The article examines the debasement of the Sarmatian ideal of a knight, which was
shown in the satire Coś nowego (Something New) written by Łukasz Opaliński – a 17th‑century
erudite and aristocratic writer. Purposely refering to various literary traditions,
styles and genres, Opaliński mocks not only specific individuals but also various phenomena
taking place in the 17th‑century
Polish political and social reality. He is focused on ridiculing
and unmasking the political and military chaos. Literary resources of ridicule vary
from the picaresque style with its poetics of parody, absurd, play on words, use of vulgarities
and augmentative forms, to the lofty or even bombastic style (which features elaborate
metaphors, epithets, refined irony and hyperbole). In creating this stylistically varied literary
form, which is parallel with the tradition of the so‑called
Mennippean structure („something
new” in Polish literature of that period), the author does not abandon the position of an insightful
and aristocratic writer who not only aptly comments on the world that he is describing,
but who consciously juggles words, moving freely within various literary conventions
