Among the German-language poets of the seventeenth century, Simon Dach has long been popular because of a handful of poems that have assumed almost the status of folk songs. Dach was a master of direct, appealing, and sometimes homely poetic diction in a time that customarily set far greater store by excessive verbal ornament. Further, sentimental legends have been attached to his life, transforming him into a traditional and beloved national type--the good-hearted, naive, pious, and musically gifted German--and he has appeared as such in plays, narrative poems, and operettas. Until the late twentieth century, however, literary scholarship had not accorded him a respect commensurate with his public stature. At last, greater appreciation of occasional verse and its poetological and sociological functions has led to scrutiny of Dach's enormous production of epithalamic, funerary, and other purposeful poems. In this process, regard for his poetic gifts has been enhanced...