Search

1. General definitionsWeimar Classicism was an outlier among European classicist movements (Classics, European), not only because it took place much later, but also because it involved no turn back to the traditions of classical poetics, recommended neither model authors nor model texts, and provided no normative body of rules. It is generally defined as having begun somewhere between 1786 (Goethe’s return from his second Italian journey) and 1794 (the forging of his friendship with Schille…

1. Definition 1.1. Core areaSystematically, poetics (Greek  poiētikḗ téchnē, “craft/art of poetry”) constitutes a special area within rhetoric [6]; [8]: the art of speaking well and effectively (Latin  ars bene dicendi; Quintilian) includes both oratory ( ars oratoria) and poetry ( ars poetica). As a subdivision of rhetoric, poetics deals with the norms and forms of poetry, which until well into the 17th century was distinguished as  oratio ligata (bound speech) from prose ( oratio soluta, “loosened speech”). Ever since Aristotle, poetics has included the theory …

1. Concept and history Occasional or casual poetry (German Gelegenheitsdichtung, French  poésie de circonstance, Italian  poesia d'occasione) is a utilitarian literary form, its purpose being to honor its addressee(s) on a particular occasion, sometimes in response to a commission from the addressee or a third party. A phenomenon of patronage, its tradition dates back to Greco-Roman antiquity. It was already found among Greek (e.g. Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar, Anacreon) and Roman poets (Catullus, Ovid, Horace). At the dawn of the early modern period, the Silvae (“Woods”) of Pub…

1. Terminology and structure As platforms for the study and conservation of vernacular languages across a range of fields, language societies and related associations were important early modern literary institutions, primarily on the European continent. Instead of “language society” [1], recent scholarship tends to prefer the term “literary society,” to distinguish them from the efforts in the early 19th century to found traditions of national philology and to avoid the perception that the activities of such associations in the e…

The concept of poetic licence or freedom (Latin  licentia, “liberty [to do something]”), that is, the liberty to deviate from established literary norms, was primarily a formal one, unlike the thematic freedom of speech (Greek/Latin parrhésia) familiar in rhetoric. In its original sense, it denotes the freedom of the poet to depart from linguistic and technical conventions of portrayal. These included particularly spelling, punctuation, grammar, diction, and word formation, as well as appropriacy to situation, imagery, factual ac…

1. General The task of  literary historiography is to present the literary activity, usually of a specific country (Nation, nationalism), in chronological order. Occasionally the focus is narrower, for instance regional, or broader, as in a general history of world literature. The chronological framework usually extends from the beginning of the literary tradition to the time of the author, although occasionally we find a history limited to a selected epoch. As lat…