Sons and Mothers: Agrippina, Semiramis, and the Philological Construction of Gender Roles in Early Modern Germany (Lohenstein's Agrippina, 1665)

1996 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-113
Author(s):  
Jane O. Newman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
German Language ◽  
Language Play ◽  
Entire Life ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
Early Modern Germany

Trois ou quatre heures du Regne de Neron ont esté plus funestes à l'Empire Romain que toute la vie d'Agrippine sa Mere. (Three or four hours of Nero's reign were more deadly to the Roman Empire than the entire life of Agrippina, his mother.)Pierre de Moyne, La Galerie des Femmes Fortes (1647,1660)Gentes tamen esse feruntur,/in quibus et nato genetrix et nato parenti/iungitur. (And yet, they say that there are tribes among whom mother and son, daughter with father mates.)Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10: 331-33Act three of Daniel Casper von Lohenstein's 1665 German language play about Nero's assassination of his mother and erst-while co-regent Agrippina in A.D. 59 contains what could arguably be deemed one of the most salacious scenes produced on the early modern stage in central Europe.

scholarly journals Ottoman Language Learning in Early Modern Germany

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Stefan Hanß
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

AbstractThis article presents new evidence on the authorship and readership of the earliest printed Ottoman language materials that details the extent to which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire actively engaged in learning Ottoman. Such findings open up a new field of inquiry evaluating the Ottoman impact on the German-speaking lands reaching beyond the so-called “Turkish menace.” Presenting the variety of Ottoman language students, teachers, and materials in central Europe, as well as their connections with the oral world(s) of linguistic fieldwork in the Habsburg-Ottoman contact zone, this article argues that Ottoman language learning is an important but thus far neglected element in understanding the cultural and intellectual landscape of early modern central Europe. What may appear to be experiments with linguistic riddles on first glimpse was in fact grounded in deep enthusiasm and fascination for Ottoman language learning shared among a community of Protestant semi-scholarly aficionados.

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