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First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
The medieval clergy, aristocracy, and commercial classes tended to regard peasants as objects of contempt and derision. In religious writings, satires, sermons, chronicles, and artistic representations peasants often appeared as dirty, foolish, dishonest, even as subhuman or bestial. Their lowliness was commonly regarded as a natural corollary of the drudgery of their agricultural toil. Yet, at the same time, the peasantry was not viewed as “other” in the manner of other condemned groups, such as Jews, lepers, Muslims, or the imagined “monstrous races” of the East. Several crucial characteristics of the peasantry rendered it less clearly alien from the elite perspective: peasants wer...
The Daughter Zion allegory represents a particular narrative articulation of the paradigm of bridal mysticism deriving from the Song of Songs, the core element of which is the quest of Daughter Zion for a worthy object of love. Examining medieval German religious writing (verse and prose) and Dutch prose works, Annette Volfing shows that this storyline provides an excellent springboard for investigating key aspects of medieval religious and literary culture. In particular, she argues, the allegory lends itself to an exploration of the medieval sense of self; of the scope of human agency within the mystical encounter; of the gendering of the religious subject; of conceptions of space and encl...
German-language writings about Islam not only reveal much about Islamic culture but also about the European "home" culture. Islam has been a rich topic in German-language literature since the middle ages, and the writings about it not only reveal much about Islamic culture but also about the European "home" culture. Many of the early essays in this chronologically arranged volume uncover fresh evidence of how German writers used images of Islam-as-other to define their individual subject positions as well as to define the German nation and the Christian religion. The perspectives of many contemporary writers are, however, far removed from such a polar opposition of cultures. Their experience...
The first monograph in English on the German Lohengrin, offering a new response to the challenges posed by the text.
"Fresh, accurate, and accessible translations of three texts that reveal much about medieval political thought and are surprisingly relevant to the precariousness of present-day political systems. Recent political events around the world, not least January 6, 2021, have shown that political systems long thought to be resilient can be surprisingly at risk. This edition offers an introduction to and prose translations of three texts that demonstrate just how precarious things can be even in a rigidly structured society (here the medieval Holy Roman Empire). The texts, the anonymously authored Duke Ernst, Konrad of Wèurzburg's Henry of Kempten, and Heinrich's Reynard the Fox, are also literary...
We all experience parenthood, if not as parents, then by way of having been parented or, in the face of ubiquitous images of idyllic family life, in the longing to be parents or to be parented. Thus, parenthood is one of the most powerful social constructs. This collection of essays gives evidence of the fact that families have never been "real;" that family, like gender or race, is not primarily based on biological criteria, but, above all, has to be performed and is a result of narratives. The relationship between these narratives - their variations in Irish, English, German, Mexican, and Chilean literature or film - and their material confinement is at the core of the essays gathered in this book. (Series: Cultural Studies / Kulturwissenschaft / Estudios Culturales / Etudes Culturelles - Vol. 40)
This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.
This volume concerns premodern understandings of vegetal nature that encompass multiple semantics and perspectives. Scholars from the disparate fields of art history, literature, and religious studies present tantalizing studies of trees and plants in sacred and secular thought. Some discuss the concept of the Book of Nature and its implications. Others explore narratives of symbiosis between humans and vegetal material, tree-dwelling hermits, spirits metamorphosing into wood, flowers or trees that sprout from bodies or the dissolution of the self into the natural world. Complementary to these approaches are studies that suggest a collapsing of time and space in spiritually charged yet ambiguous natural motifs or topographies where forests or groves are spaces of transformative experience.