Halsted, David G.: Poetry and Politics in the Silesian Baroque

Neo-Stoicism in the Work of Christophorus Colerus and his Circle. This study describes the impact of neo-Stoicism on the cultural and educational institutions of Breslau in the first half of the seventeenth century, using the career and work of Christophorus Colerus, a poet and teacher of rhetoric, to demonstrate how politics informed poets and poetry, and how poets and poetry in turn informed politics. By tracing the history and goals of educational policy in Breslau, the study shows how the city’s élite sought to reproduce its culture; by showing that the same ideals informed Colerus’ teaching and poetry, it demonstrates that literary culture shared the ideals of political culture. Neo-Stoicism provided a theoretical framework for the society in which Colerus and his pupils moved, finding models for both citizen and ruler in the literary tradition as it was preserved in and taught by the city’s schools. The study concerns itself, then, with the complex relations between individuals, power structures, educational institutions and literature in seventeenth-century Breslau. - From the table of contents: 1. Learning and power in Lipsius' theory of politics and the individual. - 2. The social role of learning and poetry in Breslau in the 16th and 17th centuries. - 3. Education in Breslau. - 4. Neo-Stoicism in Bernegger and Colerus. - 5. Neo-Stoic elements in Colerus' poetry. - Colerus' influence. - VII,272 Seiten, gebunden (Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung; Band 26/Harrassowitz Verlag 1996)