MLR, 96. , 200I MLR, 96. , 200I 'Trostschrift',but it was plainly also used for many other reasons by a wider range of readersthan was commonly attractedto late medieval worksof an unequivocally 'literary'character. Kiening's fourth chapter ('Differentiale')is the most ambitious and perhaps the most remarkable.With referencein turn to three of theAckermann's centralfeatures (thefigureof Death, itsperspectiveson the human condition, and itspresentationof a process of mourning), he examines the intricate network of intertextual relationshipsthatlinktheAckermann to a very substantialnumberof both earlierand laterworks.Severalof these are dealt with in detail,perhapsmost notably the three which Kiening edits in one of his appendices:a German translationfrom Olomouc of Innocent III'sDemiseria humanae conditionis, GuilhelmusSavonensis'sAnmortui sint lugendi an non,and Menrad Molther's free Latin adaptation of the Ackermann, the Dialogus Mortisac Coloni. The 'Differentiale'section is, however, important mainly for the light it shedson the 'schwierigeModernitat'of theAckermann itself.By dint of the kind of painstaking comparative analysis that was largely foreign to the 'Geistesgeschichte' tradition, Kiening establishes that this 'modernity' is highly complex and ambiguous,but residesmost markedlyin two relatedaspects.The first of these is the genuinely dynamic and dialectical nature of its dialogue, which succeeds in presenting the Ackermann and Death as mutually complementary partners in an 'open' dialogic structure,rather than merely as representativesof 'closed' dogmatic positions. The second is that thanksto this structure,Johannes is able, albeitneverconsistentlyand seldomunequivocally,to suggestatvariouspoints stimulatingandindeedradicalperspectives(withregardforexampleto conventional doctrines concerning death, human dignity, or spiritualconsolation) that offer his readersa certain broadening of and challenge to their intellectualhorizons. These elements of the work's 'modernity'were plainly regardedby fifteenth-centuryand sixteenth-century readers and writers as attractive, but also often as 'difficult'or even dangerous,aswitnessthe attemptseven by lay Humanistssuch as Moltherand (in his Ehebiichlein) Albrechtvon Eyb to reintegratematerialfrom theAckermann into more conventional theological frameworks.The Ackermann, then, was both influential and (to use Thomas M. Greene's term, which Kiening quotes) 'vulnerable',a fact that is underlinedeloquently in Kiening's fifthchapter ('Modernitaten'),which reviews some rather baleful purposes for which it has been exploited in our own century. The book's argument is outstandinglywell supportedby well over 200 pages of appendices, including a stemma, manuscriptand incunable descriptions,digestsof printers'careers,texts, bibliographies,plates, and indices. It is by no means an easy read: Kiening's many pages of theoretical and methodological reflection, whilst invariably intelligent, can wax long-winded and even a little pretentious, and his style,with itsliberaldosesof'Fachjargon'and 'Nominalstil',is not ideallyaccessible. Overall, however, the book is a tour deforce, and an importantone at that. UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM NIGEL HARRIS DeutscheLyrik derfruhen Neuzeit. By HANS-GEORGKEMPER. 6 vols. Ttibingen: Niemeyer. I987. Vol. vI/I Empfindsamkeit. xiii + 568 pp. DM 64. Gratitude and admiration must be the dominant reactions to a history of early modern German poetry (I500 to I800) which is thorough enough to take up six generous volumes. Much of the huge body of poetry which Hans-Georg Kemper surveysso enticingly has previously been neglected or misunderstood.Indeed, the majority of it is indisputably alien to the modern secularized world. Two 'Trostschrift',but it was plainly also used for many other reasons by a wider range of readersthan was commonly attractedto late medieval worksof an unequivocally 'literary'character. Kiening's fourth chapter ('Differentiale')is the most ambitious and perhaps the most remarkable.With referencein turn to three of theAckermann's centralfeatures (thefigureof Death, itsperspectiveson the human condition, and itspresentationof a process of mourning), he examines the intricate network of intertextual relationshipsthatlinktheAckermann to a very substantialnumberof both earlierand laterworks.Severalof these are dealt with in detail,perhapsmost notably the three which Kiening edits in one of his appendices:a German translationfrom Olomouc of Innocent III'sDemiseria humanae conditionis, GuilhelmusSavonensis'sAnmortui sint lugendi an non,and Menrad Molther's free Latin adaptation of the Ackermann, the Dialogus Mortisac Coloni. The 'Differentiale'section is, however, important mainly for the light it shedson the 'schwierigeModernitat'of theAckermann itself.By dint of the kind of painstaking comparative analysis that was largely foreign to the 'Geistesgeschichte' tradition, Kiening establishes that this 'modernity' is highly complex and ambiguous,but residesmost markedlyin two relatedaspects.The first of these is the genuinely dynamic and dialectical nature...