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Martin Opitz

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Opitz, Martin

 

Born Dec. 23, 1597, in Bunzlau; died Aug. 20, 1639, in Danzig. German poet, classicist, and art theorist.

Opitz studied law and philology in Heidelberg and was in the diplomatic service of various princes. In his treatise Aristarchus (1617), he called on Germans to study and perfect their native language. In Buch von der deutschen Poeterey (1624) he provided a theoretical basis for the use of syllabotonic versification, which had become firmly established in German poetry. His poetry, written mostly to illustrate his theory, was based on the traditions of the classics and the Renaissance. Opitz introduced new forms, furthered the German literary language, and helped free poetry from antiquated medieval traditions. His best work is the narrative poem Trostgedichte in Widerwärtigkeit des Krieges (1633).

WORKS

Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1. Stuttgart, 1968.

REFERENCE

Purishev, B. Ocherki nemetskoi literatury XV-XVII v. Moscow, 1955.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive
Also in 2008, Andras Kubinyi, Jozsef Laszlovszky and Peter Szabo coedited a volume on the economic history and material culture of medieval Hungary: Gazdasag es gazdalkodas a kozepkori Magyarorszagon: gazdasagtortenet, anyagi kultura, regeszet [Economics and management of medieval Hungary: economic history, material culture, archaeology] (Budapest: Martin Opitz, 2008), 466 pp.
Ummu Yuksel's paper discusses two poems written by Martin Opitz in praise of Daniel Heinsius, which allows us to see how the figure of Heinsius can serve as both a representative of Latin learning and a symbol of Dutch literary and political nationalism.
"Threnen zu Ehren der Ewigkeit." Martin Opitz Gesammelte Werke.
Theodor Verweyen examines the humanist friendship of Martin Opitz and Julius Wilhelm Zincgref and its importance for their works.
He brought a new immediacy and sincerity to the meter and stanza introduced by his teacher, Martin Opitz.
Whether or not he thought of the Provencal troubadour Arnaut Daniel, of Dante Alighieri, or of his fellow German poet Martin Opitz, Oskar Pastior presses his liberated word compositions into strict form.
Already in 1620, pamphlets had titles evoking the "Horror of Devastation" in Bohemia in which the "piteous situation in that Kingdom and neighboring lands will be clearly demonstrated."(27) Martin Opitz conceived his "Poems of Consolation in Adversities of War" equally early in the war, in 1621, before the true horrors of the war had begun, and suggested that: "The poor farmer has left everything/like when a dove sees a falcon in a stoop/his estate is stolen away, his buildings burned down/his animals gone, the barns knocked down/the noble vine ripped out/trees stand no more/the gardens are devastated/the sickle and plow are now a sharp sword."(28) There is, unfortunately, no evidence on what sort of pamphlet literature was available in the Werra region as the war continued.
Rhetorical and Conceptual Approaches to the Reception of Classical Historiography and Its Political Significance"; Robert Seidel, "'Aliena sequens regna, deserui mea': Antipfalzische Polemik im Medium lateinischer Centonendichtung"; Beate Hintzen, "Der Furst im Nachruf: Zu Aktualisierung und Instrumentalisierung antiker und zeitgenossischer ideologischer Muster in den Nekrologen des Martin Opitz"; and Robert von Friedeburg, "Wars with Books: From Which Point Onward Should We Employ the Term 'Ideology' with Respect to Our Sources?" Floris Verhaart has also supplied a useful index nominum, which closes the volume.
The third section analyses the substantial Judith literature of the sixteenth century, that is, works principally for the stage, written during and after the Reformation by Sixt Birck, Joachim Greff, and Hans Sachs, and in the early seventeenth century by Martin Opitz.
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