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1. DefinitionPastoral poetry, a poetic form that appears in various literary genres, features shepherds and shepherdesses (Herdsman) as its protagonists and is characterized by a repertoire of pastoral motifs that was already consolidated in Greco-Roman antiquity and remained strikingly unchanged until the 18th century. The main reason for the enormous success of pastoral poetry, which acquired its early modern contours in the Italian Renaissance before being intensively pursused in virtually all…

The term Bänkelsäng, first encountered in the 1730 work of Johann Christoph Gottsched, refers to a form of public singing performance which (as “street-ballad”) spread throughout Europe from the early 17th century onwards, flourished in the 19th century and continues to be performed in a number of European countries, such as Italy [3], to the present day. The German term derives from the small bench ( Bänkel) on which the street singers stood, so as to be better seen and heard, during their appearances at annual markets and fairs, in public houses and in front…

1. DefinitionThe term  literary institutions has found a place in everyday language, but it was introduced in response to a series of recent developments in the study of literature (mainly outside the German-speaking world) whose roots go back to the acceptance of sociology as a new leading discipline, an orientation that has become increasingly clear since the late 1960s. In an approach to literature focused more and more on social history, scholars are no longer interested primarily in the literar…

In the broader sense the term biblical drama encompasses all such theatrical compositions as rely on biblical materials. In the narrower sense it means a type of drama widespread especially in Protestant territories in the 16th and early 17th centuries, the genesis and increased validity are to be seen in the context of humanistic and (Counter-)Reformation efforts.The fertile dialogue between humanist scholars (Humanism) and ancient comedy (Terence) and tragedy (Seneca) (Antiquity, reception of) facilitated the development and establishment of new th…

1. DefinitionA commissioner is someone who issues a verbal or written assignment or contract for the delivery of material or intellectual property or the performance of services. In the fields of art, literature, and music, the relationships between commissioners and contractors in the early modern period were exceedingly diverse, and can only to a limited extent be compared with the conditions prevalent in general commerce. Development proceeded eclectically throughout the early modern period, f…

1. Institutions and genres 1.1. Principles of lemmatization The distinction between different literary genres as specific forms of poetic expression is already found in the  Poetics  of Aristotle. The increasing criticism incurred by normative claims of genre definition, from the 18th century at the latest, and the subsequent acknowledgement that genres are phenomena subject to historical change, and hence fluid, have not diminished their significance in the classification of literary forms. On the contrary: the m…

1. Counterfeiting 1.1 Criminal aspectsThe theory of criminal law and legislation of European states in the early modern era defined and sanctioned crimes of counterfeiting in very different ways. In German criminal-law theory from the 16th to the 19th century, the application of Roman law (Ius commune) was of primary importance, which recognized a series of  crimina falsi such as false witness, falsification of documents (charter), falsified boundaries, counterfeit coin, and falsification of weights and measures. The medieval Italian jurisprudence…

1. Concept and definition Enlightenment in English is first attested from 1865 as a translation of the German  Aufklärung, which was first recorded in 1691. With their European cognates  lumières (French), illuminismo (Italian), and  ilustración (Spanish), they denote the most influential European educational and cultural movement of the 18th century, as well as its overriding goals: to subject all authorities, traditions, and hierarchies to the critical measure of a newly defined reason, and to abolish them if they ran counter…