Idylle

Idylle, a literary form, usually in verse, but occasionally in prose, originating in Greek literature. It presents rural situations of joy and contentment with a tendency towards idealization.

The idyll flourished in Germany chiefly in the 18th c. E. von Kleist was the first conspicuous writer of idylls, but S. Geßner, using a rhythmic prose, popularized the form. He was followed by Maler Müller (see Müller, F.) with two idylls in dialogue intermingling prose and verse, Die Schafschur and Das Nußkernen. These semi-dramatic works, however, had no progeny. The revival of classicism brought a renewal of the idyll written in classical elegiacs, examples of which are J. H. Voß's Luise and ‘Der siebzigste Geburtstag’, and Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea and Alexis und Dora. Schiller's Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung describes the idyll as the ‘sentimental’ poet's imagined realization of his ideal. Among the 19th-c. poets Mörike wrote two notable idylls, ‘Der alte Turmhahn’ and Idylle vom Bodensee, and Hebbel Mutter und Kind.