1658 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1658. Events March 5 – A play adapted from The Taming of the Shrew is performed by students of the Gymnasium in Zittau, the earliest record of a Shakespearean comedy produced anywhere in the Holy Roman Empire; authorship is attributed to Christian Keymann, but remains disputed. This climate inspires the Silesian playwright Andreas Gryphius. Also this year, he prints one of the first secular Baroque works in German literature, the verse comedy Absurda Comica oder Herr Peter Squenz. Borrowing from A Midsummer Night's Dream (including its main character, Peter Quince), Gryphius' text rejects Meistersinger culture, while also "reinvigorating the tradition" of German-language theater after the long hiatus of the Thirty Years' War. April – Blaise Pascal enters the creative period that will lead to his Pensées, with a lecture for his Jansenist friends at Port-Royal-des-Champs Abbey, and later with a series of scattered notes. May 29 – Dara Shukoh, heir-apparent to the crown of the Mughal Empire, is defeated by his younger brother, Aurangzeb, in the Battle of Samugarh. Dara's overtures toward Vedanta and Sufism, including his promotion of the Upanishads, are condemned, as Aurangzeb formally adheres to Islamic fundamentalism – and in practice to a less syncretic theism. The new regime has a working alliance with the Pashtun warrior-poet Khushal Khattak, until the latter is deposed and arrested in 1663. July 6 – Teimuraz, deposed ruler of Kakheti and pioneer of Georgian poetry, is received in Moscow, Tsardom of Russia. An incident involving Bogdan Khitrovo contributes to the internal conflicts within the Russian Orthodox Church, generating the Raskol. September 5 – Forces of the Ottoman Empire and Crimean Khanate, under the command of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, storm into the Transylvanian capital of Feyérvár (Alba Iulia). The city is devastated, and its role in fostering Renaissance humanism is forever ended: though restored, the Bethlen Collegium is transferred to Nagyenyed (Aiud). Approximately 20,000 books are destroyed in the raid, and at least 53 students are killed. This attack also brings to a standstill the Transylvanian printing press, which had been established around 1622. A new press is founded at Nagyszeben (Sibiu). September 13 (O. S. September 3) – Death of Oliver Cromwell in England, inaugurating the transition from Protectorate to Restoration.