Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Römische Elegien [Roman Elegies]

Ellis Dye (Macalester College)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.1: German-language Writing and Culture: Germany, 500-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1791

Places

Germany (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Elegy
Poem collection

Resources

Goethe’s Roman Elegies, originally titled Erotica Romana, were composed during the period between the autumn of 1788 and April 1790, following his two-year sojourn in Italy. Except for the “Thirteenth Elegy” (No. XIV in the manuscript), which had appeared separately in the Deutsche Monatsschrift, July 1791, the poems initially circulated only among friends and were first published in 1795 in Friedrich Schiller’s journal Die Horen [The Horae, goddesses of the seasons], which title, quipped Johann Gottfried Herder, deserved thereafter to be spelled with a “u” (“Huren” = whores).

After ten years of service to the Duke and Duchy o…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2479 words

Citation: Dye, Ellis. "Römische Elegien". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 August 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2325, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Save this article