Kędy wasilek kocha się i mięta z przykrym lubczykiem. A Plant Lexicon in the poetry of the Zimorowic Brothers

Abstract

The study sought to order the arboreal-floristic vocabulary and analyse its poetic function in two seventeenth-century collections of idylls: Szymon Zimorowic’s Roksolanki and Józef Bartłomiej Zimorowic’s Sielanki nowe ruskie [New Russian Idylls].

The lexical field of plants is composed of the following: 1. general names of plants, flowers, trees, and bushes; 2. concrete, genre names; 3. names of autonomic plant parts; 4. names of acreage filled with listed designates. Thus defined lexis has been subjected to a functional analysis, during which the poetic function and values the vocabulary under study have been shown.

The works written by the two brothers and belonging to a similar trend of Baroque poetry, with regard to their genology and themes, show no principal differences with respect to the lexis under study. The differences result from different problems of the texts, the poets’ various experiences, and unequal talents.