Eclogue
The eclogue ( Greek ἐκλογή eklogḗ "choice" or "choice", Latinized ecloga ) is a term from ancient literature . The basic meaning is "choice", that is, "the selected". What is originally meant is a selected piece (excerpt, quotation) from a lengthy literary text or a single poem of moderate length that has been selected from a collection of poems or from the work of a poet. The term eclogue actually denotes a “selected” poem, but was misunderstood as a generic term in humanism.
In the plural, eclogae in Roman lyric poetry originally only referred to “selected” poems; later language usage usually refers to rural or pastoral poems ( bucolic poetry ). Therefore, the term eclogue is often used as a synonym for "bucolic poem".
The best-known poems, for which the term today Eclogues ( Eclogae ) is common, which are Eclogae (or Bucolica ) of Virgil .
As early as the 1st century Statius referred to individual poems from his Silvae with the expression egloga ; he is the first Roman poet to use the term for his own works.
In German literature, eclogue , shepherd or shepherd poem and Idylle were synonymous terms and denoted lyrical-dramatic shepherd songs or generally shorter shepherd poems, see for example Georg Rodolf Weckherlin Eclogen or Hürtengedichte (1641) or Johann Christoph Gottsched's Von Idyllen , Eclogues or shepherd poems (in Critische Dichtkunst , 1730). Due to the success of Salomon Gessner's Idyllen (1756), however, Idylle became the common term for this genre.
literature
- Dieter Burdorf, Christoph Fasbender, Burkhard Moennighoff (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexicon literature. Terms and definitions. 3. Edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-476-01612-6 , p. 182.
- Heathcote William Garrod: Varus and Varius . In: The Classical Quarterly 10, 1916, pp. 206-221, here: 218-221.
- Otto Knörrich: Lexicon of lyrical forms (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 479). 2nd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-520-47902-8 , p. 49 f ..
- Alfonso Traina: ecloga . In: Enciclopedia Virgiliana , Volume 2, Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1985, p. 165.