Instead of appealing to theory-formation and abstract classification, this study consciously uses close text analysis to examine secular German baroque poetry from a specifically problem-oriented viewpoint. Sensuality as a problem: the literature of antiquity agonized over the impact of eros in a way that was hardly any less soul-searching than that of later Christianity. Authors like Opitz, Fleming, Zesen, Stieler, and above all Hoffmannswaldau take their bearings from this tradition, essaying in their erotic texts a discourse on sensuality that goes beyond the musa iocosa to adumbrate positions represented in the early Enlightenment.