Warum gibt es im neulateinischen Epos keine Liebe?

• Authors: Braun Ludwig

Title variants

EN

WHY THERE IS NO LOVE IN THE NEOLATIN EPIC POETRY?

• Languages of publication: DE

Abstracts

EN

No writer of neolatin epic poetry could shun the migthy influence of Vergil’s Aeneid and, after about 1600, that of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata. But strangely enough, love-affaires modeled on the famous fates of Dido and Aeneas or Armida and Rinaldo in all these poems never occur. The reason seems to be that to Christian morals, omnipotent at the time, these were sinful actions. Then why coeval poets writing epic poems in their native languages had no qualms introducing condemnable lovers into their verses? As for instance de Scudéry and Voltaire, not to mention Tasso himself. Apparently the obedient Latinists, respecting the sublimity of the epic genre and the ecclesiastical character of the Latin language, shyed away from the abyss of desperate love, whereas poets using the native language shook off the restricting traditions and opened new roads to originality and freedom, as well as they did in other genres.

Keywords

EN

love-affaires; neolatin epic poetry; vernacular epics

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Listy filologické (Folia philologica)
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 137
• Issue: 3-4
• Pages: 339-348

Contributors

author

Braun Ludwig