The present article analyzes the depiction of the Thirty Years War in the texts by the scholars of the Reval (today Tallinn) gymnasium and focusses on the occasional poems of professors (e.g. Timotheus Polus, Reiner Brockmann, David Cunitz) composed in the 1630s as well as on the autobiography of the cantor David Gallus (probably written in the early 1650s). As a result, it will be shown that in the poems the war is regarded as a topos and the concrete events of war are represented on an abstract level. The autobiography of Gallus, on the other hand, describes the war from the distant perspective of a survivor and reflects how the war was felt and experienced by a “private” person.

This paper discusses the image and reception of the Thirty Years Warʼs Catholic military leader Johann T’Serclaes von Tilly in Jesuit Neo-Latin epical poetry of the 17th century, starting with Magni Tillij Parentalia written by Jacobus Balde, a prosimetrical work that came into being immediatly after the ‘heroʼs’ death but was posthumously published in 1678, using epical patterns such as picture descriptions or similia not only in metrical parts of the work, but also in prose fiction. The text shows Tilly as a pillar of the Holy Roman Empire and Catholic faith as well. Affiliated are shorter reflections of further Jesuit Neo-Latin poems such as Bellicum Tillij (1634) by Jacobus Bidermann, Johannes Bisseliusʼ Icaria (1637), and Jacobus Damianus’ Bellum Germanicum (1648).

This essay considers the seventeenth-century translations of the celebrated Persian poet Saʿdi’s Gulistan (1258 ad) into European languages: André du Ryer’s French version (1634), the Latin translation of Georgius Gentius (1651) and the German editions of Friedrich Ochsenbach (1636) and Adam Olearius (1654). The Gulistan – which consists of short, moralistic tales, aphorisms, proverbs, and Sufic lore – helped introduce Persian thought to the early modern European public (and later influenced Goethe’s West-östlicher Diwan as well as Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes).

This essay discusses the transformation and breakdown of the picaresque in the late 17th century, with specific reference to narrative strategies used in Der ruchlose Student (1681), an anonymous and fragmentary German translation of a Dutch text – picaresque in the broader sense. These strategies, it is argued, reveal both an internalisation of the first-person narrator and early manifestations of a causally motivated (biographical) syntagma. By way of example, it is demonstrated how the typical affectively flat, villainous narrator of earlier picaresque novels, as well as the episodic structure of these texts, are transformed in Der ruchlose Student such as to enable the emergence of a more modern individual within the framework of a more consistent story line. As such, this essay contributes indirectly to scholarly discussions relating to the embourgeoisement of the picaro figure. Der folgende Text stellt einen Beitrag zu Um- und Abbauten des Pikaresken gegen Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts dar. Er widmet sich den narrativen Strategien in dem anonym verfassten Romanfragment Der ruchlose Student (1681), der deutschen Übersetzung eines niederländischen Schelmenromans im weiteren Sinne, die eine Verinnerlichung des pikaresken Ich-Erzählers sowie erste Ausprägungen eines kausal motivierten (biographischen) Syntagmas erkennen lassen. Exemplarisch wird also herausgearbeitet, wie sich der typische pikareske statische Erzähler älterer Schelmenromane sowie deren episodische Handlungsführung in Ansätzen transformieren und ein moderneres Individuum in einem konsistenteren Handlungsgefüge aufscheint. Indirekt schließt der Beitrag damit an die Debatte um die Verbürgerlichung des Pikaros an.

Preachers in Restoration England carved out a space for the expression of political counsel and criticism towards those in power. Using sermons at the court of Charles ii (1660–1685), this article shows how they intervened in questions of ecclesiastical policy and how they supported and shaped the representation of monarchy through moral criticism. It puts forward the thesis that the official preachers of the Church of England were not merely voices of admonishment but active participants in political discourse. Der Aufsatz untersucht, wie sich Prediger im England der Restaurationszeit Raum für die Äußerung von politischem Rat und Kritik erarbeiteten. Am Beispiel von Predigten am Hof Karls II. (reg. 1660–1685) wird gezeigt, wie durch Predigten in (kirchen-)politische Debatten eingegriffen wurde und wie sie durch moralische Kritik bestimmte Repräsentationsarten des Königtums unterstützen und gleichzeitig mitgestalteten. In dieser Hinsicht sind, so die These des Aufsatzes, gerade die Prediger der anglikanischen Staatskirche nicht nur Wächter und Mahner, sondern direkte Akteure in der politischen Debatte.

The concept of landscape is often said to have developed only in the 18th century. Earlier place descriptions supposedly lack the sense of unity and mood that we feel to be constitutive for a real landscape. Using the example of Neo-Latin literature, the present article shows that this idea is wrong. Early modern Latin authors are perfectly able to describe true landscapes. They even have developed a number of specific literary techniques to represent scenic unity and atmosphere.

The article discusses the miscellanies of Erasmus Francisci, one of the most prominent and commercially successful authors of “curious” literature in late 17th century Germany. In particular, it traces the two mutual mechanisms or principles that guide his mediating of knowledge: ‘Unterhaltung’ and conversation. Both contributed to the functionality of Francisci’s textual collections that edited and popularized learned knowledge to a wider audience.

Due to its peculiarity and significance, occasional poetry occupies a special role in the literary output of Sibylla Schwarz. In her epithalamia, epicedia and other casual poems, in which she shows her thorough humanities education, one finds not only conventional, partly trite rhetorical figures, but also some interesting autobiographical references. The following article attempts to analyse the poet’s output with respect to the epigonic (imitative) character of her works both in the spirit of Opitz’s poetics and her own originality.