Poetische Alchimie

This study is the first monograph on the subject of alchemy and literature in the early modern age. In the light of the hermeticist tradition, the study urges a literal (as opposed to the traditionally allegorical) understanding of the sensual images encountered in the mystic-pietist tradition of poetry in the Song of Songs tradition. Theological and anthropological reference contexts justifying such an understanding are carefully reconstructed. Selected poems by Greiffenberg, Pordage, Leade, Arnold, Zinzendorf, and Novalis are interpreted for the first time exclusively against the backdrop of the hermeticist 'alchemy' concept.