Sebastian Fabian Klonowic – reprezentant ostatniej generacji humanizmu renesansowego
Sebastian Fabian Klonowic: A representative of the last generation of Renaissance humanism

Author(s): Grażyna Łabęcka-Jóźwiakowska
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Renaissance humanism; Sebastian Fabian Klonowic; Mannerism; literary generation; Polish Latin literature
Summary/Abstract: Poland’s humanism was a multi-generational project. Sebastian Fabian Klonowic (1545–1602) belonged to the generation born in the 1540s. His upbringing included reading early humanist writers and Mikołaj Rej, the father of Polish literature, as well as witnessing the development of Jan Kochanowski’s literary talent. The time of Klonowic’s literary output fell on the last decades of the 16th century, the decline of the Polish Renaissance. His writings, influenced by tendencies of both the Renaissance and the upcoming Baroque, cannot be reduced to a “typical” Renaissance literary practice. This, in turn, results in the fact that Klonowic’s literary skills are unappreciated and his writings rarely discussed in the academia. It isvery difficult to univocally assign his works to particular literary genres –the paradigms of Renaissance poetry, church song, secular song, Medieval speculum vitae, and didactic writing can be noticed in them. Klonowic’s writings in Latin, abundant in references to the classics, are oriented towards imitatio antiquorum, but they have the undertones of aemulatio antiquorum; they are both Erasmian and focused on the concurrent world. His writings in Polish seem Mannerist due to his usage of figures of words and thoughts; the poetics of humanism is less visible. Knowledge and experience (present also in his writings in Latin) remain the main sources of inspiration, while the achievement of one’s practical aims is the main theme.

• Details
• Contents