This study relates theory to the details of poetic practice. It presents Opitz, Buerger and Eichendorff as representatives of their times and demonstrates how they adapt the classical art to thier particular talents and beliefs. All three poets are shown at work within a tradition flexible enough to persist even into the present. The influnce of rhetoric on German poetry did not vanish in the mid-eighteenth century, as is widely supposed. The first chapter of the monograph briefly compares theoretical statements by Martin Opitz and the twentieth-century poet Peter Ruehmkorf. It uses the comparison to introduce two main arguments: that classical rhetoric and poetics exert a persistent though constantly changing influence on the composition of German poetry; and that theoretical precepts and natural talent are mutually interdependent. These arguments are developed through the examination of work by three German poets, taken from periods of major literary change. Opitz is representative of the Baroque, Buerger of the "Sturm und Drang", and Eichendorff of Romanticism.

Three main chapters reconstruct the working method of each poet, applying his own theory and that of near contemporaries to detailed analysis of one or two of his poems. This procedure illustrates how each poet adapts rhetorical and poetic traditions to his own personal talent and to the literary preoccupations of his time.