Search

When medieval poets began to reflect on love, it was, from the beginning, a highly complex and problematic phenomenon, mostly determined by frustration, contradictions, and a lack of fulfilment. Highlighting particularly two major texts, one in Latin, the other in Middle High German, this paper brings to light the critically important element of discourse as part of the public performance of theoretical and practical reflections of love in the Middle Ages. Since courtly love thus has to be defined as a literary medium for courtly debates about its own identity, it makes perfect sense that we hardly ever hear about actual individual satisfaction and the realisation of erotic dreams. Instead, the overarching intention by medieval poets was to problematise the issue of love and to present its paradoxes, difficulties, and conflicts through the literary performance, not to present a maudlin, sentimental story with a simple happy end. As we realise here, the debate about proper attitudes towards the other gender, the analysis of values and virtues all contribute to the realisation of the discourse itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the concept of the Absurd seems to be characteristic only of modernity, especially since WWII, we face the intriguing opportunity to investigate its likely first emergence in the early thirteenth century in Der Stricker's Pfaffe Amîs (ca. 1220). While the narrative framework insinuates that meaning and relevance continue to be the key components of the priest's life, especially because he constantly seeks new sources of income for his own generosity and hospitality, his various victims increasingly face absurd situations and are abandoned even to the threat of insanity and death. The analysis of the verse narrative suggests that the protagonist begins to embrace crime and violence as the norm for his operations as a fake merchant. Thus, in some of the episodes of this famous Schwankbuch, elements of the absurd become visible, creating considerable irritation and frustration, if not horror and desperation, among the priest's innocent victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undoubtedly, the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg brought about a profound paradigm shift, transforming both the late medieval book markets and the general reading culture. However, as with many paradigm shifts, we need to differentiate in this regard more than scholarship has acknowledged so far. First, many medieval narrative motives, topics and themes continued to be rather popular well into the seventeenth century, if not beyond. Second, manuscript culture did not simply disappear. Instead, as this article outlines, in many areas and especially among the upper social classes, luxury items in the form of manuscripts remained critically important. A closer analysis also indicates that many times practical knowledge (fencing, horse training, medicine, etc.) and personal observations were copied down by hand and thus passed on to the specific audiences without the printing press involved. The manuscript did not disappear at all; instead, it assumed a more specialized function in terms of knowledge, autobiographical reflections and social representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late Middle Ages, aristocratic and urban circles competed against each other for esteem, legitimacy, authority, and fame. Family chronicles gained significant importance in that process, but we can also identify a definite discourse on dynastic interests in historiographical terms in contemporary literature. This study illuminates in three cases how individual authors conceived of the notion of dynasty and traced the rise and/or fall of their protagonists. Even in the case of an utter demise, the topic itself, the emergence and development of a dynasty, appealed to the wider readership, as reflected in some of the major late medieval German prose narratives and novels. The concept of a mythical origin of the family was particularly attractive, but also the miraculous rise from a low social status to the rank of a king, unheard of in reality, of course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social historians have often overlooked the evidence of popular literature as a reflection of common cultural conditions and the history of everyday life. But if we want to understand sixteenth-century society, such as in the Holy Roman Empire where the Protestant Reformation had brought about major upheavals, we would be well advised to consider the value of jest narratives that appealed to wider audiences, and this well into the seventeenth century. One of the issues in recent social-historical research has been gender relationships, whether we think of love, sexuality, marriage, or divorce. To shed light on this concern, relevant for all adults throughout early modern society, this article examines the statements about women and their relationships with their husbands in the Lalebuch (first printed in 1597) to gain a better understanding of the dominant patriarchal concepts and their challenges. Even though the anonymous author did not intend, as far as we can tell, to provide specific information about the gender relationship, in the background of the narrative we can discover numerous references of relevance for the exploration of the everyday life situation at the end of the sixteenth century concerning women's roles within marriage and within their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irrespective of our comfort level, the topic of prostitution assumes an important role also within late medieval and early modern history, literature, law, and art history. While many scholars have already engaged with this issue drawing from legal or social-economic sources, the literary evidence also deserves to be considered in this context. The German-Swabian Franciscan preacher and poet, Johannes Pauli, is famous for his extensive discussion of everyday-life situations in his close to 700 prose narratives. There is hardly any aspect in human existence left out, whether we think of truth, fools, gender, peasants, judges, clerics, women, or the many different vices and virtues. Practically overlooked by scholarship, however, in one section, Pauli also turns his attention to prostitutes and entertains his audience with humorous narratives about various situations in the lives of those women, certainly an important sliver of human society during the pre-modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of countless problems, the modern world faces, especially religious fanaticism, violence, and hatred, it is high time to reflect on some of the older literary statements once again that had already voiced critical concerns about the principles of human interaction determined by good communication, love, and tolerance. Maybe surprisingly, when we turn to Lessing's Nathan der Weise (1779), we come across a major literary document in which those ideals are formulated convincingly and dramatically. While German scholarship has already discussed this play for a long time, it deserves much wider attention because of its strong advocation of those ideals, which we are in the highest need as of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It ought to be an ongoing effort by all scholars/researchers to question the validity, legitimacy, and purposes of their own discipline because we live in an ever-changing world and must regularly reflect upon our academic self-justification. This also applies to the field of Medieval Studies that faces considerable difficulties and challenges today with declining numbers of students enrolling in respective classes and lacking support by university administrators. This study begins with a general consideration on where we are today in terms of justifying the humanities at large, that is, of the study of literature particularly, and hence of medieval literature. Then this paper focuses on two universal themes, tolerance and then love. While love has always been associated with the courtly world since the twelfth century, toleration and even tolerance do not seem to fit within the medieval context. However, the discussion of both phenomena can be utilized as a particularly effective catalyst for further investigations of medieval culture and literature within the framework of modern and postmodern responses to the Middle Ages. The exploration of this theme as it emerged already at that time offers intriguing opportunities to make the study of medieval literature relevant and important for us today, as does the examination of the love discourse through a historical lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 2023, published by the Internationale Gutenberg-Gesellschaft, covers a wide range of topics related to the history of printing, book publishing, printers, and incunabula. The volume includes eleven articles and a review of recent research, with contributions in English, German, French, and Italian. Topics covered include the publications of Richard de Bury's Philobiblon, charges of blood libel and host desecration against Jews, the increase in paper products for book printers, illustrated books, German culinary recipes, and the identity of the author of a treatise on logic. The volume is well-regarded for its scholarly quality, but there are some issues with typos and mistakes in grammar and syntax. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the historical importance of Low German in the northern region of Germany. It explains that Low German was widely used in literary, legal, and religious works until the seventeenth century when High German replaced it. Today, Low German is primarily spoken in rural areas, with some traces in cities like Lüneburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Rostock. The article highlights various perspectives on the identity of the region and the significance of linguistic features in relation to political entities. It also explores specific examples of influential works in Low German, such as the Saxon Mirror and the epic Sassine. The article concludes by acknowledging the contributions of this volume to the study of Middle Low German history and literature. [Extracted from the article]

Although it proves to be a difficult task, we still can identify more literary texts from the Middle Ages addressing homoerotic love than we might have expected. Even when poets voiced severe criticism and radically condemned homosexuality, their comments serve us well to identify more specifically the actual discourse behind the official scene. Although legal and Church authorities consistently characterized 'sodomy' as one of the worst sins a Christian could commit, since late antiquity, and certainly throughout the Middle Ages, the phenomenon, a biological fact, existed, of course, and was also addressed in veiled or open language. This article examines a selection of relevant literary and didactic works that shed more light on this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Productivity and creativity triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and new technologies Virtual classes tend to suffer from their impersonal nature due to the technology-mediated distance between students and instructors, as my students have reported frequently. Although it requires a paid subscription (moderate, to be paid by students, at least currently), virtually all of my students have praised this system because it facilitated numerous different methods of studying, writing, and discussing the class material, and this is all online with everyone actually present. [Extracted from the article]

The phenomenon of game is, as we have learned recently, a critical component of medieval and early modern courtly society. But ‘game’ was more than the term seems to imply since all of courtly culture was predicated on the ludic element, whether chess or falconing, golfing or wrestling. This article examines both literary and art-historical evidence from medieval Germany and medieval Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Orbis Litterarum is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The topic of court criticism coupled with severe warnings about the dangers of a royal dictator or tyrant was well represented in medieval and early modern literature. Despite our common assumptions about the harmony and idyllic nature of King Arthur’s court and the knights of the Round Table, a closer analysis quickly reveals the horrendous problems vexing medieval society (and our own, perhaps). However, medieval poets were careful not to take off their masks when they depicted evil rulers because they normally depended on their patrons. Nevertheless, the criticism of the evil ruler, and then especially of the criminally minded royal councilor (such as in the much later case of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello) finds vivid expression in more medieval texts than we might have assumed. After a survey of dramatic cases from pre-modern literature as a basis for the subsequent analysis, this article focuses on the Middle High German version of the Old French Roman de Renart by Heinrich der Glîchezâre (late twelfth century) where the protagonist, the fox Reinhart, operates with astounding intellectual acumen and sophistication to deceive, betray, hurt, and even get his opponents killed without any bad conscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis. Germanica Wratislaviensia is the property of Wroclaw University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This document is a list of various editions and translations of a text called "Tractatus de moribus, conditionibus et nequitia Turcorum" or "Treatise on the Customs, Conditions, and Wickedness of the Turks." The text was written by Georgius of Hungary and provides a description of the Ottoman Empire and its people. It was published in multiple editions between 1482 and the early 16th century. The document also includes secondary sources that discuss the content and historical context of the text. [Extracted from the article]

The topic of court criticism coupled with severe warnings about the dangers of a royal dictator or tyrant was well represented in medieval and early modern literature. Despite our common assumptions about the harmony and idyllic nature of King Arthur's court and the knights of the Round Table, a closer analysis quickly reveals the horrendous problems vexing medieval society (and our own, perhaps). However, medieval poets were careful not to take off their masks when they depicted evil rulers because they normally depended on their patrons. Nevertheless, the criticism of the evil ruler, and then especially of the criminally minded royal councilor (such as in the much later case of Iago in Shakespeare's Othello) finds vivid expression in more medieval texts than we might have assumed. After a survey of dramatic cases from pre-modern literature as a basis for the subsequent analysis, this article focuses on the Middle High German version of the Old French Roman de Renart by Heinrich der Glîchezâre (late twelfth century) where the protagonist, the fox Reinhart, operates with astounding intellectual acumen and sophistication to deceive, betray, hurt, and even get his opponents killed without any bad conscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed a tremendous growth of globalism, at least in terms of European outreach and interest. We can identify this phenomenon particularly well through two different and independent sources, first, the publication of Adam Olearius's Vermehrte Newe Beschreibung der Muscowitischen vnd Persischen Reyse, 1647, and then the growth of Jesuit reports about their missionary activities all over the world carefully collected and published by Joseph Stoecklein ca. hundred years later in his highly popular Welt-Bott, compiled and published since 1726. Globalism is, of course a complex term, both for today and for the past. Everything depends on the narrator's perspective, the engagement with the other culture/s, and the reciprocity. Olearius appears to have achieved a major breakthrough with his travels to Russia and then later to Persia, introducing much of Persian culture to Germany. The Jesuits (Eusebio Kino, Ignaz Pfefferkorn, Joseph Och, et al.) provided their German (!) readers with astoundingly precise comments and reports about the New World in northern Mexico and in the province of Sonora (today, partly Arizona), while their many colleagues globally contributed their own reports about all four corners of this world. Combining these two perspectives, we can identify a very early but already very strong effort to learn more about the foreign world, to overcome the otherness (from a Eurocentric perspective), and to create a global platform far beyond what travelogue authors such as Marco Polo or Odorico da Pordenone had achieved in the fourteenth century, irrespective of their extraordinarily extensive travels to China. This paper, however, will begin, after I have reflected on the latest theoretical approaches to Global Studies, with a most unusual eye-witness account from ca. 1350, and then pursue the discourse on globalism as it developed over the following centuries, crossing several periodical barriers and bridging different narrative genres within the Germanlanguage context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undoubtedly, racism is a deeply-anchored problem that continues to vex our world. There is a long history behind it, which can easily be traced back to the Middle Ages and beyond. This article, however, takes into consideration a number of medieval narratives and art works in which surprisingly positive images of Blacks are provided. The encounter with black-skinned people tended to create problems even for the best-intended white intellectuals or poets during the pre-modern era, but the examples studied here reveal that long before the modern age there was already an alternative discourse to embrace at least individual Blacks as equals within the courtly and the religious context. Since Europe did not yet know the large-scale form of slavery, as it emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were much less contacts between Blacks and Whites. Nevertheless, the evidence brought to the table here clearly signals that we would commit a serious mistake by equating modern-day racism with the situation in the Middle Ages, as much as modern research (Heng) has argued along those lines. It would be more appropriate to talk about the encounter of races within the literary and arthistorical context. Even the notion of Black diaspora would not fully address the issue because the evidence brought to the table here engages mostly with black or half-black knights and other individuals who enjoy considerable respect and appear to be integral members of courtly society both in the East and in the West. Instead of working with theoretical models developed for the analysis of racism in our own times, such as Critical Race Theory (CRT), this study offers close readings of literary examples of personal encounters between members of different races in medieval German and Dutch literature, and of the representation of Blacks in late medieval and early modern art history, concluding with some comments on the first Black philosopher in eighteenth-century Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is highly fashionable today to project either a very negative or a very positive image of the Middle Ages. The invention of the printing press has hence often been associated with a radical change in literature, religion, politics, and generally the public media. Indeed, we can observe an imminent paradigm shift, ultimately leading, above all, to the Protestant Reformation, which would not have been possible without the printing press. However, technological revolutions do not necessarily transform the Zeitgeist or the history of mentality, the general value systems, and hence the fundamental concepts of literature. Although many medieval romances and heroic epics were soon eclipsed by new types of prose novels, for instance, printed and sold on the early modern book markets, in many other cases the medieval narratives, such as the various versions of the Melusine novel and the jest narratives of Till Eulenspiegel, experienced an astounding afterlife and renewed interests through the printed versions, and this far into the seventeenth century. This article does not intend to diminish the huge impact of the printing press on late medieval culture, but wants to qualify further and discriminate more in detail what really changed and what remained the same within the history of literature. Both the narratives discussed here and their accompanying woodcuts demonstrate a smooth continuation of late medieval topics well into the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of medieval literature, irrespective of the genre, contains considerable criticism of the hero or protagonist. In fact, in many cases the narrator voices rather harsh condemnation of his or her main characters who often demonstrate a lack of rationality, fail to observe basic rules and laws, and tend to act rather foolishly. In a survey at first, this article illustrates the presence of this phenomenon in a number of European literary texts from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries. The focus of the present article, however, rests on the anonymous thirteenth-century Old French chanson de geste (or romance) Huon de Bordeaux. Here, more than in most other medieval narratives, the protagonist regularly rejects or disregards all concrete instructions, severe warnings, or commands and promptly runs into major problems. Although these contribute to the narrative development (more adventures), the critical analysis reveals, after all, a disturbingly negligent, irresponsible, and defiant character whose behavior might mirror profound social problems with late medieval knighthood and the political structure of that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout time, alcohol has been used by people all over the world, and its negative effects have commonly been the subject of many comments by critics and poets. Medieval literature is actually filled with references to wine and its excessive consumption. This paper examines the evidence we can find primarily in medieval German literature, but it also includes parallel remarks by didactic and religious writers, along with those by some English, French, and Italian contemporaries who addressed the same issue. While the criticism voiced is loud and clear, the literary treatment of drinking of wine ‒ rarely of beer, mead, or ale ‒ allows us to gain a deeper insight into the basic everyday-life conditions at that time. Reports about excess only reflect the common consumption of wine especially among aristocrats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time now, Old Norse literature has often been colonized and misappropriated by modern right-wing political groups for their own ideology, symbolism, and public appearance. A critical reading of Icelandic sagas, however, easily demonstrates that those public strategies are very short-sighted, misleading, and outright dangerous for our democratic society. To stem the flood of misinformation regarding the Viking world and its literature, this article joins a small but forceful chorus of recent scholars who are hard at work deconstructing this politicization of saga literature by way of offering new readings of those texts in which the very Viking ideology is actually exposed by the poets, rejected, and supplanted by new forms of social interactions predicated on a legal system and an operation with rationality in the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

92, fol. 11v), once in b/w (p. 45) and once in color (plate 4, next to p. 154) is supposed to illustrate the claim, but I do not see a reference to the image in the text. As Even-Ezra emphasizes, these diagrams served particularly to translate the mental concept into a graphic design, which numerous medieval writers visualized in drawings. The bibliography at the end does not even include a reference to the critical edition, whereas all information about the manuscript seems to have been gleaned from a secondary source only (p. 121; p. 218, note 14). [Extracted from the article]

Many times, even scholars in the Humanities do not know how to deal with literature because they work only in the field of language acquisition, linguistics, or other data-driven study areas. Not surprisingly, when the issue emerges how to explain and to defend the Humanities, the literary areas seem to be the first on the chopping block. On the one hand, we can certainly argue that there is a specific literary canon that provides the readers/students with a sense of cultural identity and history. On the other hand, it seems more significant and effective to consider literature from whatever period or written in whatever language as a kind of laboratory of human behavior. The fictional framework makes it possible to experiment with unique types of situations in human life, often in an extreme fashion, which facilitates, as any scientist working in a lab would confirm, the critical analysis without too many outside distractions. The present paper argues that we can learn much about human communication through the study of literary texts. This finds an excellent illustration in the works of the late medieval German poet Heinrich Kaufringer (ca. 1400), in whose verse narratives we encounter a plethora of various situations and conditions reflecting on ordinary cases in people's lives, with all the shortcomings and potentials pertaining to the human language and the social community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many scholars in the medical and psychological profession offer specific suggestions about how to handle stress and to overcome its negative impact, very few have ever considered philosophical reflections as a critical tool for this problem. One of the greatest moments of stress would certainly be when an individual has to face his/her death penalty and subsequent execution, especially if s/he feels innocent. Already ca. 1.500 years ago, the late antique philosopher Boethius (d. ca. 524) had to answer for himself how to cope with this situation, being imprisoned and waiting for his last terrible moment. When he composed his treatise, The Consolation of Philosophy, he created one of the most influential philosophical reflections on life's burning issues. This treatise continues to offer fundamental insights into how to come to terms with the conflicts and stresses of human existence, and it is discussed here as a profoundly philosophical answer to stress in universal terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study concerns a late medieval manuscript, the Ambraser Heldenbuch , created by Hans Ried for Emperor Maximilian I between 1504 and 1516. The recent facsimile edition makes it much easier to probe the critical question why this volume was not printed and what makes it stand out so much in the context of the early modern book market. The inclusion of the anonymous verse narrative Mauritius von Craûn (ca. 1220–1240) allows for more trenchant analyses concerning the patron and his interest in these literary works. The study takes into view the emperor's strong concern with his afterlife, the paradoxical aspects determining that novella, and the contrast of this text copied here, very oddly, for the first time with the more popular literary works offered on the early modern book market. At a time when the printing press was increasingly conquering the book business, luxury bibliophile items continued to be produced as manuscripts. It might well be that the current book market finds a parallel in this phenomenon, with the electronic book pushing traditionally printed books aside. In fact, until today, we still resort to the manuscript in special cases, such as deeds, wills, licenses, and other documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memory and memoria are closely related to each other, but the latter constitutes the physical, mostly public manifestation of the self through art works, writing, musical compositions, buildings, and the like. After a reflection on the current research pertaining to both aspects, this article deals with the famous Ambraser Heldenbuch compiled by Hans Ried for Emperor Maximilian I (1504-1516) as a collection of major medieval German narratives. In particular, the focus rests on the most unique verse novella, Mauritius von Craûn (ca. 1220) where knighthood and courtly love seem to reach their apogee but then abruptly fail. In an odd way, even this rather deconstructive piece of literature, preserved only in this very late manuscript, obviously contributed to Maximilian's great effort to secure his gedechtnus, the memory by posterity of his glory and accomplishments. However, there is also a great sense of the precarious nature of this goal, hence of memoria. To understand late medieval aristocratic culture, we can rely profoundly on the efforts by that social class to establish memory as a form of self-identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of German as a Foreign Language is the property of German as a Foreign Language and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Amsterdamer Beiträge zur Älteren Germanistik is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

However, Drucker does not linger on the Middle Ages too much and turns her attention mostly to those scholars who pondered the issue of the alphabet since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many times, a reviewer faces a fairly easy task because the study under investigation presents a straightforward, focused point and develops this through a variety of lenses. Johanna Drucker: Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present: University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA, 2022, 380 pp., numerous b/w ill. and figures, Hardcover, ISBN 978-0226815817. [Extracted from the article]

Fable literature from Greek antiquity (Aesop) to today, from East and West, has proven to be of universal relevance and timeless meaning, even if modern generations seem to ignore increasingly that genre as something old-fashioned. Nevertheless, the timeless value of fables finds particularly powerful expression in the collection of fables, Der Edelstein, by the Dominican Swiss-German poet Ulrich Bonerius (ca. 1350). Whereas many historians have commonly tried to identify the Middle Ages as a world or culture all on its own, determined by an alien mentality, maybe even inaccessible for us in hermeneutic terms (Jauss), these fables allow us to comprehend fourteenth-century people and their concerns and ideas much more intimately than previously assumed because they commonly address universal issues people have always faced in their interaction with society. The article offers first a critical assessment of mostly erroneous assumptions about the Middle Ages and then illustrates the universal concerns shared by that past culture and us today by way of a close examination of a selection of fables by Bonerius. We discover here remarkable examples of ethical, moral, but especially rational concepts about good and respectable life. Little wonder that the Edelstein exerted such a long-term appeal far into the early sixteenth century, and that I was then rediscovered and greatly appreciated by late eighteenth-century scholars and writers. Bonerius offers many fables in which he formulates many observations and comments that reveal a rational universality in their content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Neuphilologische Mitteilungen is the property of Modern Language Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Fable literature from Greek antiquity (Aesop) to today, from East and West, has proven to be of universal relevance and timeless meaning, even if modern generations seem to ignore increasingly that genre as something old-fashioned. Nevertheless, the timeless value of fables finds particularly powerful expression in the collection of fables, Der Edelstein, by the Dominican Swiss-German poet Ulrich Bonerius (ca. 1350). Whereas many historians have commonly tried to identify the Middle Ages as a world or culture all on its own, determined by an alien mentality, maybe even inaccessible for us in hermeneutic terms (Jauss), these fables allow us to comprehend fourteenth-century people and their concerns and ideas much more intimately than previously assumed because they commonly address universal issues people have always faced in their interaction with society. The article offers first a critical assessment of mostly erroneous assumptions about the Middle Ages and then illustrates the universal concerns shared by that past culture and us today by way of a close examination of a selection of fables by Bonerius. We discover here remarkable examples of ethical, moral, but especially rational concepts about good and respectable life. Little wonder that the Edelstein exerted such a long-term appeal far into the early sixteenth century, and that I was then rediscovered and greatly appreciated by late eighteenth-century scholars and writers. Bonerius offers many fables in which he formulates many observations and comments that reveal a rational universality in their content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The volume itself is an impressive example of bibliophile publications; the era of book printing is certainly not over, although it is changing rapidly, as this yearbook also indicates. Falk Eisermann offers a bibliography of recent publications concerning recent research on incunabula, and Ralf de Jong discusses the new print font, the Comma Base by Martin Majoor. Every second year, a new print font is used, and the present volume has appeared in the Comma Base font developed by Martin Majoor. [Extracted from the article]

We certainly live in a world today determined by globalism, however we might want to define it. But it would be erroneous to assume that earlier centuries, and not even pre-modernity, were entirely ignorant about foreign worlds and did not have any interest in reaching out to, or in approaching foreign countries, peoples, and cultures either peacefully or militarily. The first part of this paper examines some of the misconceptions and then outlines many features that justify us in using the term 'globalism' already at that early stage, maybe free of much of the modern baggage brought upon by the colonialist attitude pursued by early modern Europeans. To illustrate the claim more specifically, this then leads over to a detailed examination of one of the many versions of the Alexander narratives in the Middle Ages, specifically of Priest Lambrecht's Middle High German Alexanderlied. Although Alexander is presented as a conqueror of the Persian empire and the Indian kingdom, apart from many other countries, there is still a strong narrative strategy to open the perspective toward the East and to make it to an integrative part of the global worldview of the western European audiences. This and many other Alexander versions contribute in their own intriguing way to the process of "worldmaking," as Nelson Goodman (1978) had called it. Although historic-fictional in his approach, Lambrecht facilitated in a path-breaking way, drawing on many classical sources, of course, the establishment of a global vision, at least in the mind of his medieval audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We always face a certain danger when we investigate cultural-historical situations or conditions. Our chronicles and other documents tend to emphasize dramatic, if not tragic cases that color our understanding in rather dark light. This also applies to the relationship between Jews and Christians during the late Middle Ages, which has been discussed already from many different perspectives. Less consulted have been late German medieval verse narratives (verse-couplets, or mæren), where we encounter a number of times quite remarkable frameworks which situate the Jews in a much more mundane, ordinary context. As much as the poets endeavored, of course, to present the possibility of converting Jews to Christianity, as much they thereby also reveal a variety of different relationships characterized by a surprising degree of normalcy, free from the usual anti-Judaic hostility. We gain additional support for our approach by way of including two prose novellas by Boccaccio in his Decameron (ca. 1350). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article accepts the challenge to reflect on the cultural history of music as a transcultural and universally human phenomenon, particularly in the medieval context. To what extent has music played the same or at least similar function in endless cultural contexts all over the world from the past to the present? We know for sure that music has always been present at all age groups, in all ethnic groups, among all genders, and throughout time. There have always been local, ethnic types of music (folklore), and universally accepted manifestations of music (esp. classical music). The emphasis here rests, after an extensive study of music in global cultural-historical terms, on comments about music in medieval philosophy, mysticism, and literature because here we discover fundamental notions about music being the medium to connect the individual with the cosmic harmony, hence with the divine. In literary texts, above all, music was identified as the critical expression of identity, love, and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been accepted that fairy tales somehow trace their roots in pre‐modern culture and folklore. But we are rather unclear about what would constitute the historical dimension in those tales. Leaving psychological or gender‐oriented methodologies aside, this article takes a fresh look at the fairy tales by the Grimms and examines critically to what extent they contain more or less authentic material connecting them specifically with the Middle Ages and our understanding of that age today. There are many elements in the tales predicated on medieval culture and social‐political conditions, such as kingship, castles, princesses and princes, knights, etc. But then there are also many mysterious and magical creatures and objects that have appealed to audiences young and old, whether they are direct borrowings from the pre‐modern world or not. Some of those, along with many motifs, were obviously directly borrowed from medieval literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite renewed efforts to establish world literature, most of the presently available theoretical models do not provide solid concepts as to the meaning and relevance of this approach. After a critical review of recent publications, this article analyzes a unique and most revealing case, the reception of medieval Persian literature (Sa'dī) through translations into European languages beginning in the seventeenth century, primarily by the German diplomat, traveler, librarian, philologist, and linguist Adam Olearius. Here we can observe what truly constitutes world literature, with Sa'dī serving as a major literary inspiration for early modern reflections on virtues and vices, relevant also for Western audiences. He was not a Christian, but the poet's truly noble ideals were to have a deep impression on his future readers in East and West, especially since the early modern age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a review of how the western world has viewed Persia and Persian culture since the turn of the eighteenth century, this article explores older forms of reception of Persia, first during the seventeenth century, but then, which is the main focus, in the high and late Middle Ages. As far as I can tell, Middle High German poets seem to have been at the forefront within the European context of engaging with the topic of Persia in their romances and other genres. Many of those references, of course, constitute nothing but fiction, and they were most likely not based on practical travel experiences or personal encounters. Nevertheless, we can identify a significant interest in that part of 'the East,' probably determined by the strong impact of the myth of Alexander the Great and his conquest of the Persian empire in the third century BCE on medieval literature. However, most of the references to Persia go far beyond that ancient topic and might signal a significant opening up toward non-European culture to the east already during the high and late Middle Ages. The thematic approach identified here facilitates the combination of a number of different texts from the late twelfth to the late fifteenth and even sixteenth century and intends to provide a new puzzle piece to the exploration of the notion of the Global Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dominican priest from Bern, Ulrich Bonerius, composed his collection of fables, Der Edelstein, at exactly the same time when Boccaccio created his collection of tales, Decameron, 1350. Even though there is no direct evidence of any kind of personal contacts between these two poets, the strong similarities between both works in formal and conceptual terms prove to be striking. This article illustrates the reasons why we would be justified to call Bonerius, more than just playfully, a Germanlanguage Boccaccio, since he created the first major compilation of narratives (in verse), framed by a prologue and an epilogue, in the history of late medieval German literature. While Boccaccio has ten storytellers entertain each other over ten days (ten stories per day = 100) reflecting on eroticism, love, adventures, or anticlericalism, Bonerius offers one hundred didactic fables illustrating human failings, shortcomings, and vices. Both contemporaries thus aimed at criticizing and improving their society through surprisingly similar literary means. Bonerius thus emerges as one of the most important fourteenthcentury poets in the German tongue who deserves to be placed close to Boccaccio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Horribile dictu , the twenty-first century is witnessing a steady decline of democracy and the rise of autocratic, self-aggrandizing rulers in many countries across the world. How long will they stay in power, however? Already since the high Middle Ages, numerous poets across Europe explored the topic of the 'emperor in misery,' in which an angel takes on the appearance of the emperor, which forces the latter to go through a long period of extreme suffering, being denied all respect, rejected, beaten, imprisoned, suffering from hunger and cold. Eventually, the poor emperor learns to accept his destiny, repents his previous hubris, confesses his sins, and suddenly realizes that his doppelgänger is actually an angel sent from God to teach him a lesson. Once this transformation in his soul has happened, the angel explains the entire situation, warns the emperor never to commit his sins again, and disappears. Of course, it is doubtful whether these narratives might have ever had a direct impact on the political situation, but the warning for evil rulers resonated throughout the centuries and found a remarkable continuation in one of the novellas of the Baltic-German author Werner Bergengruen (1946). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of the Jesuit Order (founded in 1540), many European territories were re-Catholized. But the Jesuits aimed much higher than getting engaged in a petty war of words with the Protestants in Germany or Austria and pursued a global perspective, sending missionaries to virtually every corner of the then known world to teach, to preach, to convert, and to baptize. The Jesuits' global reach found its probably best expression in the publication of the „Lettres édifiantes et curieuses écrites des missions étrangères" (1702–1776) and then also the „Welt-Bott", a collection of letters by missionaries sent to Europe, collected and translated by the Bavarian Jesuit priest Joseph Stoecklein. This article examines the responses by the Jesuits to the multitude of Protestant anti-Jesuit publications and focuses especially on the success story of the „Welt-Bott" as a true best-seller on the Catholic book market in the German-speaking lands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative research focused on medieval literature continues to be characterized by many desiderata, especially with regard to the fruitful relationships between late medieval verse narratives, mæren, and the famous Italian storyteller Boccaccio and his Decameron. This paper brings to light four significant Middle High German verse narratives from the 13th or early-14th century that demonstrate remarkable similarities with stories contained in Boccaccio's Decameron. While the study of Boccaccio's sources has traditionally been focused primarily on Old French (fabliaux) or Latin sources, here I introduce a number of texts that were composed just a few decades earlier and which express, in surprising parallel, strikingly similar themes that could be straight from the textbook the Italian poet might have drawn from. We have, of course, no specific evidence as to Boccaccio's direct familiarity with late-medieval German literature, but the motif analysis reveals major parallels between the examples in The Decameron and in those mæren. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]