Quellen und Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte

Die vorliegende Studie verbindet erstmals die Entwicklung der utopischen Literatur der Jahre 1720–1820 nicht nur mit derjenigen des praktisch-philosophischen Denkens dieser Zeit, sondern setzt beide auch in Verbindung mit einem dritten, romanpoetologischen Diskurs: der pragmatischen Geschichte.

Im 18. Jahrhundert durchläuft das utopische Denken eine wichtige Veränderung: Während Utopien im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert den Zustand des vollkommenen Menschen und seiner idealen Gesellschaft vorstellten, interessieren sie sich nun verstärkt für die Entwicklung, die der Mensch von seinem jetzigen unvollkommenen hin zu jenem vollkommenen Zustand nehmen muss, und für die Möglichkeiten, die er von Natur aus hierfür mitbringt. Diese in der Forschung als Dynamisierung und Subjektivierung der Utopie bekannt gewordene Gattungsentwicklung geht einher mit dem zeitgleichen Trend zu einer verstärkt anthropologischen und psychologischen Grundlagentheorie in der Moral- und Rechtsphilosophie sowie der Ästhetik. Vom Naturzustand zum Idealzustand: Diese Perspektive erfordert schließlich auch eine erzählerische Innovation, welche die Zeitgenossen unter dem Rubrum Historia Pragmatica fassen. Das ursprünglich aus der Historiographie stammende und über die Philologie und Moralphilosophie in die Romanpoetik übergegangene Paradigma pragmatischer Geschichte fühlt sich einem anthropologischen Realitätssinn ebenso verpflichtet wie einem moralischen Vervollkommnungsideal, liefert damit eine bestimmte Legitimation der Fiktion und bildet das Fundament für jene charakteristische Erneuerung der Utopie, wie sie bis in die Romantik wirkt.

The German sensibility-oriented art theory of the eighteenth century had its beginnings in rationalism.This book looks at the relationships between sensibility and understanding in psychology, moral philosophy, and art theory to demonstrate the groundbreaking significance of rationalist sensibility. By systematically presenting central terminology and concepts, it provides a foundation for understanding important debates, from Lessing to Goethe.

The notion that like prefers the company of like is characteristic of the love and friendship relationships in medieval literature. For the first time, this study takes a cultural historical approach to examine the staging of similarity in four late courtly romances, where this elemental principle of relationship is at the center of the narrative and determines the structure of action as well as the constellation of figures.

Ernst Jünger's texts are permeated by a dense network of metaphors and concepts that he took from paleontology and research into prehistory. This study is the first to systematically reconstruct his adaptation of paleobiological, geological, and historiographical discourses in the chronological order of his works, thereby opening up new perspectives on Jünger’s mythologization of history, shaped by the history of knowledge and science.

In the 12^th-century, islands, caves, and forests became settings for extraordinary narratives of the beyond. The protagonists physically occupy the spaces of paradise and purgatory in non-visionary ways, have otherworldly, eschatological experiences, and return to the world unscathed. This work examines narratological interpretations of this epistemological conundrum – from diachronic, discourse historical, and cultural studies perspectives.

Following a trajectory that begins with Goethe and extends through Emerson, Whitman, and Mann, this study reconstructs a neglected facet of modernity: the effort to create a “collective poetics.” The work examines both aspects of literary form and ways of thinking about society and politics. The collective poetics of “E pluribus unum” represents the literary manifestation of the guiding principle of the US and of liberal democracy in general.

Stefan George (1868–1933) was one of the most fascinating cultural figures of classical modernity. Among the prominent features of his works are poetic treatments of the historical canon. This study is the first systematic and comprehensive examination of George’s medievalist imaginations. Through detailed case studies, it shows how he shaped the Middle Ages into an important point of reference for a modern cultural elite.

The study examines gradation as a central mode of 18^th century thought. Originally a structural notion in the natural sciences, gradation underwent a change in the 17^th century to become a major descriptive trope for gradually intensifying patterns of change. As a trope that extends across disciplinary boundaries, gradation became an important aesthetic concept of the period in areas as diverse as rhetoric, aesthetics, dramatic art, and music.

What is the relevance of spatial concepts to the structure and meaning of narrative texts? The monograph analyzes the semantic coding of narrative spatial concepts and their transformation in retelling stories from antiquity to the Middle Ages. It contributes to the understanding of spatial concepts in late-Medieval romances and specifically addresses Apollonius’ notions of spatial governance.

The poems that Hölderlin wrote between 1800 and 1806 draw on traditions and discourses in religion, the arts, and natural science in order to develop a Neue Religion (“New Religion”). Five poems are taken as examples in order to investigate the syncretistic combining of coherent bodies of knowledge and the ambiguity of the religious concepts employed. The various connotations upon which the New Religion is based are thus brought to light.

The study examines the aesthetics of religious theater in the 16^th century based on theories and instructions for meditation. It interprets pre-Reformation plays and Protestant and Catholic dramas against the backdrop of contemporary cultures of piety and proposes a perspective on theater history that includes both theological ruptures and inter-religious connections during the Reformation era.

This book presents the first edition of the traveling theater play Die Liebes Verzweiffelung as well as variants of the Vienna manuscript King Franodalpheo. The volume includes a catalog of preserved traveling theater texts, their routes of reception, and performance dates. It also offers an index of the best-known wandering troupes and their repertoire, thus shedding light on the earliest days of German professional theater.

Freundschaft und Legenden stehen immer wieder im Fokus mediävistischer Untersuchungen, doch nur selten wird Freundschaft in Legenden perspektiviert und fast gar nicht in Ordengründerlegenden. Diesem Umstand widmet sich nun die vorliegende Studie, wenn sie sowohl die lateinischen, als auch die volkssprachlichen Erzählungen des 13.-15. Jahrhunderts analysiert. Die im Zentrum stehenden OrdensgründerInnen (Birgitta, Klara, Bruno, Dominikus, Franziskus, Norbert und Robert) sind jeweils Teil eines komplexen Relationsgefüges. Gott, ihre Gemeinschaft und die Institution Kirche stellen in den Erzählungen konkurrierende Geltungsansprüche an sie. Mit Hilfe eines systemtheoretischen Freundschaftsbegriffs werden in den Texten sowohl die Differenzen markiert, als auch die übergreifenden Funktionen des Erzählens skizziert. Es sind die Semantiken, Narrative und Figurationen der Freundschaft, die die divergenten Relationen ausgleichen und das legendarische Erzählen stabilisieren. Freundschaft erweist sich also als Konstituens der Ordensgründerlegende, ein wichtiges Ergebnis für die historische Ordens- und Freundschaftsforschung, aber ebenso für die narratologische Legendenforschung.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville describes the world of the Late Middle Ages and draws on a sophisticated blend of other texts containing traditional lore about foreign lands, peoples, and religions. The study explores the ways that foreign religions were presented in manuscripts and early printed books and analyzes the processes of semantization, valuation, and reflection that can generate an intriguing balance between self and otherness.

Each extant illustrated manuscript of Parzival represents a unique reading, and each image gives the reader new perspectives on the text. The study examines the use of the expression vremde (foreign) along with a comparison of three images from three manuscripts (Cgm19, Cod. AA91 and cpg 339). The comparative analysis shows the potential value of exploring such medial connections.

Seen from the perspective of philosophical anthropology, Schiller’s philosophy is a modern anthropology of crisis, a theory of human non-determinability, and an aesthetics of openness to the world within the orbit of a philosophy of the art of living. A typological comparison between the centuries reveals parallel figures of thought and analogous conflict situations upon which the theories of Schiller, Scheler, Plessner, and Gehlen are based.

Starting from a modern understanding of "fascination", this broad-based study in the area of conceptual history develops a formal notion of this aesthetic emotion while considering classical and 18^th century theories. Aesthetic fascination is the product of an experience of divergence in processing sensibility and meaning. It does not engender a moment of farewell, but rather stimulates intelligibility.

Rescued from its status as a marginal genre, the libretto reveals its aesthetic qualities and far-reaching importance in German and European literature and literary discourses. Written for the expert or beginner, this volume introduces the libretto text as a work of art in its own right and shows the impact of the libretto in structuring the transmedial nature of opera as a genre.

Prior to 1933–38, more women earned doctorates in German studies at the University of Vienna than at any other German-speaking university. Starting from this observation, the author examines the institutional and academic history of the German studies program from 1848 to 1938 and links it to professional portraits of three University lecturers, Christine Touaillon (1878–1928), Marianne Thalmann (1888–1975), and Lily Weiser (1898–1987).

The open access publication has been supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

This study analyzes representative texts in which the master-servant relationship is a structurally determining theme. The analysis is undertaken from the perspective of ideological history and is based on a model of interdependent rule in literature that transcends epochs and genres. It reveals the ways that 18^th to 20^th century literature participated in contemporary theoretical discourses on rule.

The first historical-critical edition of the 195 letters of Sophie von La Roche to the educator of princes Johann Friedrich Christian Petersen offers surprising insights into the final chapter of the writer’s life. Her attitude was not one of resignation; von La Roche helped influence the education of a sovereign and initiated marriage schemes between Protestant princely houses to favor a Prussian-friendly Restoration policy.

This study explores German literary figures’ reflections on the empire from the Enlightenment to the Romantic era. It helps shed light on a central theme often overlooked in the gaps between disciplines. The Holy Roman Empire never became a quantité négligeable for writers like Wieland, Herder, Schiller, and Goethe, nor for Jean Paul, Eichendorff, and Kleist. Instead, it formed an important reference point for their thinking and writing.

The aesthetic categories “outline” and “contour” are of central importance in the history of literature on art. The problematic history of these categories furnishes insight into the evolution of aesthetic thinking in its continuities, fissures, and mechanisms of change. This study traces significant moments in the history of “outline” and “contour” from antiquity through the beginning of the 20th century.

This is the first study to examine the figuration of the devil and demons in Low German medieval literature. Demonic figures are the protagonists in three traditional genres (novella, example, and legend). At the same time, they served to represent numinous negativity. In a hermeneutic fashion, this work integrates a historical-anthropological question with the approach of discourse analysis.

The achievements of Friedhelm Kemp, Paul Celan, Ludwig Harig, and Volker Braun in the field of poetic translation represent a high-water mark in the intermediation of French and German lyrical poetry. This work explores the strategies of semantic, tonal, and metrical transformation that these translators employed to construct singular interpretations of the original texts.

How does one create vivid narratives about realms that cannot be experienced before death, such as hell, purgatory, and paradise? This work uses early Jewish texts to reconstruct the narrative process of describing journeys to the beyond, and follows its transformations – from the Apocryphal Apocalypses of Peter and Paul to the influential medieval narratives of the Visio Tnugdali and the Tractatus de Purgatorio S. Patricii.

With the onset of modernity, the study of poetry emerged as a legitimate academic discipline. Conversely, authors became connected to a specialized discipline that organized and expanded knowledge about German literature. For the first time, the studies in this volume systematically discuss this connection using the philological practice and poetology of expressionist authors and the works of Holz, Mann, Stadler, Broch, Schaeffer, and Borchardt.

With the exception of Buddenbrooks, money has only occasionally aroused the interest of scholars as a subject of study in the novels of Thomas Mann. Using contemporary monetary theory as a background, the present study undertakes a close textual analysis to trace the meaning of money and awareness of money in the deep structure of Mann’s works. As Anna Kinder demonstrates, his novels reflect not only the latest in the monetary theory of their times, but also expose the uncertainty and allure of modern economic relations.

This study seeks to explain why Schiller’s later plays, written after the reception of Kant’s aesthetics and in response to the French revolution, imply a concept of the public and the public sphere that is closely akin to that of classical French tragedy. The author attributes the aesthetic and political character of the dramas to their implicit relationship with the theatrical public. This historical perspective allows the development of a model of theatricality that was characteristic of classical French drama well before the era of Schiller and bourgeois tragedy.

This book contains love correspondences between Otto von Bismarck, Adalbert Stifter, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Ernst Haeckel and their respective wives and lovers. It counters the transient nature of love by extending the correspondence to other areas: realism – constituting much more than just a literary and artistic program – is here presented as a project undertaken by these 19th-century couples with the aim of facilitating their lives and keeping alive the romantic impulse.

As a ‘rhetoric of the mean’ (mesotes ideal), sensibility provides a positive catalog of emotionalization. This is because ethos as an emotional level is viewed as being able, through gentle emotions, to please, placate and achieve sympathy and virtue (Quintilian). Sensibility in literature creates a bridge between an ‘art of the soul’ that developed into a major subjective and personal factor in the 18th century and a sense of sociability that aimed to integrate the individual into the community. The goal of this study is to provide, through a structural linking of the ethos of virtue and the ‘rhetoric of the mean’, a reading of literature of sensibility based on rhetoric and cultural history that can explain both its public success ‘with the people’ and the reasons for why it failed to meet its own claims.

At no other time has the role of art been subjected to such intense reflection as in the period of radical upheaval around 1800. Following on from the French Revolution, aesthetics became an important field of reference for political, social and philosophical debates. In this context, Friedrich Schiller plays an important role. This volume attempts to derive central themes in Schiller’s ‘classic’ aesthetics from his early articles on philosophy, anthropology and poetry.

The study describes concepts of body and of law in the Nibelungenlied and analyzes gender relationships in the epic from the perspective of both areas of knowledge. The linking of the literary text with medical and natural-philosophical as well as legal normative documents of the 12th and early 13th century shows how the Nibelungenlied takes up and modifies the notions of that period. Starting from the different areas of knowledge, the study explores the gender relationships of the imagined world and revises previous findings of gender research of the Nibelungenlied.

This study documents for the first time the scientific and cultural-historical significance of the Gesellschaft für deutsche Literatur (1888–1938) in Berlin, with which the educated middle classes contributed both to the creation of the German literary studies in more recent times and to the urban culture of the city. The authors convey a vivid picture of the prolific lecture activities of the Society, the members of which included a number of Jewish academics who were barred from success at the universities as a consequence of academic anti-Semitism.

For quite some time, Stefan George and his circle have attracted considerable attention. The main focus is generally on the persons who belonged to his circle ‑ their individual background, political convictions and sexual preferences. But what does all that have to do with the creation of poetry in the Stefan George circle? The author shows that both aspects are associated with a comprehensive concept of imitation. Via stylistic imitation in writing poems, Stefan George’s aim was to educate his followers to imitate him in the field of ethics and thus to indirectly influence the education of the whole nation.

The work shows the extent to which the thinking of Friedrich Schlegel was characterized by an intense examination of the literature, philosophy and religion of the ancient world ‑ not only in the productive phase of Jena Romanticism, but far beyond that. It highlights the significance of this preoccupation with antiquity for the creation and development of early Romantic poetics and explores the importance of antiquity as a conceptual reference point for the cultural-philosophical, ethical, political and religious positions of Friedrich Schlegel.

Gottfried Keller is known and appreciated as lyric poet only by a few admirers; in anthologies he leads a rather shadowy existence. This book demonstrates that his poems deserve to be resurrected from obscurity. The author presents Keller’s poetry in 16 chapters, classified according to its dominant features and aesthetic form. Each chapter contains a concise commentary on the individual poems and one or more exemplary text interpretations. The intention of the book is to be the first literary presentation of all of Keller’s poetry, taking into account the research on the subject.

The letters convey a picture of Broch’s political discussions with Kahler (World War II, the invention of the atomic bomb, post-war Germany, the founding of Israel, the role of the intellectual). Other topics covered in the letters include the intentions of his novels and his theory of mass hysteria as well as the cultural-historical essay “Hofmannsthal and his Time”. The letters also reveal personal details ‑ old Austrian retrospectives as well as current friendships with women and the efforts of his sponsors to promote his fame.

This book shows Christoph Martin Wieland’s independent position in the literature and culture of around 1800 in a new way: Wieland’s work describes a significant knowledge transfer between the Early Modern Age and the Modern Age. This is achieved by a double reference to the knowledge base of the Enlightenment on the one hand and to the philosophical and aesthetic tradition of antiquity on the other hand. The humanist-educated academic world, religion and the narrative and rhetorical situation of the collected knowledge develop ‑ especially in the late works ‑ into a productive tension with the processes of handing down the knowledge, the conveyance, reworking and translation of this knowledge as well as the dynamics of preservation and “modernization”.

Rudolf Borchardt’s anthologies - Deutsche Denkreden, Ewiger Vorrat deutscher Poesie [German Speeches, Eternal Supply of German Poetry] and Der Deutsche in der Landschaft [The German in the Landscape] (1925-27) - differ not only due to the extraordinary canon of comparable collections they are based on, but particularly due to the ruthlessness with which Borchardt intervenes in the texts he collected. This book analyzes Borchardt’s anthologies in detail for the first time. It places them in their context as central texts of Borchardt’s cultural political program of a ”Creative Restauration“.

Until now, August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845), has not received as much research attention as his more well-known brother Friedrich Schlegel. Besides focusing on August Schlegel’s life and poetic work and his place in literary history, the contributions in this handbook-like volume examine his significance for the development of European Romanticism and its specific aesthetics. Several contributions are devoted to the reception of his theory in Europe. The book sketches a comprehensive picture of this important representative of Romanticism and describes his work and his philological impulses as a European event.

This study undertakes a fundamental (new) evaluation of the intercultural relationship of Jews and Christians between 1150 and 1500. Fragments of the transfer of Jewish motifs and materials into the Christian literature of the German Middle Ages are shown, thus rounding out our picture of medieval German literature in this important aspect. The study makes a further contribution to understanding the relationship of Jews and Christians in all of the German-speaking areas during the German Middle Ages.

In four closely interwoven chapters, this study interprets the texts of one of the longest-lived narrative traditions of the German Middle Ages and attempts a new description of the adventure-filled Dietrich epic from a reception-aesthetic perspective. In doing so, the study gains new insights in the field of narrative constants of the corpus and shows why the texts have enjoyed such long-lived success. The study can also be understood as a test to determine just how ‘literally’ medieval schematic literature can be taken.

This book uses the annotations in W.G. Sebald’s private library (held in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach) to construct an interpretation of his prose style as fundamentally dialectical. Alongside his readings of writers such as Benjamin, Bernhard, Bassani, and Lévi-Strauss, it uses in particular Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s „Dialektik der Aufklärung“ to help develop a close reading of Sebald’s syntax and narrative structures. The key concern of Sebald’s prose emerges not as the Holocaust, but rather the dialectical processes of ‚progress’ and ‚regression’ inherent in history.

This publication of the three 15th century Low German versions of the play of Theophilus is based on the revised edition by Robert Petsch; the arrangement of the text makes it possible to read effortlessly in parallel the versions H and S used. Access to the original text is facilitated both by the facing translation, linked to a detailed linguistic and factual commentary, and by the concluding section, which gives an introduction to the history of the material of the play and its literary formation, and in addition presents a literature report on everything known today about the iconographic tradition.

The story of Amicus and Aurelius was told in many European languages from the late 11th century until after the late Middle Ages. It revolves around two friends who cannot be told apart. The intense bonding between them is stronger than all other social demands and codes of conduct. This study develops the common basic structure of the story and differences in the medieval versions of it. The connection between friendship, force and identity forms the focus of the analysis.

Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is the most widespread medieval German courtly romance. Despite this, work on the history of the text and transmission of this important work has been sadly neglected. The present monograph attempts to determine the status of the transmission branch *T taking account of the present methodological discussion about the concept of 'version'. In addition, it provides comprehensive textual analyses giving insights into the substantive qualities of this version, which has hardly been considered in research.

The outstanding literary significance of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is due in no small part to the fact that this romance from the courtly golden age was still being repeatedly copied at the close of the Middle Ages and was even printed. The monograph examines four manuscripts and early prints from this time of transition in written media in the 15th century; on the one hand, the texts prove significant for textual history through their dependence on the early version *m, largely neglected now, and on the other, the novel layouts used are expressive of their epoch.

The study is devoted to the thought patterns and forms of presentation of transience and renunciation of the world in lyric and epic poetry from the 12th to 15th centuries. As secular poetry is itself 'the world's work', it presents a fortunate fundamental paradox ‑ flight from the world in poetry is always accompanied by a latent reference to the world. Poetic approaches to the problem thus move towards a plurality of thought and aesthetic imagination which undermines the rigid concepts of the theological tradition and in a way prepares the processes of superseding them in the modern age.

The study is devoted to Thomas Mann’s final completed work and attempts to understand why research has so far neglected it; one of the approaches taken is that of reception aesthetics. The author examines the place of the text within Mann’s complete works and its intricate relationships to the very varied contexts without which it cannot be understood ‑ aspects of mythology and philosophy, of the history of medicine and science, of politics and ideology critique reveal a view of frequently underestimated movements and changes but also of hitherto unnoticed constants within the complete works.

The end of the 19th century, which declared progress and the technical and scientific mastering of life as guiding maxims, saw a human capacity moving into prominence - the force of will. In the spectrum between the literature of early modernism and the philosophical and scientific conjunctures of the concept, this study reconstructs the auto-interpretations of modern culture which provide the empowerments and exhaustions of the will. In this, naturalism in particular emerges as a determining factor in the process of literary modernisation around and after 1900.

This study investigates the presentation, evaluation, and literary appropriation of sport, physical education, and physical exercise in the works of Robert Musil. In Musil’s day the modern “body cult” was gradually evolving, including the invention of sport as a modern life-form. The author examines the historical phenomenon of sport via evaluation of contemporary newspapers and specialist manuals, focusing subsequently on the estheticization and semanticization of sport in Musil’s works.

Wolfram von Eschenbach's Willehalm is one of the most-discussed German poetic texts from the High Middle Ages. To date, researchers have been unable to agree how to read this text - as a plea for the ideology of the Crusades, for tolerance or even for humanity. The present study seeks new answers to these important questions by evaluating the text structures predestined to influence the medieval reader or listener in their experience and judgement - when and for whom does the text evoke their empathy, their compassion or even their sympathy?

In German literature and philosophy of the 1930s and 1940s we encounter recurrent images and modes of thought of an ahistoric existence. There were attempts to turn away from modern rationalism and re-think "Man" as a being not determined by intellect, history, or nature. The present study is the first to reconstruct this discourse. In doing so, it opens up new windows on the development of the history of German literature and thought from the end of the Weimar Republic until the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany and on the works produced during this time.

With his Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften ['Literary History of the German Tribes and Landscapes'] Josef Nadler is one of the most important 20th century scholars in German Studies. His concept, which ascribes a particular literary epoch to each "German tribe" has evoked fascination and rejection in equal measure. This first monograph on the subject concerns itself with the basis of his concept, where its problematic aspects lie, how it managed to gain academic recognition from the 1920s onwards and then lost this recognition again after 1945.

This study is the first to essay an appreciation and analysis of the scientist Alexander von Humboldt as a writer. Its focus is literary, and it inquires into the historical preconditions, contexts, and impacts of Humboldt’s successful writing career. Humboldt’s extended and extensive activities as a writer illuminate important aspects of scientific modernization and specialization, the increasingly problematic concept of nature, and the specific history of German education in the 19^th century.

The book homes in on the transitional zone between the interior and the exterior of a literary opus, i.e. its framework. It inquires into the way in which the various border regions of literary texts – title, preface, footnotes, etc. – contribute to their internal unity. In the 18^th century a number of decisive changes took place in this respect. Authors began incorporating the apparently external “appendages” of the framework into the internal organization of their works and to appreciate the functions they perform in esthetic terms.

Scholars nowadays regard nations as changeable constructs in the force-field of politics and culture, and therefore also of literature, and the beginnings of German national consciousness are now dated later than was the case for a long time hitherto. The new insights have far-reaching consequences and are highly relevant today. This is the starting point for the present monograph, which enquires into the literary construction of (pre-)national identity from the perspective of German Studies and subjects current modes of interpretation to critical scrutiny.

The media-historical study addresses a fundamental, culture-historical event of the European pre-modern period: the advancement of the print medium in schools from the 8th to the 17th century. The manifestations and effects of the event on the practical organization of instruction and on text work are depicted by means of a Latin and a German text corpus, namely, the fables of Avian and the German translations of the ‘Disticha Catonis’ from their beginnings in the 13th century, to Martin Opitz in 1629.

The plot of a novel is expected to move purposefully toward an ending. Until the 19^th century, processes within a reality believed to have been created by God were also understood to work in this way. As a result, novels claimed to represent reality through their purposefulness. Because of Charles Darwin, this world outlook entered a state of crisis. The study shows how narratives changed as a result of a new concept of reality as being erratic and random. How could novels depict this conception of reality? This question is discussed with reference to examples from literary and aesthetic texts by Friedrich Theodor Vischer and Gottfried Keller.

This work presents, for the first time together, two early modern everyman plays in which the radical changes of the Reformation era are reflected - a distinctive excerpt from a history of subject matter that reaches from the late antiquity to Hofmannsthal and further to Philip Roth. The introduction, translation and commentary make the works available to a broader audience. The volume also provides insight into the conditions of literary communication in the early modern period and the correlation between New Latin and Early New High German literature.

Biographics has only recently started establishing itself as a field of research, and within it this study on biographical anthropology sets new directions by giving a detailed description of the significance of anthropological and moral-didactic theories and interests for the description of strangers’ life histories in a chronological traverse of over 100 years of history of the genre. In contrast to traditional locations of biographical writing between art and scholarship, novel and historiography, biography is now reviewed as anthropological case history and didactic example. Foci: biographical stances in the 19th century (Varnhagen, Stifter, Laube, Gutzkow, Droysen, Ranke, Smiles, Gottschall) – psychological and biological models – ‘modern biographics’ (Wassermann, Zweig, Ludwig) – national biographical texts (Ritter, Molo, Schäfer).

Over 500 different examples of minnerede have been preserved. The texts, in which a first-person subject articulates his experience of courtly love or his knowledge about it, testify to the strength of a continuous fascination with this topic in the Late Middle Ages. Concentrating on the genre of minnerede, the twelve papers in this volume develop innovative approaches to the relationship of text and culture in the Middle Ages. The starting point is an at first provocative initial thesis, which however leads to the surprising conclusion that what modern readers might find ‘trivial’ in a pejorative sense was a source of great fascination for medieval readers of these discourses of courtly love. Thus attention centres around the density of repetition, the availability of rhetorical gestures, the conventionality and the breaks with convention, the metaphorical indulgence and the construction of gender roles.

The forms of expression of the emotions in medieval literature are subject to different social, communicative and aesthetic conditions than those obtaining in the modern age. Using exemplars of the sentimental medieval love romance, the study draws out processes of historical change in the conventions governing the expression of emotions.

This study treats a central complex of issues which have hitherto received little attention from Goethe scholars, namely the question of the conception and position of the subject in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novels and shorter narrative pieces. In his study the author combines approaches from the history of ideas and poetology in a systematic way and succeeds in demonstrating that the question of the ego, its identity and boundaries is a recurring problem in Goethe's writings, and one that he obviously did not succeed in resolving; at the same time he shows that Goethe's figures, with their internal breaks, already display clear features of the modern subject.

The dramatic works of Jacob Locher (1471-1528) have largely fallen into oblivion. Introduced here in chronological order, they are set within their cultural contexts. In 1495, Jacob Locher was the first German author to stage a tragedy on the classical model. His stage presentations of contemporary events placed the theatre as a means of influencing politics in the Holy Roman Empire. By 1513, he produced a further six plays in Latin relating to politics and science policy.

Considered by researchers to be typical post-classical adaptations of medieval narratives and of lesser literary value, the poems about the Germanic hero Wolfdietrich are among the “best sellers” of the Late Middle Ages. The author investigates the reasons for their success and reveals that the popularity of the texts lies in their unique mixture of narrative elements and the episodic structure of their plots. What counted was not their literary value, but the sheer diversity of the hero’s adventures that satisfied readers’ wide-ranging interests.

This book presents the first systematic overall view of the genesis and form of what has long been discussed by researchers under the heading of “German Orientalism”. Focussing historically on the early 19th century, the author sketches the literary, academic and political conditions under which the modern German image of the Orient has been constituted, and in the process proposes a fundamental theoretical revision to the key text in oriental research, Edward Said’s Orientalism. Detailed individual studies on Goethe’s ‛West-östlicher Divan’, Hauff’s fairy-tales and the oriental fantasies at the Prussian court map out the possible boundaries of an orientalist aesthetic.

The innovative study examines the art theory of Weimarian Classicism, which was also of meaningful importance for the literary aesthetics of, for example, Goethe and his Weimarian friends. The book is a highly relevant fundamental work about the history of Weimarian Classicism for literature specialists as well as art historians, and discusses the central problems in the depiction of European Neoclassicism.

The portrayal of conflicts transmits norms governing the mutual behaviour of men and women. This critical literary study identifies patterns of conflictual processes in such disparate 17th century texts as pastoral poems and regional regulations. It shows how the portrayal of conflicts gives readers an impression of social commitment.

As a precarious part of affirming imperial patriotism (1870-1880), defamed or little-respected historical novels decisively promoted historical reflection and identity formation. These novels expounded the problems of the contemporary handling of history and, therefore, stand at the beginning of the crisis of historism. The current dispositive analysis shows the highly reflexive intertwining of affirmation and subversion, to which the novels are connected with Nietzsche's historical writings, Droysen's historical semiotics, and Menzel's turning away from historical painting, but also those with monument dedications, the jubilee celebration of 1870/71, publishing house advertisements, professor novels, newspaper articles and newspaper illustrations.

The study examines narrative processes and modes of writing in hitherto neglected early works by Franz Kafka. Close readings of the texts reveal how his writing develops towards a dream-like imaginative narration. This analysis of Kafka's early work reveals for the first time the prerequisites for that literary breakthrough in which Kafka entered the literary scene as a narrator in 1912.

Peter-André Alt examines the political role accorded to queens in the Early Modern Age, using 17th century German and English tragedies. With its interdisciplinary approach, the book also considers the pictorial arts and legal history and advances our understanding of the history of sovereignty and the constructions of nature, power, body, and gender underpinning it.

At the beginning of the 18^th century, the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum seemed to coincide with the developing interest in classical culture. But instead of noble innocence and simple grandeur, the visitors discovered a city with small, richly decorated houses with windowless, often obscenely painted rooms. The reports of these travellers try to reach a balance between these illustrations and the classical picture of antiquity.

Selbst seine kritischen Rezensenten mussten einräumen, dass Vulpius (1762 - 1827) insbesondere nach dem Erfolg seines Räuberromans Rinaldo Rinaldini (1799) zu den wahrhaft populären Autoren seiner Zeit zu zählen war, 'berühmt wie ein Sprichwort'. Trotz etlicher Versuche im hohen Stil tragischer Formen, die selbst am Wiener Hoftheater Beachtung fanden, wurde er mit über 30 dramatischen Texte und annähernd 70 Romanen zu einem der meistgelesenen Unterhaltungsautoren der Goethezeit, dem selbst Thomas Mann in "Lotte in Weimar" seinen Tribut nicht versagte. Wenngleich die literarische Kritik mitunter wünschte, dass seine 'Fruchtbarkeit nicht permanent' sei, gelang es Goethes Schwager Vulpius, ausgehend vom galanten Unterhaltungston Wielands, vor allem erzählende Genres zu entwickeln, deren Montagetechnik unmittelbar auf die serielle Produktion der Kolportageromane des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts wirkte. Verblüffend muss der heutige Leser konstatieren, dass auf dem Revers der glänzenden Medaille Weimarer Klassik eine 'triviale Klassik' ihre Spuren hinterlassen hat.

Die vorliegende mit einer umfangreichen Einführung versehene Ausgabe seiner Korrespondenz umfasst etwa 750 Briefe von und ca. 160 Briefe an Vulpius, die das gesamte Feld seiner Tätigkeit erschließen und eine Innenperspektive der Organisation kultureller Institutionen des Klassischen Weimar eröffnen. Ergänzt um mehrere Hundert amtliche Schriften und erschlossene Briefe, über die in Regestform berichtet wird, dokumentiert dieses Briefkorpus verwaltungstechnische wie ästhetische Entscheidungsprozesse innerhalb des Herzoglichen Hoftheaters, für das Vulpius als Dramaturg Goethes die Bühneneinrichtungen nahezu sämtlicher Opern und Singspiele in den 1790er Jahren vornahm und vor allem der Herzoglichen Bibliothek, in der er eine Karriere vom Registrator bis zum die Geschäfte leitenden Herzoglichen Bibliothekar durchlief. Vor allem als von den Zeitgenossen geschätzter Verfasser und Herausgeber vorwiegend lokalhistorischer Zeitschriften wie Die Vorzeit und den Curiositäten hat auch Vulpius seinen Anteil an der Entwicklung öffentlichkeitsorientierter Strukturen des kollektiven Gedächtnisses.

Der zweite Band enthält einen umfassenden philologisch-historischen Kommentar.

Um 1500 floriert ein poetisches Verfahren, das Metaphern von Sprichwörtern nutzt, um daraus Holzschnitte oder Erzählungen zu gewinnen. Es bildet sich die neue Gattung des Sprichwortbilder-Buchs. Exemplarisch wird dafür das berühmte Narrenschiff analysiert. Ein narratives Pendant ist der Ulenspiegel, dessen Schwänke komplett auf Sprichwörtern fußen. Narrative und piktoriale Varianten gehören zu demselben Verfahren, was intertextuelle Bezüge belegen. Das Verfahren wird u.a. satirisch genutzt, die Sprichwortbilder aber auch mnemonisch oder als Rebus. Rezipienten sind neben dem "Volk" Bürger, Gelehrte und Adlige. Die literarischen Bezüge sind vielfältig: zum illustrierten Flugblatt, zur Hieroglyphik und Emblematik oder zur Menippea.

Das literarhistorische Thema wird erstmals in systematischer Grundlegung und umfassender Synopse behandelt.

Das Buch bietet die erste Gesamtdarstellung zu einer Gattung, die von der Romantik-Forschung kaum beachtet wurde. Sämtliche Dramen von Tieck, Brentano, Arnim und Eichendorff werden textnah und im übergreifenden Werk- und Epochenzusammenhang interpretiert. Witzige Spielgemälde, literarische Experimente in Szenenform, kombinieren und steigern Varianten der europäischen Dramengeschichte (Shakespeare, Calderón u.a.) auf neuartige - poetische - Weise.

Die interdisziplinär angelegte Untersuchung widmet sich der Entstehung und Entwicklung der Anthropologie im 18. Jahrhundert und bietet eine umfassende Bestandsaufnahme des nur schwer überschaubaren anthropologischen Denkens vor seinem kultur- und problemgeschichtlichen Hintergrund. Aus vier in sich abgeschlossenen, zugleich aufeinander aufbauenden Studien ergibt sich so eine Geschichte der Anthropologieentwicklung im 18. Jahrhundert.

Die Arbeit analysiert Patrick Süskinds Gesamtwerk im Rahmen der postmodernen Wiederkehr des Erzählens. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Fragen von Produktion und Rezeption, Zeitlichkeit und Intermedialität sowie von Räumlichkeit und Figurengestaltung. Leitende Perspektive ist die erzählerische Reduktion von Komplexität durch die sinnlich (aisthetisch) eingeschränkte Weltwahrnehmung - Hören, Riechen, Sehen - der Figuren.

That the alleged Sturm und Drang writer J.M.R. Lenz was once a long-time student of Immanuel Kant is a fact that literary studies has largely ignored up to now. The present study is the first to extensively examine Kant's strong influence on Lenz's intellectual and artistic developments. The result of this study is not only a modified understanding of Lenz's literary works, but also of a literary movement in which Lenz was wrongfully extolled alongside Goethe as one of its protagonists.

Modern literature contains a conspicuously large number of lists, catalogues and other enumerative forms. What functions do they perform? What do we actually do when we enumerate? Inventorise? Classify? Describe? Recite a litany? Memorise?… And when does this become art?

Die 'Poetik der Sinne' ist für Rilkes Spätwerk zentral und unterstreicht seine Bedeutung für die Lyrik der Moderne. Ausgehend vom Bild der 'fünffingrigen Hand' der Sinne im Aufsatz "Ur-Geräusch" (1919) erschließt die Arbeit erstmals die poetologische Argumentation des Autors und weist sie in der dichterischen Praxis nach. Rilkes Poetik folgt weder einer Hierarchie der Sinne noch synästhetischen Konzepten; vielmehr halten alle fünf Sinne auf eine Grenze des sinnlich Erfahrbaren zu. Das Sehen, werkgeschichtlich bislang leitend, wird im Spätwerk nicht durch das Hören als neuem Leitsinn abgelöst, sondern bleibt in umgewerteter Weise für das poetische Raumkonzept unabdingbar. Sehen und Hören sind überdies eingespannt in eine Konfiguration der Sinne, in der sich die Spannung zwischen Faßbarkeit und Unfaßbarkeit realisiert.

The courtly romances still bear witness to the marvellous narrative culture of the Middle Ages. Little is known, however, about the actual narrative practice. When, where and on which occasions were these stories told? What social functions did the narration perform? What were the rules of narration that applied in performance? Following these central questions and using modern methods of textual analysis, the ten papers in this volume find a new approach to medieval narrative culture.

Self-contained interpretations of four picaresque novels - namely Albertinus' Landtstörtzer Gusman (1615), Dürer's Lauf der Welt Und Spiel des Glücks (1668), Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus Teutsch (1669) and Beer's Corylo (1679) - combine to give an outline of the history of the picaresque novel and

In order to combine their facts and make sense of them, writers of history in the 16th century made use of literary genres and representational strategies. Using four chronicles, the 'Truchsessenchronik', Küng's Wurttemberg Chronicle, the 'Zollernchronik' and the 'Zimmerische Chronik', Professor Wolf examines the function of a literarisation of history, together with the political and dynastic interests involved and the authors' understanding of truth and their attempts to interpret the world.

Das vielzitierte Musikalische in Jean Pauls Dichtung - seit 200 Jahren einer der wichtigsten Rezeptionstopoi in der Jean-Paul-Forschung, aber niemals überzeugend rekonstruiert - wird in dieser Arbeit in den Landschaften identifiziert und erstmals systematisch dargestellt.

Im ersten Teil ordnet Julia Cloot zunächst Jean Paul in die Kunstästhetik des späten 18. Jahrhunderts genauer ein, während sie im zweiten Teil die als musikalisch empfundenen Erscheinungen im Erzähltext aufspürt und deutet. Dabei geht sie von zwei Thesen aus: zum einen erweisen sich die musikästhetischen Diskurse der Zeit um 1800 als Prätexte für Jean Pauls Romanschaffen, d. h. als geheime Texte, die den Suggestionen erklingender Musik zu unterlegen sind; zum anderen macht Musik in den Romanen Jean Pauls nicht nur die erzählte Zeit als solche erfahrbar, sondern spannt auch imaginäre Räume zwischen den Polen von Nähe und Ferne auf.

Damit beschränkt sich Julia Cloot nicht nur auf die Analyse der Erzähltechnik, sondern sie untersucht die Wechselwirkung zwischen Musik und Sprache im Werk Jean Pauls.

The study examines the function of titles, using Goethe's poems as exemplars. In so doing, it not only opens a new approach to the poet's lyric work, but also gives insights into the 'essence' of a previously neglected formal element which can help understanding of the text and its characteristics.

Literature does not just represent, it also invents. When the modern German book market began developing in the second half of the eighteenth century, literary texts were populated by innumerable writers, who appeared as characters. This study examines how literary characters function as individuals, types, and symbols – and how the new reality of professional writing could quickly become an invention once more.