Jan Kochanowski

Life and Works

Life• Date of Birth – 1530

• Date of Death – 1584

Education

• At age fourteen – Kraków Academy.

• At age seventeen – University of Królewiec.

• Last university – Padua University in Italy.

• At Padua, Kochanowski came in contact with the great humanist scholar Fancis Robortello.

• Kochanowski closed his fifteen-year period of studies and travels with a final visit to France, where he met the poet Pierre Ronsard.

After Studies

In 1559 Kochanowski returned to Poland for good, where he remained active as a humanist and Renassiance poet

Family• In 1575 he have married with Dorota

Podlodowska.

• Children: Urszula, Ewa, Poliksena, Halszka, Krystyna, Jan.

Urszulka

Kochanowski, Laments devoted daughter of the deceased. She was two-and-a-half-year-old.

Works

• Kochanowski never ceased to write in Latin; however, his main achievement was the creation of Polish-language verse forms that made him a classic for his contemporaries and posterity.

• Kochanowski's first major masterpiece was Odprawa posłów greckich (The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys, 1578; recently translated into English by Indiana University’sBill Johnston).

• Laments ( nineteen elegies )

• Trifles

End of life.• Kochanowski died, probably of a heart attack, in Lublin on 22

August 1584.

• Kochanowski is sometimes referred to in Polish as "Jan z Czarnolasu" ("John of Blackwood"). It was there that he wrote his most memorable works, including The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys and the Laments.

Thank you for your patience! :-))