Early modern Germany saw the dissemination of vast quantities of information at unprecedented speed. Popular knowledge, scientific inquiry, and scholarship influenced the political order, poetic expression, public opinion, and mechanisms of social control. This collection presents twelve essays by distinguished scholars on newly emerging epistemologies regarding the transcendent nature of the Divine, the natural world, the body, sexuality, intellectual property, aesthetics, demons, and witches.

The contributors are Thomas Cramer, Walter Haug, C. Stephen Jaeger, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Jan-Dirk Maller, James A. Parente, Jr., Stephan K. Schindler, Gerhard F. Strasser, Lynne Tatlock, Elaine Tennant, Horst Wenzel, and Gerhild Scholz Williams.