Spectral Sea

Stephen G. Nichols is James M. Beall Professor Emeritus of French and Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Medieval Academy of America, his Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography received the MLA’s Lowell Prize. He holds an honorary Docteur ès Lettres from the University of Geneva and is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres. He received the Humboldt Research Prize in 2008 and 2015. He’s published 25 books, most recently From Parchment to Cyberspace: Medieval Literature in the Digital Age.Joachim Küpper is Professor of Comparative Literature and Romance Literatures at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He has published literary, historiographical, and philosophical texts from Homer to the twentieth century. He won the Heinz-Meyer Leibnitz prize as well as the Leibniz prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. He is currently working on a network theory of cultural dynamics (European Research Council Advanced Grant). He is a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, a member of the German National Academy of Sciences/Leopoldina as well as of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Andreas Kablitz is Professor of Romance Philology and Chair of the Romanisches Seminar of the Philosophische Fakultät of the Universität zu Köln. He is also the director of the Petrarca-Institute, member of the editorial board of the Romanistisches Jahrbuch and of the academic committee of the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung. In 1997 he was awarded the Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In 2007 he was to the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). In 2010 the President of the Italian Republic named him Commendatore of the Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana. Although his recent research interest focuses on Dante, his publications cover a wide range of topics from French, Italian and English literature, particularly, Petrarch, Tasso, and other Italian and French Renaissance authors as well as Shakespeare, Thomas Mann, and Oscar Wilde. He has also written on Aristotle, Kant, and Wittgenstein.

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• Contributors – Preface – Introduction – Marina Rustow: On the Salutary Effects of Empire: Muslims, Jews, and the Calculus of Benefaction – Daniel Heller-Roazen: Thought Things: Greek, Arabic, Latin – Stephen G. Nichols: Greek Fathers, Roman Tyrants, Spanish Martyrs: The Invention of European Vernacular Language – Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet: The Gaze of the Other: Decentered Vision and Language in Fifteenth-Century French Poets – Jan-Dirk Müller: The Uncanny Beyond: The Mediterranean as Imaginary Frontier of Medieval Christian Culture – Axel Rüth: Crusade Witness: Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis – Gerhard Regn: Rome, Italy and the End of the History of Salvation: Petrarch’s Italia mia – Joachim Küpper: Sentimental Revivals: Gérard de Nerval’s Voyage en Orient – David E. Wellbery: "Geist" as Medium of Art: Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan – Index.