Dialects and Languages in the Poetic Oeuvre of Laurentius Rhodoman (1545–1606)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the choice of languages and dialects in the poetic oeuvre of the German Protestant humanist Laurentius Rhodoman. The first section discusses an instance of Latin-Greek code-switching in the poem Iter Lipsicum, arguing that it is influenced by the common educational background of both author and addressee. The second section considers two of Rhodoman's poems written in the Greek Doric dialect and tries to explain the dialect choice by analyzing their context and intended audience. The third section examines some of his bilingual poems (both Latin-German and Greek-Latin prose), and the final section is dedicated to the handling of Greek and Latin verse in Rhodoman's bilingual poem Troica. The analysis proves that Rhodoman made a highly deliberate choice of languages and dialects.