The volume assembles papers (some of them extensively revised) given at a symposium on Johann Gottfried Schnabel (1692-?1760) in Halle in early 2002. They aim at an extension of the purview in which the author of »Die Insel Felsenburg« demands to be assessed. New aspects of his work are pointed up by relating it to Leibniz and Thomasius, hermetic philosophy and spectral theology, and contemporary concepts of culture and anthropology. At the same time, a more comprehensive engagement with the relevant genre profiles in the early Enlightenment casts a revealing light on the standing of Schnabel's novels and on his description of festivity in »Das höouml;chst-erfreute Stolberg«.