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A. Humanist theatre  A.1. Introduction  The basis for the reception of ancient D. was the comedies of Plautus (twenty plays) and Terence (six plays), and the nine tragedies (neither performed nor intended for performance in Antiquity) by Seneca the Younger. Only eight plays by Plautus were known before the early 15th cent., but in 1429, Cardinal Giordano Orsini received a manuscript from Nicholas of Cusa containing twelve more of his plays lost since Antiquity. While the works of Plautus w…

A. GenreThe word 'N.' derives from the Italian  novella ('short story'), but in 16th-cent. English it came to denote longer fictional works, which had hitherto been called 'romances'. This did not happen in other European languages (cf. modern German Roman, French  roman etc., 'novel'). The two English terms coexist uneasily, with distinction between them sometimes blurred. Unlike other narrative forms of ancient origin, the European novels and romances of the early modern period neither imitated clearly-defined models nor followed es…

A. Genre A.1. Antiquity and Middle Ages The word I. (Greek  eidýllion, 'sketch') denotes a short, descriptive literary work in verse or prose. Theocritus, in the 3rd cent. BC, developed the I. as a poem in dactylic hexameters on realistic, everyday subjects, occasionally incorporating myths and dialogues.  The Hellenistic poets Moschus and Bion, and especially the Roman poet Virgil in his bucolic poetry ( Bucolica or  Eclogae;  Eclogues), made the I. a poetic representation of an idealized rustic, pastoral world. Virgil also founded the tradition of portraying…

A. Ancient origins While the works of Homer ( Iliad, Odyssey) were almost completely forgotten in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, the Latin E.s of Virgil ( Aeneid), Lucan ( Bellum civile/ Pharsalia) and Statius ( Thebaid, Achilleid) never disappeared from view. Moreover, E. poetry flourished in medieval popular culture. Like Homeric poetry, popular E. was usually only recorded in written form following a long phase of oral transmission. Medieval society celebrated itself and its past in legends and stories of historical events and heroic deeds, as told in  Beowulf, the  Nibelungen…

A. Concept and ancient origins The word E. (Greek  epígramma) originally denoted an 'inscription' or 'label' put on a solid piece of material (e.g. a vase, beaker, funerary stele or herm). The E. was metrical from the outset in Greece, the most frequent metre being the hexameter, which from the 6th cent. BC was usually combined with a dactylic pentameter to make a couplet, and sometimes also with an iambic trimeter. It was preferred for funerary and votive inscriptions. The E. developed a career increasi…