The role of the canonic genre of the idyll in high Biedermeier: formulating the problem
- DOI
- 10.5922/2225-5346-2025-3-13
- Pages
- 205-223
Abstract
The article examines high Biedermeier in its rapprochement with the idyll genre based on the poetry of Annette Droste-Hülshoff and Eduard Mörike. The idyll is very influential and active in both poets. Biedermeier, which was considered an era, a trend, a style, in its variety, ‘high Biedermeier’ at the start can be interpreted in a fundamentally new way — as an unusual turn in the fate of the idyll genre and the idyllic mode. The purpose of the article is to study the idyll as one of the sources of high Biedermeier. This problem is posed for the first time. The research methods are structural-descriptive and historical-typological. The phenomenon of Biedermeier is diverse, and the described character is inherent only to high Biedermeier. In the canonical genre of the German idyll, which spread its influence to other genres, including prose, writers saw a number of possibilities of the Biedermeier. Having begun to develop the idyll in their own way, they led the variety of the genre they created away from the romantic channel. One of the sources of the high Biedermeier is, in all likelihood, the active behaviour of the canonical genre of the idyll, its inertia, expansion, diffusion with other genres and radiating influence on the lyrical, epic and dramatic genres.