Only since the 1960s has an overall positive picture emerged regarding Philipp von Zesen's contributions to German language and literature. For hundreds of years, beginning during his own lifetime, Zesen was scorned and mocked; he seemed destined forever to be an outsider. Recent studies of his contributions in several fields, however, including poetry, poetics, novels, history, devotional literature, and coinage of new words, as well as his participation in language and literature societies, show him in a new light; he deserves still further study so that his rightful place in literary history will be secure.

Zesen was born on 8 October 1619 in the village of Priorau, approximately equidistant from Dessau and Bitterfeld, to Philipp and Dorothea Zesen. He is one of the early representatives of the many German authors whose fathers were Lutheran pastors: his father served as pastor in Priorau from 1616 to 1668. Zesen received his earliest education at...