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British and US scholars of German literature and culture assess the nature of public communications and the molding of public opinion in historical situations ranging from the late Middle Ages to the 20th century. In particular they look at the representation of the public sphere in literary writing a half century after the German original of Jürgen Habermas' The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere was published. Their overall themes are publics before the public sphere, thinking about Enlightenment publics, and cultural politics and literary publics. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
Whether enemy or ally, demon or god, the source of satisfaction or the root of all earthly troubles, the penis has forced humanity to wrestle with its enduring mysteries. Here, in an enlightening and entertaining cultural study, is a book that gives context to the central role of the penis in Western civilization. A man can hold his manhood in his hand, but who is really gripping whom? Is the penis the best in man -- or the beast? How is man supposed to use it? And when does that use become abuse? Of all the bodily organs, only the penis forces man to confront such contradictions: something insistent yet reluctant, a tool that creates but also destroys, a part of the body that often seems ap...
European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300-1500 explores the intricate dynamics of witchcraft accusations and trials during the medieval period, seeking to untangle the roots of these phenomena in both popular and learned cultures. The author critiques the anthropological approach to the European witch trials, noting that while European society differed significantly from non-Western societies, the mechanisms behind witch beliefs and persecutions seem to transcend these cultural distinctions. Despite societal differences, both European and primitive cultures exhibited a fluidity in their understanding of causality, where magical, natural, and religious expl...
Using the example of Eichstätt, this book challenges current witchcraft historiography by arguing that the gender of the witch-suspect was a product of the interrogation process and that the stable communities affected by persecution did not collude in its escalation.
This book gives an analytical review of the history of witch-hunt historiography. So far not much attention has been paid to how the European witch-hunts have been studied and explained in some 150 years of academic research on the issue. The history of the approaches and explanations in witch-hunt research fundamentally contributes not only to our understanding of the bizarre phenomenon in European history but also contributes to understanding of cultural as well as academic trends which heavily direct any research even when scholars are not cognisant of their underlying premises. How and why the picture of witch-hunts has been changing in scholarly works and text books is as illuminating an issue as the proper explanations offered by the research works. Contributors include: Rune Blix Hagen, Ronald Hutton, Gunnar W. Knutsen, Marianna G. Muravyeva, Marko Nenonen, Raisa Maria Toivo, Charles Zika
Offers biographical information about the more than 1900 people mentioned in the correspondence and works of Erasmus who died after 1450 and were thus approximately his contemporaries.
"A history of Celtic thought and identity over the last three centuries. This book will be the first synoptic historical study of Celtic ideas in the modern era. The Celts are perennially popular in both academic and popular culture, having been the subject of several recent books--scholarly and otherwise--as well as a major exhibition, 'The Celts: Art and Identity', at the British Museum and National Museum of Scotland in 2015-16. However, attention remains overwhelmingly focused on the ancient peoples labelled 'Celts', with little interrogation of how and why they became known as such during the modern period. In addressing these questions this study will be the first to account for the tr...
As war, pestilence, and famine spread through Europe in the Middle Ages, so did reports of miracles, of hopeless victims wondrously saved from disaster. These "rescue miracles," recorded by over one hundred fourteenth-century cults, are the basis of Michael Goodich's account of the miraculous in everyday medieval life. Rescue miracles offer a wide range of voices rarely heard in medieval history, from women and children to peasants and urban artisans. They tell of salvation not just from the ravages of nature and war, but from the vagaries of a violent society—crime, unfair judicial practices, domestic squabbles, and communal or factional conflict. The stories speak to a collapse of confid...
In thirteen essays by leading art historians, and a critical introduction by the editor, Beyond the Yellow Badge seeks to reframe the relationship between European visual culture and the changing aspect of the Christian majority’s negative conceptions of Jews and Judaism during the Middle Ages and early modern periods. By situating their subjects within a broad continuum of historical and critical issues, the authors inquire into such questions as the shifting politics of toleration and intoleration; the role played by anti-Judaic legends in the formation of Christian cults; the role of positive evaluations of Hebrew, Jewish learning and Christian hopes for Jewish conversion; and the transformation of religious anti-Judaism into its modern racial and nationalistic counterparts. The book will be of special interest to art historians, cultural historians, students of Christian theology and Jewish history, and to educated general readers.
A publication of the Goethe Society of North America, carrying Goethe criticism (and studies of his contemporaries); extensive book review section. The Goethe Yearbook is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America, which was founded in 1980 to promote the study of Goethe and his contemporaries. Originally conceived as a vehicle for Goethe criticism in Englishduring the Cold War political tensions, when the most prestigious Goethe publication, the Goethe Jahrbuch, was not available to most Western scholars, the Yearbook subsequently gained the respect of the international community, and has published articles, in both English and German, by scholars from around the world; it is unique among other periodicals devoted to the 'Goethezeit' for its extensive book review section.