Carmen (poetry)
Carmen (pl. Carmina , Latin song), until the 18th century a generic term for poetry, which itself hardly had a clear definition of its own. Zedler's Universal Lexicon symptomatically offers no entry on Carmen but individual entries on individual genres - from the Carmen Anacreonticum, the Carmen Epicum, the Carmen Lyricum, the Carmen Propheticum and the Alexandrian Carmen to the Carmen Bucolicum in the last supplement volume.
Among the productions in verse, the Carmen included the verses of Homer (the Carmen Epicum Heroicum) down to the lyrical, melody-inviting small genres. The word was used above all where genres and styles in the area of language had to be defined in verse: the shepherd poetry, the lyrical (acceptable, melodic) poetry - at the same time Carmen was not a synonym for poetry : the word guided him Look at the language in verse and that one could theoretically see Carmina as song forms.
In the field of occasional poetry , the occasions gave further distinctions and terms such as the "Leich-Carmen" (on the occasion of funerals), the "Wedding Carmen" (at weddings) or the "Congratulations Carmen" (produced for a wide variety of congratulations).
In the field of prose, the word “ tract ” gained a similar flexibility - as the word for the “treatise” in the special sense of the word, but in broader usage a term that could encompass novels like any representational prose text.
“Because poetry, like the art of speaking, is divided into things and words; as if we want to speak first of the invention and the division of things / then of the preparation and drawing of the words / and finally of the measure of the syllables / verses / rhyme / and various kinds of carminum and tales. "
Examples
Individual evidence
- ↑ Anacreonticum Carmen. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 2, Leipzig 1732, column 15 f., Epicum Carmen. In: Zedler. Volume 8, 1734, column 1387 f., Lyricum carmen. In: Zedler. Volume 18, 1738, column 1547., Alexandrinum Carmen. In: Zedler. Supplement 1, 1751, column 1047., Bucolicum Carmen. In: Zedler. Supplement 4, 1754, column 883 f.