POETRY AS MILK: A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY METAPHOR AND ITS PEDAGOGICAL CONTEXT

Анотація

The title of the 1691 manuscript collection of carmina curiosa by Ioan Velychkovs’kyi, «Milk from the Sheep to the Shepherd Owed», alludes to the alimentary metaphor «a milk diet for beginners», which was frequently used in the Latin-oriented humanistic school system to both defend the use of literary exercises at the trivum level, while censuring literary activity in the quadrivium and, especially, among mature men, other than trivium preceptors. This article proposes that Velychkovs’kyi carefully selects quotations from the Psalms and the Greek Testament to reverse a pedagogical prejudice and to promote poetic games as an exemplary tool for teaching the Ukrainian vernacular, sharpening the wits of his readers and delightіng his countrymen. Unfortunately, metropolitan Varlaam Iasyns’kyj, his former teacher of poetics to whom he dedicated the collection, did not deem it necessary to support fi nancially its publication, thereby delaying – for more than a century – the offi cial teaching of Ukrainian poetry and the enjoyment of its creation. Keywords: alimentary metaphor, post-Renaissance pedagogical theory, trivium, quadrivium, Quintilian, courtly poetics, George Puttenham, formulaty rhetoric, Ioan Velychkovs’kyi, Samiilo Velychko, Hryhorii Skovoroda.