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Knape, Joachim. Poetik und Rhetorik in Deutschland 1300-1700. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006. Pp. viii; 227. 23 illustrations.
Joachim Knape's new book examines the increasing use of German as a medium for theoretical consideration applied to the arts of persuasion and poetry between the late Middle Ages and the end of the early modern period. The volume is a detailed and comprehensive introduction to the field of German rhetoric and poetics as it began to take shape after 1300, as well as an excellent illustration of how a thorough understanding of rhetorical concepts seen through the lenses of both classical writings and modern communication theory can enrich the analysis of seminal works of this period.
Knape's study is divided into three parts. Part One ("Poetiken, Rhetoriken und ihre Theorie") functions as a general introduction to the field during the late-medieval and early modern period, one which can stand alone (it appeared in shortened form in the 2006 Camden House History of German Literature edited by Max Reinhart) or serve as a prelude to Part Two's rhetorical and poetical analysis of Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff' '(1494) , which Knape had published in his Stuthenausgabe of Das Narrenschiffin 2005. Part Three looks back upon the accomplishments of German rhetoricians between 1300 and 1700 in view of the eighteenth-c. shift from a focus on the mastery of the forms and mechanics of literary production to the liberation of literature from conventional patterns and assumptions.
The author begins Part One by briefly delineating the corpus of rhetorical works and poetics produced by German authors in both Latin and German. In Chapter Two, he discusses the range of works produced to address the readers' need for standards of language and form. Then, he examines the theories of Nielas von WyIe (c.1415-78) and Friedrich Riederer (c.14501508), among others, and considers the influence of normative "rhetorical thinking" upon the varieties and aspects of communication before 1700. Knape notes that for German humanists, rhetorical categories and issues of form took on new urgency as the medium of encoding the vernacular by means of the written word changed drastically with the invention of printing and the rapid growth of imprints. It was, however, difficult even for the most determined authors to disengage totally written, learned...