Matas Grubliauskas (Vilnius University Library, Lithuania)
During the Baroque epoch, pattern poetry (poesis artificiosa) started to flourish and gained great popularity. Born in Late Antiquity, it had been transformed by evolving into new forms, styles, and approaches. The Baroque aesthetics caused its rebirth, changes, and development. Students were taught to compose it during the poetics courses, and it found its way to the occasional literature. First of all, Baroque visual culture, which had an impact on art and literature, had pushed it to motion. The visual dimension had soon been integrated into the content of poetical texts. Poesis artificiosa, because of its visual nature, could have even more elaborate and perfect this aesthetical dimension by combining not only the content but also the form. Second, the Baroque literary theory had opened another challenge for poetry. The predominant character of creating literary texts by employing conceptualism (making a wit harmony of two discordant things) had created new possibilities for poesis artificiosa because of its natural duality of text and picture. Examining student manuals, poetics courses, and published works composed in the Commonwealth of Two Nations shows that poesis artificiosa flourished and was estimated by the authors of the Polish-Lithuanian state to be equal among the other genres of poetry.