Res Humanitariae

The article deals with the issues related to the specifics of the incantation as a genre of oral folklore, history of collecting, publishing and the beginning of their studying in Russia. The main emphasis is put on the first monographic work dedicated to conspiracies. Scientific portrait of the author is represented, his work, translations and reprinting are analyzed. Features that have made the book classic are established.

Personality profiling nowadays is a common organisational practice aiming to identify a set of traits of an individual, which distinguish him/her among other people. Based on the assumption that personality factors constitute a fundamental indicator of development potential of a particular person, it is possible to depict his/her functioning style in a job position and hence predict professional suitability in performing a given professional role. The research project was conducted by the means of the 2010 Polish adaptation of the NEO-FFI Personality Inventory. The analysis pointed out the differentiating effect of a professional group under the influence of the results obtained in Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience, and Conscientiousness. The major differences between the groups of managers and specialists occurred in Neuroticism, the lesser ones in Extraversion and Conscientiousness and the least in Openness to Experience. However, the analysis did not reveal any interaction effects between professional group and gender. However, it showed a concurrent influence of age and professional group on the level of Extraversion and Conscientiousness.

The article is devoted to the historiographic analysis of French flute manuals of the 18th-19th centuries. The author has examined the technological and artistic principles of the formation of French flute didactics at different stages of historical development. The educational books by Jacques Hotteterre, Charles de Lusse, Benoit Tranquille Berbiguier, François Devienne, Antoine Hugot, Johann Wunderlich and other performer-educators have been investigated by using the comparative analyses. Theobald Boehm’s reform has been displayed in terms of its impact on flute playing technology. The author also has focused on the discussion about its use in the educational process at the Paris Conservatory.

The paper focuses on the contribution of regional 18th-century ‘East Prussian’ historiography to the formation of an Old Prussian identity. The author specifies the concept of ‘Old Prussianism’, and reveals the main steps in the change in that model of identity in the 18th century through an analysis of three authors who were active in Königsberg and spanned three generations: Michael Lilienthal (1686–1750), Daniel Heinrich Arnoldt (1706–1775) and Georg Christoph Pisanski (1725–1790). On the basis of their treatises, the paper reveals how in the 18th century, in the territory of the former Duchy of Prussia, a unique regional self-awareness independent of Royal (Polish) Prussia and of Brandenburgian Prussia was developing, as well as a related concept of the past of the region.

The paper analyses the techniques and methods of creating propaganda narratives about Lutherans in the chronicle of Dominican monk Simon Grunau (the early 16th c.). It examines how, during the Reformation, in the debates of the propaganda character between its supporters and opponents, narratives or their complexes were used with the intention to belittle the image and the arguments of the opponents. It also explains how the Dominicans’ common European experience of the fight against the spreading Reformation was used in the stories of Grunau’s chronicle about the Reformation gaining a foothold in Prussia.