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Satire On The Lazy Peasants

The document summarizes three early forms of Polish literature from the 15th-16th centuries. The first is the Satire on the Lazy Peasants, an anonymous work that complains good-naturedly about peasants obstructing field work under serfdom. The second is To Children Playing with the Hoop by K. Janicki, which metaphorically describes the passage of time through a child's carefree play with a hoop. The third references how easily people accepted half-slavery and how lightly they played with the constraints it imposed.

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Wojciech Plocharski
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798 views1 page

Satire On The Lazy Peasants

The document summarizes three early forms of Polish literature from the 15th-16th centuries. The first is the Satire on the Lazy Peasants, an anonymous work that complains good-naturedly about peasants obstructing field work under serfdom. The second is To Children Playing with the Hoop by K. Janicki, which metaphorically describes the passage of time through a child's carefree play with a hoop. The third references how easily people accepted half-slavery and how lightly they played with the constraints it imposed.

Uploaded by

Wojciech Plocharski
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Satire on the Lazy Peasants

The history of Polish literature is almost a thousand years old.


For the first few centuries, however,
it was often a river of Latin preaching -
like in other parts of medieval Europe.

In the 15th century, a short and secular


verse form appeared, in Polish -
called the Satire on the Lazy Peasants.
An anonymous nobleman good-naturedly complains in it
about the peasants who use obstruction
in carrying out field work within serfdom.

Another distinctive early form is a little subsequent,


a renaissance miniature: To Children Playing with the Hoop.
The author (K. Janicki) gives there
metaphorical features of the passage of time
to a carefree child's play.

... It is amazing
how easy it was for the people to put on hoops of half-slavery,
funny how lightly they can play with them.

MMXVIII

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