Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-fvjsw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-12T09:25:10.129Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Friedrich Spee's “Arcadia” Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Frederick M. Rener*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Abstract

Literary historians and critics from the nineteenth century to the present have attributed Friedrich Spee's descriptions of nature to his personal experience. Except for a few instances of biblical influence, these passages are variations of the topos locus amoenus with many of its less common classical features: the park-orchard-garden varieties of landscape, typical epithets, and catalogs of trees and plants. In the Trutznachtigall, the section with the largest pattern of the topos are the laudes, commonly considered to be derivations of the Psalms, while the eclogues (“Arcadia”), a genre traditionally associated with the topos, has only a few samples of it. Rather than being a rigid formula the topos becomes an elastic pattern whose size and components Spee tailors to the individual poem, providing at the same time a distinct diction and a variety of formulations. This may be one reason why Spee, who is in every respect a poeta doctus, has been mistaken for a Pre-Romantic poet.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable