictionaries

Abstract

The author takes up the problem of anti-Jesuit stereotypes in Polish culture. The analysis is based on Polish language dictionaries: Dictionary of the Polish Language edited by Samuel Bogumił Linde in the years 1807-1814; the so-called Vilnius Dictionary edited by a team of several authors and published by Maurycy Orgelbrand in Vilnius in 1861; Dictionary of the Polish Language published in Warsaw in 1902, the work of three outstanding researchers of that time: Jan Karłowicz, Adam Kryń ski and Władysław Niedz´wiedzki; Dictionary of the Polish Language worked out under the management of Witold Doroszewski, whose third volume containing the entries connected with the Jesuits was published in Warsaw in 1961; and contemporary dictionaries of the Polish language – the three-volume Dictionary of the Polish Language edited by Mieczysław Szymczak (the first edition – 1978); Computer Dictionary of the Polish Language published in 1996; A Different Dictionary of the Polish Language edited by Mirosław Ban´ko.

The image that appears from the analysis shows that the negative presentation of the problems connected with the Jesuits in the middle of the 19th century basically did not change until the end of the 20th century. The unambiguously negative stereotype of the Jesuits started undergoing changes in Dictionary of the Polish Language edited by M. Ban´ko in 2000.