''A Year in Arcadia: Kyllenion'' (german: Ein Jahr in Arkadien: Kyllenion) is an 1805 novel by

Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (full name: ''Emil Leopold August'') (23 November 1772 — 17 May 1822), was a Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, and the author of one of the first modern novels to treat of homoerotic love. He was the maternal ...

. It is notable as "the earliest known novel that centers on an explicitly male-male love affair".

Overview

''A Year in Arcadia'' is structured as a set of

idyll An idyll (, ; from Greek , ''eidullion'', "short poem"; occasionally spelt ''idyl'' in American English) is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus' short pastoral poems, the ''Idylls'' (Εἰδύλλια). U ...

s, one for each month of the Attic calendar. Set in

ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...

, it features several couples—including a

homosexual Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

one—falling in love,Béeche, Arturo E., ''The Coburgs of Europe'', Eurohistory, 2013, pp. 19, 354. overcoming obstacles and living happily ever after. The

Romantic movement Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

gaining momentum at the end of the 18th century allowed men to "express deep affection for each other", and the motif of ancient Greece as "a utopia of male-male love" was an acceptable vehicle to reflect this, but some of Duke August's contemporaries felt that his characters "stepped over the bounds of manly affection into unseemly eroticism." The

Frankfurt University Library The Frankfurt University Library (German: ''Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main'', or ''Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg'') is the library for the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany. Overview It originated in th ...

Goethe University Frankfurt Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt ...

has an original copy of ''Ein Jahr in Arkadien'' in its Library of

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...

Collection. The volume is 124 pages, with ''ΚΥΛΛΗΝΙΩΝ'' in

Greek script The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...

facing the title page, and front and rear illustrations. The book was translated into English and PortugueseUm Ano em Arcádia
Translated by Pedro Decleva Fernandes, Independently Published, 2022. . languages.

References

1805 novels 19th-century German novels Novels with gay themes 1800s LGBT novels {{LGBT-novel-stub