'Lift up your heart' : the poem Sursum corda by Margaretha Susanne von Kuntsch Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens (Lamentations 3:41)

Abstract

Margaretha Susanna von Kuntsch (1651-1717) was a well-read, pious, Protestant author who blended a strong religious faith with a neoStoic philosophy in her writings, which encompass lyric poems and an operetta. She is a seriously under-appreciated writer whose work is rarely assessed from an aesthetic standpoint. Elke O. Hedstrom claims that Sursum corda, the poem with which the present essay is concerned, expresses a world-negating attitude, employing typical, antithetical statements, as well as images of vanitas.peer-reviewe