Their tragic poetical plays and epic poetry, written in the aftermath of the 1830 Uprising against Russian rule, revolved around the Polish struggle for independence from the three occupying foreign empires.
[2]: 8 [3][5][6] The term "Three Bards" (Polish: trzej wieszcze) is applied almost exclusively to Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849), and Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859),[1][7][8][5] the most celebrated Romantic poets of Poland.
[3][5][6] Nonetheless, according to literary historian Kazimierz Wyka, since the mid-20th century the trio of Bards – Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Krasiński – has been recognized as historical and classic, and as such, immuatable, despite periodic criticisms and challenges.
[3] The early-20th-century rediscovery of the writings of Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821–1883) led some to call him a "fourth bard"[16][17]: 68 or to count him among the "four greated poets of Poland".
Consequently, according to Polish literary critics Przemysław Czapliński [pl], Tamara Trojanowska, and Joanna Niżyńska, his work "remained isolated [and] unnoticed", and was "overshadowed by the three earlier literary 'giants' [Mickiewicz, Słowacki, and Krasiński] long celebrated in exile and at home"; hence Norwid failed to influence or affect his contemporaries to the extent that did the Three Bards.
[22][23]: 147 [24]: 184 His 1901 play The Wedding is considered the last great classic of Polish drama, and Rochelle Heller Stone writes that it alone "earned him the title of fourth bard".
[26] Other 19th-century writers who have been called bards include Józef Bohdan Zaleski, Seweryn Goszczyński, Wincenty Pol, and Kornel Ujejski.