Max Reinhart 
Early Modern German Literature 1350-1700 

Pathbreaking volume providing a detailed, state-of-the-art overview of the literature of this 350-year period and its cultural and historical background.


Early Modern German Literature provides an overview of major literary figures and works, socio-historical contexts, philosophical backgrounds, and cultural trends during the 350 years between the first flowering of northernhumanism around 1350 and the rise of a distinctly middle-class, anti-classical aesthetics around 1700. Recent scholarship has significantly revised many traditional assumptions about the literature of this period, starting with areassessment of the canon. The notion of ‘literature’ has expanded to include a much wider range of texts than before, such as broadsheets, illustrated books, emblem books, travelogues, demonological treatises, and letters. Greater attention to the cultural and social phenomena that affect literary production has led to hitherto neglected areas of research, including the culture of learning and learnedness; the idea of authorship; the relationship betweenthe intellectual elite and the state and other political authorities and institutions; the development of the family; gender dichotomy; and the early formation of an educated, urban middle class. In an introduction and twenty-seven essays on specific but broadly-based topics of seminal importance to the period, written by leading specialists from North America, the United Kingdom, and Germany, this pathbreaking volume reflects this state-of-the-art research.


Contributors: Klaus Garber, Graeme Dunphy, Renate Born, Stephan Füssel, Scott Dixon, Wilhelm Külmann, Max Reinhart, joachim Knape, Hans-Gert Roloff, Erika Rummel, John Alexander, Peter Hess, Andreas Solbach, Peter Daly, Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Jill Bepler, Gerhart Hoffmeister, Steven Saunders, jeffrey Chipps Smith, Wolfgang Neuber, Gerhild Scholz Williams, Anna Carrdus, John L. Flood, Laurel Carrington, Theodor Verweyen, John Roger Paas


Max Reinhart is Professor of German at the University of Georgia.

Table of Content

Introduction – Max Reinhart

Frühe Neuzeit– Early Modernity: Reflections on a New Category of Literary History – Klaus Garber

German Literature of the Middle Period: Working with the Sources – Hans-Gert Roloff

Literary Transitions, 1300-1500: From Late Medieval to Early Modern – R. Graeme Dunphy

The Evolution of Modern Standard German – Renate Born

Education in Early Modern Germany – Wilhelm Kuehlmann

The Reformation Movement in Germany – Scott Dixon

Early Modern German Printing – Stephan Fussel

Poetics and Rhetorics in Early Modern Germany – Joachim Knape

Neo-Latin Literature in Early Modern Germany – Wilhelm Kuehlmann

Ad fontes: German Humanists as Editors and Translators – Erika Rummel

Early Modern German Drama, 1400-1700 – John Alexander

Poetry in Gemany, 1450-1700 – Peter Hess

Early Modern German Narrative Prose – Andreas Solbach

The Emblem and Emblematic Forms in Early Modern Germany – Peter M. Daly

The Pictorial Language of German Art, 1400-1650 – Jeffrey Chipps Smith

Eros in Early Modern German Literature – Gerhart Hoffmeister

Literature and the Court, 1450-1720 – Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly

Music in Early Modern Germany – Steven Saunders

Early Modern German Libraries and Collections – Jill Bepler

Travel Reports in Early Modern Germany – Wolfgang Neuber

Demonologies: Writing about Magic and Witchcraft – Gerhild Scholz Williams

Parallel Lives: Heinrich Steinhöwel, Albrecht von Eyb, and Niklas von Wyle – John L. Flood

Parallel Lives: Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Bucer – Laurel Carrington

Parallel Lives: Martin Opitz and Julius Wilhelm Zincgref – Theodor Verweyen

Parallel Lives: Sigmund von Birken and Duke Anton Ulrich – John Roger Paas

Women’s Writing in the Context of Their Lives, 1520-1720 – Anna Carrdus