Poetry and politics in the Silesian baroque

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 seventeenthcentury Breslau.