Die Buchreihe Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte deckt das gesamte Spektrum der germanistischen Literaturforschung ab und umfasst Monographien und Sammelbände über einzelne Epochen vom ausgehenden Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Sie versammelt Beiträge zur Erklärung zentraler Begriffe der Literaturgeschichte, zu einzelnen Autoren und Werken.

This volume is an attempt to provide a first comprehensive appreciation of Hölderlin's Tower Poems (the poems of his madness). It begins by reconstructing the poetology underlying them under the headings of imagery, landscape, space, and time. In addition the interpretations cast light on the dietetic and therapeutic aspects of this subjacent poetology, which is shown to accord with a therapeutic approach to life in general. In the history of discourse Hölderlin stands in the tradition of the 'mad author', a role he must have seen as being more or less thrust upon him. Finally, his pseudonym 'Scardanelli' is interpreted as an enactment of the figure of the mad poet refracted with that of a poeta minor .