Chapter 10 The Encounter with the Foreign in Medieval and Early Modern German Literature: Fictionality as a Springboard for Non-Xenophobic Approaches in the Middle Ages. Herzog Ernst, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Konrad von Würzburg, Die Heidin, and Fortunatus

Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-254
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.


The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography provides a comprehensive overview of the development of Latin scripts from Antiquity to the Early Modern period, of codicology, and of the cultural setting of the mediaeval manuscript. The opening section, on Latin Palaeography, treats a full range of Latin book hands, beginning with Square and Rustic Capitals and finishing with Humanistic minuscule. The Handbook is groundbreaking in giving extensive treatment to such scripts as Old Roman Cursive, New Roman Cursive, and Visigothic. Each article is written by a leading expert in the field and is copiously illustrated with figures and plates. Examples of each script with full transcription of selected plates are frequently provided for the benefit of newcomers to the field. The second section, on Codicology, contains essays on the design and physical make-up of the manuscript book, and it includes as well articles in newly-created disciplines, such as comparative codicology. The third and final section, Manuscript Setting, places the mediaeval manuscript within its cultural and intellectual setting, with extended essays on the mediaeval library, particular genres and types of manuscript production, the book trade in antiquity and the Middle Ages, and manuscript cataloguing. All articles are in English. The Handbook will be an indispensable guide to all those working in the various fields concerned with the literary and cultural dynamics of book production in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period.


Numen ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Dinzelbacher

AbstractAlthough the medieval tradition of the famous parable which stands in the centre of Lessing's Nathan der Weise is quite well known, the present writer holds that the older versions of this motive are usually misinterpreted, being habitually read in the light of the German poet's text written during the age of enlightenment. An analysis, however, of the original stories of Etienne de Bourbon, Busone, Boccaccio et al., shows that their real aim was to illustrate an aporia and the shrewdness necessary to escape from it, not to call for religious tolerance. Indeed, the latter idea grew out of the disasters of the Thirty Years' War only, and was nearly completely alien to the Middle Ages. The few exceptions (Wolfram von Eschenbach, Ramon Llull, Nicolaus Cusanus) — and their limitations — are briefly discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Rubenstein

Abstract The apocalyptic belief systems from early modernity discussed in this series of articles to varying degrees have precursors in the Middle Ages. The drive to map the globe for purposes both geographic and symbolic, finds expression in explicitly apocalyptic manuscripts produced throughout the Middle Ages. An apocalyptic political discourse, especially centered on themes of empire and Islam, developed in the seventh century and reached extraordinary popularity during the Crusades. Speculation about the end of world history among medieval intellectuals led them not to reject the natural world but to study it more closely, in ways that set the stage for the later Age of Discovery. These broad continuities between the medieval and early modern, and indeed into modernity, demonstrate the imperative of viewing apocalypticism not as an esoteric fringe movement but as a constructive force in cultural creation.


1990 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Jensen

One of the most remarkable changes to take place at German Protestant universities during the last decade of the sixteenth century and the first twenty years of the seventeenth century was the return of metaphysics after more than halfa century of absence. University metaphysics has acquired a reputation for sterile aridity which was strengthened rather than diminished by its survival in early modern times, when such disciplines are supposed deservedly to have vanished with the end of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, this survival has attracted some attention this century. For a long urne it was assumed that German Protestants needed a metaphysical defence against the intellectual vigour of the Jesuits. Lewalter has shown, however, that this was not the case.


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