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Abstract
This article deals with Sibylla Schwarz’ poetic confrontation with the literary authority of the early 17th century par excellence. In Martin Opitz, she not only found a model to follow, but also a point of orientation for her own approach to writing, which is why she productively transforms his material and texts, but develops her own forms and arguments in this imitation. She repeatedly addresses him explicitly as an ally in matters of poetry and the implementation of poetic guidelines, who, like herself, had to overcome resistance. Both his texts and his personality are appreciated in this context and integrated into her own writing. In doing so, she follows Opitz in a strategy propagated by himself and thus continues it.
Abstract
The night plays an important role in Sibylla Schwarz’ self-presentation as a female poet. On the one hand, she expresses her poetic skills by using the night as a literary motif which she combines with metaphors of farewell and death. On the other hand, she presents the night as the time and place of the creation of her poetry, thereby marking it as a secondary activity accepted within the gender discourse of early modern culture. Schwarz’ use of the motif of the night vividly illustrates the interplay of convention, strategy and lifeworld reference that is characteristic of her poetry.
Abstract
Research has so far argued that Anna Maria van Schurman is the Dutch poet to whom Sibylla Schwarz alludes in her poem “Ein Gesang wieder den Neidt”. This article not only argues that Schwarz was rather alluding to the Dutch poet Anna Roemers Visscher; it also discusses what significance the openness of Dutch poetry towards female authors could have had for a young female poet in Germany.
Abstract
This article discusses the relationship of Sibylla Schwarz’ poem Verachtung der Welt and its Dutch source: passages from Jacob Cats’ book Houwelyck (1625), a kind of guide to marriage for the Dutch bourgeoisie. Previous research was not able to identify this source, partly because Schwarz takes a very unique approach with her adaptation. A comparative analysis of the texts brings Schwarz’ translation strategies into the foreground, which in turn demands a reevaluation of conclusions and assumptions about her work that until now have gone mostly unquestioned. The comparative analysis also reveals how skillfully Schwarz was able to make use of the Early Modern ‘spaces’ of translation, as she inscribes a new poetic dimension into Cats’ text.
Abstract
This article examines the link between politics and poetry in Sibylla Schwarz’ work. In various texts, the author negotiates socio-political discourses on the hierarchical society, the position and appreciation of poets, as well as on her self-image as a woman and as a female writer. Poetry and the creation of poetry permeate her texts on a thematic level. Literature, however, is also her tool and means of expression with which she challenges injustice and false values and thus inscribes herself in the discourses of her time.
Abstract
In this article the author analyses the characterization of Sibylla Schwarz as “pommersche Sappho”. The aim is to carve out basic motivic structures as well as peculiarities of a Sapphic persona in poetry, on which Sibylla Schwarz was able to draw on in her writing and to which she is determined by her contemporaries and recipients when she is established in the literary world via the honorary title “Sappho”. In doing so, it is shown that sapphic writing is bound to certain expectations, such as musicality and high quality of the poems, reflection on strong emotions, a – partly concealed – inclusion of female homoerotic undertones, and the thematisation of the possibility of being driven to death by the power of passion as well as the unbearable bittersweetness of love. In her poems Schwarz shows her knowledge of Sappho as a female role model for women writers, but does not define her poet persona primarily or emphatically in the succession of the Greek lyric poetess Sappho.
Abstract
In competing with Rabelais’ French novel Garguanta, the German author Fischart aims to illustrate the richness of the German language and its poetry in his comic novel Geschichtklitterung. Focusing on the second chapter of this text, which has so far been viewed as nothing more than an absurd play on language, this article offers a new interpretation and demonstrates how the German author stylizes himself as a poeta vates in his Pantagruelian prophecy and presents himself as a being purified by wine in his poem “Glucktratrara”. In the end, inspired by Apollo and the Muses, he seems to create an epic poem praising both Germans and the German language.
Abstract
Aurora von Königsmarck’s letters from Medevi show the outstanding role this celebrated baroque poetess played in the gallant festival culture at the Swedish court. They tell of courtly festivals taking place at the famous health spa Medevi in August 1682. They uncover festivals which do not appear in official festival books. So these letters represent very important documents of cultural history, allowing a fresh sight on courtly festival culture. This article inquires the gallant performance of Aurora’s letters, investigates them for well-known models, motifs and journals of courtly-gallant festivals and emphazises their political and aesthetical relevance. With her various artistical contributions Aurora tries to influence her position within the Swedish nobility. The festivals follow the French festival culture of Ludwig XIV. and are to be interpreted as synthesis of the arts, including several arts. Aurora’s letters are not only descriptions, but also a part of this synthesis of the arts.
Abstract
This article examines definitions and evaluations of as well as alternative terms for ‘atheism’ in encyclopedias of the early modern period. In a representative overview it will be shown that the early modern discourse about atheism must be interpreted in the light of the history of concepts, of ideas and of knowledge: Not only was the scope of the term ‘atheism’ much broader in the 16th and 17th centuries than it is today, but the sometimes highly ambitious attempts to classify the phenomenon of atheism according to the early modern orders of knowledge remained influential during the 18th and well into the 19th century.