Language Dispositions in Literary Works of the Belarusian Cultural Space of the 16th – First Half of the 19th Century: a Revision of the Traditional Metanarrative of the Belarusian Studies

Abstract

The basis of the Belarusian historical metanarrative since the Soviet times has been the thesis of polonization as the cause of the gradual decline of the Belarusian language, which was revived in the 19^th century. The ideologeme of unfavourable conditions for the development of the language of the Belarusian people, which was actively supported in the historical discourse of the BSSR, retains its relevance in the post-Soviet period. At the same time, the linguistic identification of literary is presented rather amorphously in scientific and didactic publications. Most often, the absence or blurriness of linguistic characteristics is connected with the researchers' desire to create idealized concepts of literary development, which in one way or another articulate the aspiration of literary writers belonging to the Belarusian cultural space to sacralize the (Old)Belarusian language and use it in their works. The purpose of this article is to reconstruct the actual linguistic disposition in the Belarusian cultural space of the 16^th -19^th centuries from the historical and literary perspective, having determined the place in this disposition of the Ruthenian language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Old Belarusian language) as well as the mixed idiom recorded in the texts of the 16^th – first half of the 19^th century.