„Ma olen kõnelenud!”. Varauusaegse Tartu ülikooli (1632–1710) akadeemiliste oratsioonide korpusest

“I have spoken!” The corpus of academic orations at the University of Tartu during the early modern period (1632–1710) This article introduces the genre of orations, or academic speeches, at the University of Tartu during the early modern period (1632–1710) and examines their role as a central literary, pedagogical, social, and performative practice in university life. The Tartu oration corpus consists of approximately 230 printed texts, mostly in Latin, authored by both students and other members of the academic community. These speeches were composed on a wide range of topics, and for various purposes and occasions. Alongside a description of the corpus based on bibliographic metadata and a comparative analysis of its paratextual features (title pages, dedications, and congratulatory poems), the article focuses on identifying the key characteristics of the oration genre and distinguishing orations from other academic genres, particularly disputations, which have often received greater scholarly attention and overshadowed orations in historical research. The article also explores the value of orations as sources for intellectual history and considers why academic speeches and the oratory tradition have at times been overlooked or dismissed. It provides an overview of existing research on the Tartu oration corpus, offers new perspectives for understanding the genre, highlights accessibility issues related to bibliographic data, and reflects on how and why distant reading techniques used in the digital humanities could be used to further investigate and elevate the corpus.