ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship of rhetoric to the composition of the TrostGedichte in Widerwertigkeit deß Krieges, and offers clear rhetorical criteria for the reassessment of his standing as a poet. The TrostGedichte are Martin Opitz's longest and most ambitious poetic work. The structure of the TrostGedichte is determined by their genre. The chapter relates Scaliger's theory to Opitz's practice, identifies Opitz's direct apprenticeships to earlier examples of consolatory genres and exposes the coherent integration of genre, themes and style in the composition of the TrostGedichte. The TrostGedichte are shaped by conventions that are natural to grief and consolation, but have parallel literary origins in the Bible, and in classical philosophies, especially Stoicism. Classical theory codifies these conventions, and Scaliger recapitulates them in the Poetices libri septem. The theory of consolation illuminates several generic conventions which are reproduced in the poems.
