Bilingualism in the Writings of Jan Kochanowski

Abstract

Jan Kochanowski was a bilingual artist– he wrote poems in both Latin and Polish. The choice of language in his work is determined by the circumstances in which particular works arose (in his Paduan period he wrote in Latin, after his return to Poland he turned to his native language) as well as the subject matter he deals with in different texts. A comparison of his foricoenia and fraszkas or Latin elegies and Polish songs demonstrates that he uses both languages to express a range of emotions and both allow him to employ diverse literary conventions.