International brigades of mice and rats join forces to defend the rodents of Poland, threatened with extermination at the paws of cats favoured by the ancient ruler King Popiel, a sybaritic, cowardly rulerā¦ The Hag of Discord incites a vicious rivalry between monastic orders, which only the good monksā common devotion toā¦ fortified spiritsā¦ is able to allayā¦ The present translation of the mock epics of Polandās greatest figure of the Enlightenment, Ignacy Krasicki, brings together the Mouseiad, the Monachomachia, and the Anti-monachomachia ā a tongue-in-cheek āretractionā of the former work by the author, criticised for so roundly (and effectively) satirising the faults of the Church, of which he himself was a prince. Krasicki towers over all forms of eighteenth-century literature in Poland like Voltaire, Swift, Pope, and LaFontaine all rolled into one. While his fables constitute his most well-known works of poetry, in the words of American comparatist Harold Segel, āthe good bishopās mock-epic poems [ā¦] are the most impressive examples of his literary gifts.ā This English translation by Charles S. Kraszewski is rounded off by one of Krasickiās lesser-known works, The Chocim War, the poetās only foray into the genre of the serious, Vergilian epic.