Latinitas and Identity Formation in the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries). An Introduction

In this article the author illustrates the main aspects dealth with in the essays collected in this volume, which range from range from history to literature and to cultural history and the history of ideas. In particular she broaches the issue of building an identity, either real or imagined, from different points of view, as well as the classical origins of myths and ideas that have helped build the national identities of those that constituted the ethnic mosaic of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The latter is one of the most interesting topics dealth with in the volume. The author also analyses the different degree to which the Latin heritage has been studied in the countries that now occupy the territory of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, that is Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus, and points out those areas and aspects, that still await to be researched in depth.