The study is devoted to the thought patterns and forms of presentation of transience and renunciation of the world in lyric and epic poetry from the 12th to 15th centuries. As secular poetry is itself 'the world's work', it presents a fortunate fundamental paradox? flight from the world in poetry is always accompanied by a latent reference to the world. Poetic approaches to the problem thus move towards a plurality of thought and aesthetic imagination which undermines the rigid concepts of the theological tradition and in a way prepares the processes of superseding them in the modern age.