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None of Wieland’s poems was more enthusiastically celebrated by his contemporaries than his verse poem Oberon, A Poem in Fourteen Songs, a work situated between the worlds of romance and the classical epic. The oft-translated epic, frequently dramatized and set to music, became part of the canon of required school readings in the 19th century. Throughout his life, Wieland devoted special attention to the comical verse epic that was linked to the medieval knightly epics of Ariosto and Tasso. Even before he first published the work in 1780, he had already transcribed it seven times, each time with alterations and improvements.

The present volume presents the Oberon poem exactly as it first appeared more than 230 years ago. In addition, the volume includes contemporary essays, dialogues, translations, poems, and critical reviews by Wieland.