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This thesis presents a close study of Hermann of Reichenau’s De octo vltm principalibus (’On the Eight Principal Vices’), a didactic poem and dialogue composed in southern Germany c.1044-54. The poem takes the form of a three way exchange between the author, the female character of the Muse, and an audience of unidentified sisters or nuns. While Hermann is well known to medievalist as a scholar of the liberal arts, I argue that the De octo vitiis provides a more useful point of entry for exploring his approach to monastic learning and, in particular, his vision of the right relationship between scholarly pursuits and the commitment to monastic discipline. The study thus aims to develop a fresh approach to the life and work of important figure in eleventh-century monasticism, whose scholarly interests have tended to be overlooked by many of the grand narratives of medieval historiography such as that of the twelfth-century renaissance. By examining the exchanges and characterizations within the De octo vitiis, as well as the wider contexts of Hermann’s life and career at the monastery of Reichenau, I aim to chart the development of his claims to authority both as an author and a teacher. Through an investigation into his pedagogic aims and techniques, I also explore his efforts to define the limits and possibilities of transmitting moral and spiritual instruction, a discussion which he undertakes through the language of male› female interactions within the monastic life. Part I of the thesis is concerned with the external context of Hermann’s work. Part II presents a translation of the De octo vitiis, while Part III undertakes a close reading of the text. In Chapter 1 I explore the history and composition of the De octo vitiis and seek to position the work as part of a wider programme of classroom teaching and spiritual instruction. Chapter 2 examines the evidence for Hermann’s life and career at eleventh-century Reichenau, while Chapter 3 considers the possible identity of his stated female audience for the De octo viliis. Chapter 4 explores Hermann’s representation of the eight principal vices and his construction of a spiritual journey for monastic readers, while Chapter 5 considers his use of the dialogue form and his depictions of a close spiritual friendship between himself and the Sisters. Finally Chapter 6 considers the construction of the Muse, examining Hermann’s efforts to define the place of poetry within the daily monastic round.

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This thesis contains a comparative analysis of the poetry of Peter Huchel and Johannes Bobrowski. Following Hans Dieter Schafer's reassessment of writing in National Socialist Germany, Das gespaltene Bewusstsein: Uber deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933-45 (1984), Huchel and Bobrowski are considered here with minimal reference to cultural politics in the two dictatorships in which they wrote. Axel Goodbody's survey of nature symbolism, Natursprache: Ein dichtungstheoretisches Konzept der Romantik und seine Wiederaufnahme in der modernen Naturlyrik (1984), provides both a theoretical basis for considering Huchel and Bobrowski's nature poetry, and also sets their writing in a lyrical tradition. Goodbody's work is considered in particular in chapter one. The tradition of German lyric poetry, particularly that of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, is central to the analysis of Huchel and Bobrowski's poetry throughout this thesis. Chapter two investigates the place of religion in their poetry and its broader appeal to the poets considered here. The mood of the poetry is the subject of chapter three, linking the scepticism in much of Huchel and Bobrowski's writing with that of twentieth-century writers and thinkers, and with poets from the lyric tradition who share a post-revolutionary situation. Poetic mythology is considered in chapter four, with examples being taken from Huchel, Bobrowski, and Eduard Morike, and these are discussed alongside the theoretical ideas of Schiller and Holderlin. The final chapter takes issues of subjectivity and communication as the basis for an examination of Huchel and Bobrowski's place in Modernism and for a comparison of their Personengedichte. Much of the analysis in this thesis depends on a reading of a variety of poetic texts by Huchel and Bobrowski, early Modernist German poets, Biedermeier writers, and eighteenth-century poets, while drawing on the substantial body of scholarship on Huchel and Bobrowski already available. The Peter Huchel Collection at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester and the Huchel and Bobrowski archives at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar, were also consulted. The thesis concludes by proposing a 'visionary' construction of Huchel and Bobrowski's writing, focusing on the non-rationalist levels at which the two poets attempt to communicate, through their concepts of language, through mythologies, through the religious and the mystical, and through the moods invoked in their writing. Their poetic vision tries to provide a holistic view of the individual and of human society, but this view is fundamentally undermined by the reality with which the poets are faced. The visionary construction offers a complementary approach to Huchel and Bobrowski's poetry alongside the political and biographical approaches presented elsewhere. It also indicates specific points of similarity and divergence between two oeuvres which have often been the subject of critical comparison, setting them in the context of a lyric tradition of great importance to each.

Contrary to assumptions within existing scholarship on Paul Celan's poetics, this thesis demonstrates that surrealist aesthetics were a significant discourse within Celan's poetics, in particular in die theories articulated in his Buchner Prize speech (1960). By mapping the points of convergence and divergence between specific surrealist ideas and particular elements of Celan's poetics, it demonstrates that the most significant point of contact between die two sets of aesthetics lies in the surrealist idea of a sustained tension between the unconscious and conscious realms, and between the past and die present, which elucidates Celan's well-known 'meridian' metaphor. The study thus develops new interpretations of Celan's theories, in particular in its assertion of the primacy of unconscious impulses in Celan's view of poetic language. Its conclusions thereby impact on an understanding not only of the specific status of the surrealist discourse in Celan's aesthetics, but also of the shifting relationship between poetic language and die poet's and readers' conscious and unconscious realities and of the intentional and unintentional cultural encounters that impact on linguistic and literary7 signification. The inquiry' focuses on verifiable and concrete points of contact between Celan's writings and surrealist texts, in the form of his translations of surrealist poems, his poetological notes and his correspondence. Recently published correspondence and theoretical writings by Celan reveal that he considered poetry to be composed in part as a result of unconscious impulses, which become visible during translation. Close readings of Celan's versions of surrealist poems demonstrate that these translations both illustrate and thematise this textual Unconscious, and so exhibit the metapoetic content of Celan's translations. By focusing in particular on the surrealist aspects of the original poems translated by Celan, and on Celan's transformation of these features into metapoetic figures, these readings therefore demonstrate the poetological significance of Celan's encounter with surrealism, and culminate in a new conceptualisation of his poetics of translation.

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