Martin Klöker „„How we can make use of any verse in common life.“ Place and function of early modern poetry in literary culture“

Klöker, Martin (2023). „How we can make use of any verse in common life.“ Place and function of early modern poetry in literary culture. Journal of Baltic Studies, 54 (4), 697−710.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01629778.2023.2221665

Abstract

From the sixteenth century onwards, those education institutions that were humanistic by rhetoric turned to a basic education in poetry, teaching the use of verse in everyday life. Initially, this was related to ancient verse and its meaning, then was transferred to Neo-Latin poetry and to German (vernacular) verse, thereby transforming literary culture. On this basis, the role of poetry in literary culture in the Baltics is shown using three examples: the late humanistic literary culture of Riga in the 1580s, mainly in Latin; the literary culture in Reval (Tallinn) around fifty years later, much more influenced by German-language poetry; and finally, German poems in love letters of that time, showing the application and function of verse in the private space.