A major revolution in world literature, that of Romanticism, coincided in Poland with the trauma of national defeat. The country's rapid degradation from empire to nothing was a shock that found a tremendous outlet in the national literature. Its status was emphasized even further by the novel fact that the absence of statehood and foreign  oppression made literature one of the few remaining areas of national identity and self-realization. See also The Romantic Ideal.

Thus the "standard" ideological repertoire of Romanticism was combined, in Poland, with some distinctive elements. The Romantic cult of the individual, for instance, was blended with the cult of the collective; in other words, the Romantic individual, although still Byronic, fulfilled his Byronism in the (often, fatal) service to his own nation. The Romantic vindication of the Middle Ages, of the "Gothic," coincided, in Poland, with a more general cult of the national past and tradition of both folkloric and aristocratic contexts. Together with the rest of Europe, the Polish Romantics rediscovered Shakespeare and immediately assimilated him into the mainstream of Polish literature.

Polish literature, Romantic or later, has been dominated by four powerful figures. The first three have achieved star status in their lifetime: Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Slowacki and Zygmunt Krasinski have since been known as Polands Three Bards (Wieszcz). Krasinski has always remained somewhat in the shade of the other two, Mickiewicz vying with Slowacki for the title of Poland's Greatest Poet of All Time (and usually winning, at least in popular reception). Cyprian Kamil Norwid was from a younger generation and remained almost completely unknown until the beginning of the 20th century - when he became a powerful influence of Poland's modern poets.