page_title: Polish Golden Age
section_title: Literature
hierarchical_section_title: Polish Golden Age / Culture of Polish Renaissance / Literature
caption_attribution_description: English: Jan Kochanowski Polski: Jan Kochanowski
context_page_description: The Polish Golden Age refers to the Renaissance period in Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania which lasted from the late 15th century to the death of Sigismund II Augustus, the last member of the Jagiellonian dynasty, in 1572. Some historians claim that the Golden Age continued until the mid-17th century, when in 1648 the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was ravaged by the Khmelnytsky Uprising, and the Swedish invasion. During its Golden Age, the Commonwealth became one of the largest kingdoms of Europe, stretching from modern-day Estonia in the north, to Moldavia in the east, and Bohemia in the west.
  In the 16th century, the area of the Commonwealth reached almost 1 million km², with a population of 11 million. The country prospered due to its enormous grain, wood, salt and cloth exports to Western Europe via Baltic Sea ports of Gdańsk, Elbląg, Riga, Memel and Königsberg. The Commonwealth had several major cities, such as Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań, Lviv, Vilnius, Toruń and temporarily held Kiev in the 17th century. The Commonwealth army was able to defend the realm from foreign invasion, but also participated in aggressive campaigns against Poland's neighbours.
context_section_description: Modern Polish literature begins in the 16th century. At that time the Polish language, common to all educated groups, matured and penetrated all areas of public life, including municipal institutions, the legal code, the Church and other official uses, coexisting for a while with Latin. Klemens Janicki, one of the Renaissance Latin language poets, a laureate of a papal distinction, was of peasant origin. Another plebeian author, Biernat of Lublin, wrote his own version of Aesop's fables in Polish, permeated with his socially radical views.
  A Literary Polish language breakthrough came under the influence of the Reformation with the writings of Mikołaj Rej. In his Brief Discourse, a satire published in 1543, he defends a serf from a priest and a noble, but in his later works he often celebrates the joys of the peaceful but privileged life of a country gentleman. Rej, whose legacy is his unbashful promotion of the Polish language, left a great variety of literary pieces.Łukasz Górnicki, an author and translator, perfected the Polish prose of the period. His contemporary and friend Jan Kochanowski became one of the greatest Polish poets of all time.
  Kochanowski was born in 1530 into a prosperous noble family. In his youth he studied at the universities of Kraków, Königsberg and Padua and traveled extensively in Europe. He worked for a time as a royal secretary, and then settled in the village of Czarnolas, a part of his family inheritance. Kochanowski's multifaceted creative output is remarkable for both the depth of thoughts and feelings that he shares with the reader, and for its beauty and classic perfection of form. Among Kochanowski's best known works are bucolic Frascas (trifles), epic poetry, religious lyrics, drama-tragedy The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys, and the most highly regarded Threnodies or laments, written after the death of his young daughter. The poet Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński, an intellectually refined master of small forms, bridges the late Renaissance and early Baroque artistic periods.
caption: Jan Kochanowski, Polish Renaissance poet who established poetic patterns that would become integral to the Polish literary language
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