„Pasyje amorata” , czyli o przejawach mody językowej w piśmiennictwie czasów saskich
“Pasyje amorata”, or signs of linguistic fashion in the literature of the House of Wettin period

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the discussion presented in the article was to draw attention to a linguisticfashion which spread in the first half of the 18th century and manifested itself in the useof the previously non-occurring Polish words amorat (a male lover, admirer, seducer)and amoratka (a female lover, admirer, seducer), as well as the popularity − influenced by the French language − of the word pasyja in its new meaning of “passion”. A linguisticfrequency analysis of various-genre texts from that period, conducted as part of researchinto the manner of presenting the topic of love and eroticism in the House of Wettin era,demonstrates that in the face of the changes in morality and mentality, new possibilitieswere sought to express emotions. The language of feelings evolved under the influenceof, inter alia, the popularity of specific literature, first of all romance novels (primarilytranslations from French or Italian), which were read, written and translated by bothmen and women, the latter taking up literary activity on such a scale for the first time inhistory. The conducted research was aimed at broadening the contemporary knowledgeof the late-baroque Polish language and enlarging the corpus of excerpts for the ongoingwork on the Dictionary of the Polish Language in the 17th Century and the First Halfof the 18th Century. At the same time, the research demonstrated that the phenomenonof a linguistic fashion also applies to the language of the past, and the vocabulary occurringin literary works influenced other genres of writing, such as the letter, diary or memoir.

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