(Old Polish) Armorials as a Literary Genre

The article discusses heraldic works as a specific phenomenon within Old Polish literature from the standpoint of a historian of literature. The author pays particular attention to the taxonomy of texts that could be labeled as armorials and to the limits and characteristics of the genre in all its diversity. It is the diversity of forms and functions of heraldic writings produced within the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that make the phenomenon so striking. The task of defining the genre characteristics is made more difficult by the loose relationship that Old Polish armorials have with the Western European heraldic models, though this is not to say that Polish heraldry developed completely apart from those models. It seems that the writings in question do indeed have a common denominator and that it is possible to distinguish some types of armorials that were characteristic for Old Polish culture and to trace them in their historical development