The positive revaluation of aesthesis and the emergence of aesthetics in the 18th century - from Bodmer and Breitinger to Baumgarten, Meier and ultimately Herder - established an aesthetic discourse centred on the sensual component of art and literature. In literature, this component is to be found in its visual imagery, its rhythms and also in its appreciation as a meaningful structure. The volume contains studies on Gryphius, Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland, Herder and Schiller. It systematizes the insights gained from these studies to demonstrate how, in the 17th and 18th centuries, aesthetic experience was enriched by a theoretical concern for its sensual aspects and conceptualized in a manner that is of essential importance for approaches to the interpretation of art and for hermeneutics.