The category of ornament in Jesuit rhetoric : Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski, Zygmunt Lauksmin, Jan Kwiatkiewicz

The paper attempts at describing the category of rhetorical ornamentation (ornatus) in the textbooks of eloquence by three 17th c. Jesuits: Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595-1640), Zygmunt Lauksmin (1596-1670), and Jan Kwiatkiewicz (1629-1703). Ancient rhetoric teachers linked it with many linguistic forms known under the names of various tropes and figures. Broadly understood figuration became its main determinant. A comparison of the modes of describing this category in the three textbooks, the authors of which were inspired by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, allows to expound the changes in thinking about ornamentation and transformations that Ciceronianism unterwent in early-modern theory and oratorical practice. Opening to new stylistic inspiration was accompanied by concern for brilliance of expression. The most commonly used rhetorical devices were allegory, metaphor, antithesis, periphrasis, and antonomasia.