Klaipėdos universitetas

The article is devoted to the literary and historical studies on the heritage of the Lithuanian poet Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584). He was a nobleman and a citizen of Sandomierz district in Malopolska region. It is possible he thought about himself like about a polish nobleman, just about a Pole. It appears that there are not any problems to define his nationality. It seems that we have not also problems with “the national identity” of his writings. The main criterion in this process was a question of using Polish language, however not always. This national perspective had made the deep divisions between the ‘own’ and the ‘alien’ culture. Firstly we would be asked if Jan Kochanowski was the strange poet from the outside. The same questions we would be asked about other writers who had lived in Lithuania in 16th–17th centuries but who were born in the Polish Kingdom: Piotr Skarga, Andrzej Wolan, Daniel Naborowski and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski, etc.