Barocke' Lyrik Lesen

How should one go about reading German 17th century poetry? Dirk Werle answers this question on the basis of a consistently historical understanding of both genre and epoch. In the seventeenth century, "poetry" had a decidedly different meaning from what we take it to be today, and there was no such thing as our term "Baroque". For each of the chapter's introductory analyses, from which more general considerations and points of view are developed, poems have been selected that do not appear in relevant anthologies and therefore allow unbiased access to a fascinating field of literary history. The Author shows that 17th century poetry is characterized by a poetics of repetition, based on affinity to music and the principle of convivial play. It is a form of pop literature that does not directly refer to reality, but creates a poetic world all its own. To grasp this phenomenon, a "hermeneutics of simplicity" is called for, which is introduced and explained in this book.