L. MARTIN OPITZ

A Silesian scholar (1597-1639) who won great renown as a poet and a literary lawgiver. In a pioneer treatise on poetics (1624, in which year his Teutsche Poemata also appeared), he came to the defense of the German language, pleaded for a purer diction, and defined the principal genres current abroad, illustrating them with verses of his own. His theory recognized but two feet, the iamb and the trochee, which he defined in terms of accent. He prescribed a more regular alternation of accented and unaccented syllables and recommended the use of the alexandrine verse. Under his influence German poetry became more regular and artistic, but lost touch with the general life, being more and more regarded as a refined diversion of the scholar class. The text of selections 1-4 follows Braune’s Neudrucke, No. 1 and Nos. 189-192; for No. 5 see Tittmann’s edition in Deutsche Dichter des 17. Jahrhunderts.