Andreas Kablitz - Böcker

How much can we know about sensory experience in the Middle Ages? While few would question that the human senses encountered a profoundly different environment in the medieval world, two distinct and opposite interpretations of that encounter have emerged-one of high sensual intensity and one of extreme sensual starvation. Presenting original, cutting-edge scholarship, Stephen G. Nichols, Andreas Kablitz, Alison Calhoun, and their team of distinguished colleagues transport us to the center of this lively debate. Organized within historical, thematic, and contextual frameworks, these essays examine the psychological, rhetorical, and philological complexities of sensory perception from the classical period to the late Middle Ages. Contributors: Marina Brownlee, Princeton University; Alison Calhoun, Johns Hopkins University; Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University; Daniel Heller-Roazen, Princeton University; Andreas Kablitz, Universitat zu Koln; Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, University of Zurich; Joachim Kupper, Freie Universitat Berlin; Stephen G. Nichols, Johns Hopkins University; David Nirenberg, University of Chicago; Gabrielle M.Spiegel, Johns Hopkins University; Eugene Vance, University of Washington; Gregor Vogt-Spira, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universitat Greifswald; Rainer Warning, University of Munich; Heather Webb, Ohio State University; Michel Zink, College de France.

How much can we know about sensory experience in the Middle Ages? While few would question that the human senses encountered a profoundly different environment in the medieval world, two distinct and opposite interpretations of that encounter have emerged-one of high sensual intensity and one of extreme sensual starvation. Presenting original, cutting-edge scholarship, Stephen G. Nichols, Andreas Kablitz, Alison Calhoun, and their team of distinguished colleagues transport us to the center of this lively debate. Organized within historical, thematic, and contextual frameworks, these essays examine the psychological, rhetorical, and philological complexities of sensory perception from the classical period to the late Middle Ages. Contributors: Marina Brownlee, Princeton University; Alison Calhoun, Johns Hopkins University; Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University; Daniel Heller-Roazen, Princeton University; Andreas Kablitz, Universitat zu Koln; Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, University of Zurich; Joachim Kupper, Freie Universitat Berlin; Stephen G. Nichols, Johns Hopkins University; David Nirenberg, University of Chicago; Gabrielle M.Spiegel, Johns Hopkins University; Eugene Vance, University of Washington; Gregor Vogt-Spira, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universitat Greifswald; Rainer Warning, University of Munich; Heather Webb, Ohio State University; Michel Zink, College de France.

From the dawn of ancient civilization to modern times, the Mediterranean Sea looms in the imagination of the people living on its shores as a space of myth and adventure, of conquest and confrontation, of migration and settlement, of religious ferment and conflict. Since its waters linked the earliest empires and centers of civilization, the Mediterranean generated globalization and multiculturalism. It gave birth to the three great monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—religions of the book, of the land and of the sea. Over the centuries, the Mediterranean witnessed the rise and fall of some of the oldest civilizations in the world. And as these cultures succeeded one another, century after century, each left a tantalizing imprint on later societies. Like the ancient artifacts constantly washed up from its depths, the lost cities and monuments abandoned in its deserts or sunk beneath its waves, Mediterranean topography and culture is a chaotic present spread over a palimpsest many layers deep.No region grappled more continuously with, nor was more deeply marked by Mediterranean culture and history than Europe. Europe’s religions, its languages, its learning, its laws, its sense of history, even its food and agriculture, all derived from Greek, Roman, and—in the Middle Ages—Muslim and Jewish cultures. The essays in this book lay bare the dynamics of cultural confrontation between Europe and the Mediterranean world from medieval to modern times. One momentous result of this engagement was the creation of vernacular languages and the diverse body of literature, history, and art arising from them. The achievements of the arts reveal—to borrow a geological metaphor—the grinding tectonic pates of Mediterranean cultures and languages butting up against pre-existing European strata.

From the dawn of ancient civilization to modern times, the Mediterranean Sea looms in the imagination of the people living on its shores as a space of myth and adventure, of conquest and confrontation, of migration and settlement, of religious ferment and conflict. Since its waters linked the earliest empires and centers of civilization, the Mediterranean generated globalization and multiculturalism. It gave birth to the three great monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—religions of the book, of the land and of the sea. Over the centuries, the Mediterranean witnessed the rise and fall of some of the oldest civilizations in the world. And as these cultures succeeded one another, century after century, each left a tantalizing imprint on later societies. Like the ancient artifacts constantly washed up from its depths, the lost cities and monuments abandoned in its deserts or sunk beneath its waves, Mediterranean topography and culture is a chaotic present spread over a palimpsest many layers deep.No region grappled more continuously with, nor was more deeply marked by Mediterranean culture and history than Europe. Europe’s religions, its languages, its learning, its laws, its sense of history, even its food and agriculture, all derived from Greek, Roman, and—in the Middle Ages—Muslim and Jewish cultures. The essays in this book lay bare the dynamics of cultural confrontation between Europe and the Mediterranean world from medieval to modern times. One momentous result of this engagement was the creation of vernacular languages and the diverse body of literature, history, and art arising from them. The achievements of the arts reveal—to borrow a geological metaphor—the grinding tectonic pates of Mediterranean cultures and languages butting up against pre-existing European strata.

Das komplexe Verhältnis von Religion und Rationalität wird hier anhand einer Vielfalt von Heiligen Texten untersucht, einem Medium, das eine Einordnung von Religion in rationale Zusammenhänge nahelegt. Neben Schriften aus Judentum, Christentum und Islam werden Zaubersprüche und Mythen, zeitweise religiös überhöhte Texte wie die des Marxismus, philosophische Texte der Aufklärung und andere Medien wie das moderne Bild religiösen Inhalts behandelt. Statt einer Gegenläufigkeit von Rationalität und Religion wird deutlich, dass Rationalität eine wesentliche Rolle für die Entwicklung der Religion und ihre internen Differenzierungen spielt. Der Umgang mit Heiligen Texten zeigt den Spannungsreichtum der Thematik in besonderer Weise: Heilige Texte haben immer die Möglichkeit des Rückzugs vor dem rationalen Zugriff mit dem Verweis auf ihre transzendentale Dimension. Zugleich beweist aber die im Heiligen Text manifestierte Religion im Wechselspiel mit diesem Zugriff und im Bestehen mit ihm die Berechtigung ihres Geltungsanspruchs immer wieder von neuem.

The essays on Dante collected in this volume interpret his Commedia as the attempt of a renewal of the Christian work of salvation by means of literature. In the view of his author, the sacro poema responds to a historical moment of extreme danger, in which nothing less than the redemption of mankind is at stake. The degradation of the medieval Roman Empire and the rise of an early capitalism in his birth town Florence, entailing a pernicious moral depravation for Dante, are to him nothing else but a variety of symptoms of the backfall of the world into its state prior to its salvation by the incarnation of Christ. Dante presents his journey into the other world as an endeavor to escape these risks. Mobilizing the traditional procedures of literary discourse for this purpose, he aims at writing a text that overcomes the deficiencies of the traditional Book of Revelation that, on its own terms, no longer seems capable of fulfilling his traditional tasks. The immense revaluation of poetry implied in Dante’s Commedia, thus, contemporarily involves the claim of a substantial weakness of the institutional religious discourse.

Welchen Stellenwert haben Texte in verschiedenen Kulturen? Dieser Frage nähert sich der vorliegende Band von verschiedenen Seiten. Beginnend mit der semiotischen Vorgeschichte der unabhängig voneinander entstandenen Schriftsprachen in Mesopotamien, Ägypten und Mesoamerika und ihrer linguistischen Konvergenz, wird sodann das Verhältnis von Schriftlichkeit und Mündlichkeit unter sinologischen und japanologischen Gesichtspunkten beleuchtet. Mit Blick auf Europa spannt sich der Bogen von den unterschiedlichen Wegen, die die in der lateinischen Kultur vorausgesetzte Einheit von Sprache und Schrift bei der Entstehung der europäischen Volkssprachen ging, bis zu Überlegungen zu Genettes Texttheorie. Das Phänomen Text aus kulturübergreifender Perspektive zu untersuchen, ist wichtig, denn schließlich lassen sich in der geistes- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschungsgeschichte zahlreiche Beispiele für eine eurozentristisch verkürzte Interpretation außereuropäischer Kulturpraktiken anführen, so dass sicher geglaubte Erkenntnisse über die genuinen Leistungen der Sprache oder des Textes allenfalls vor dem Hintergrund der europäisch-westlichen Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte gewisse Geltung für sich beanspruchen können, nicht aber darüber hinaus.

More than a hundred years after the publication of Cours de linguistique générale , Saussure is still considered the ‘revolutionary founder’ of structuralism. Saussure’s name is almost symbiotically connected with the idea of structuralism. This volume opens the view from different disciplinary perspectives for a Saussurean thinking also beyond the boundaries of the structuralist epistemes.

The essays on Dante collected in this volume interpret his Commedia as the attempt of a renewal of the Christian work of salvation by means of literature. In the view of his author, the sacro poema responds to a historical moment of extreme danger, in which nothing less than the redemption of mankind is at stake. The degradation of the medieval Roman Empire and the rise of an early capitalism in his birth town Florence, entailing a pernicious moral depravation for Dante, are to him nothing else but a variety of symptoms of the backfall of the world into its state prior to its salvation by the incarnation of Christ. Dante presents his journey into the other world as an endeavor to escape these risks. Mobilizing the traditional procedures of literary discourse for this purpose, he aims at writing a text that overcomes the deficiencies of the traditional Book of Revelation that, on its own terms, no longer seems capable of fulfilling his traditional tasks. The immense revaluation of poetry implied in Dante’s Commedia, thus, contemporarily involves the claim of a substantial weakness of the institutional religious discourse.