Abstract
IN this richly documented work, the author shows to what extent the German intellectual laity were influenced by contemporary scientific men, such as Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Pascal and Jungius. The principal lay writers considered are Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, Georg Philipp Harsdörfer, the author of forty volumes of poetry and prose, Eberhard Werner Happel, the author of twenty “gallant” novels and a five-volume work on the wonders of the world, Erasmus Francisci, the compiler of compendia of curiosities, Christian Weise, an opponent of the scholasticism of German universities, Johann Riemer, Johann Beer, the author of eighteen novels and one of the most gifted writers of the seventeenth century, and Johann Christoph Grimmelshausen, the author of “Simplicissimus” and representative of Christian asceticism. The influence of the scientific writers of the age appears to have had various effects. In the first place there was a waning of medieval belief in miraculous intervention in Nature and the theological interpretation of phenomena, although remnants of occult lore were still present. Secondly, a dominant rationalistic tendency was shown by the belief that Nature is autonomous in its control over mundane and sidereal phenomena and free from intervention by either divine or diabolic agency.
Magic and Natural Science in German Baroque Literature
A Study in the Prose Forms of the Later Seventeenth Century. By Frederick Herbert Wagman. (Columbia University Germanic Studies, No. 13.) Pp. vii + 178. (New York: Columbia University Press ; London: Oxford University Press, 1942.) 15s. 6d. net.
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Magic and Natural Science in German Baroque Literature. Nature 150, 619 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150619b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150619b0