Author: George Gömöri

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781443849692

This present collection of George Gömöriâ (TM)s essays covers several centuries of Polish literature and its reception abroad. The first three essays are devoted to Jan Kochanowski, the greatest poet of the Polish Renaissance, followed by shorter pieces on Stefan Batory, King of Poland from 1576 to 1586, whom Montaigne thought to be â ~one of the greatest princes of our ageâ (TM). This is followed by a comparative essay on the Pole MikoÅ'aj SÄ(TM)p SzarzyÅ"ski and the Hungarian poet Bàlint Balassi, both important poets of the late sixteenth century, and an essay with an Amendment, investigating Sir Philip Sidneyâ (TM)s little-researched visits to Hungary and Poland. A substantial part of the book is devoted to the Baroque period, first on the poet Hieronim Morsztyn, recently rediscovered in Poland. A long essay analyses his first important work, Worldly Delights, a poem which illustrates the transition from the classical models of the late Renaissance to Baroque poetics. The following part of the book examines the huge impact that the neo-Latin poet Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski made on more than one English poet of the seventeenth-century, while also explaining the political reasons for his warm reception in England. â oeThe Verse Letter of the Polish Baroqueâ follows the development of this interesting genre from Daniel Naborowski to Jan Andrzej Morsztyn. The final part of the book deals with the great precursor of modern Polish poetry, Cyprian Norwid (1821â "1883). The final essays in this collection investigate Norwidâ (TM)s views on Lord Byron, expressed both in his poetry and his public lectures in Paris, as well as the complex views of the Polish poet on nineteenth-century England, which he only briefly visited, and the United States where he resided for two years.