Niklaus Largier – författare

From medieval contemplation to the early modern cosmopoetic imagination, to the invention of aesthetic experience, to nineteenth-century decadent literature, and to early-twentieth century essayistic forms of writing and film, Niklaus Largier shows that mystical practices have been reinvented across the centuries, generating a notion of possibility with unexpected critical potential. Arguing for a new understanding of mystical experience, Largier foregrounds the ways in which devotion builds on experimental practices of figuration in order to shape perception, emotions, and thoughts anew. Largier illuminates how devotional practices are invested in the creation of possibilities, and this investment has been a key element in a wide range of experimental engagements in literature and art from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and most recently in forms of "new materialism." Read as a history of the senses and emotions, the book argues that mystical and devotional practices have long been invested in the modulating and reconfiguring of sensation, affects, and thoughts. Read as a book about practices of figuration, it questions ordinary protocols of interpretation in the humanities, and the priority given to a hermeneutic understanding of texts and cultural artifacts.

From medieval contemplation to the early modern cosmopoetic imagination, to the invention of aesthetic experience, to nineteenth-century decadent literature, and to early-twentieth century essayistic forms of writing and film, Niklaus Largier shows that mystical practices have been reinvented across the centuries, generating a notion of possibility with unexpected critical potential. Arguing for a new understanding of mystical experience, Largier foregrounds the ways in which devotion builds on experimental practices of figuration in order to shape perception, emotions, and thoughts anew. Largier illuminates how devotional practices are invested in the creation of possibilities, and this investment has been a key element in a wide range of experimental engagements in literature and art from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and most recently in forms of "new materialism." Read as a history of the senses and emotions, the book argues that mystical and devotional practices have long been invested in the modulating and reconfiguring of sensation, affects, and thoughts. Read as a book about practices of figuration, it questions ordinary protocols of interpretation in the humanities, and the priority given to a hermeneutic understanding of texts and cultural artifacts.

From medieval contemplation to the early modern cosmopoetic imagination, to the invention of aesthetic experience, to nineteenth-century decadent literature, and to early-twentieth century essayistic forms of writing and film, Niklaus Largier shows that mystical practices have been reinvented across the centuries, generating a notion of possibility with unexpected critical potential. Arguing for a new understanding of mystical experience, Largier foregrounds the ways in which devotion builds on experimental practices of figuration in order to shape perception, emotions, and thoughts anew. Largier illuminates how devotional practices are invested in the creation of possibilities, and this investment has been a key element in a wide range of experimental engagements in literature and art from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and most recently in forms of "new materialism." Read as a history of the senses and emotions, the book argues that mystical and devotional practices have long been invested in the modulating and reconfiguring of sensation, affects, and thoughts. Read as a book about practices of figuration, it questions ordinary protocols of interpretation in the humanities, and the priority given to a hermeneutic understanding of texts and cultural artifacts.

Am Schicksal der Figur des Diogenes von Sinope, des berühmten kynischen Philosophen der Antike, ist in hervorragender Weise die spätantike, mittelalterliche und frühneuzeitliche Rhetorik des Exemplums darzustellen, sind doch sämtliche Anekdoten, die über das Leben des Kynikers berichten, moralisierende Exempelerzählungen. Es läßt sich so anhand verschiedener Kontexte, in denen die Exempla verwendet werden (Predigten, Lehrbücher, Fabeln, Geschichtsbücher), eine Logik des Exemplums rekonstruieren, die uns zugleich eine longue durée moralphilosophischer Rhetorik vor Augen treten läßt. Dabei zeigt sich einerseits eine erstaunliche Kontinuität, die bis ins späte 20. Jahrhundert reicht, und zugleich eine Vielfalt an Erzählvarianten und Deutungsmöglichkeiten, anhand derer sich Traditionen der Allegorese, aber etwa auch der Übergang vom pragmatisch-exemplarischen zum novellistisch-unterhaltenden Erzählen neu verstehen lassen.

Die vorliegende Studie sichtet und analysiert erstmals die breite und fast unüberschaubare Masse an Quellen des 4. bis 17. Jahrhunderts, die Diogenesanekdoten und -exempel überliefern. Ein großer Teil dieser Quellen wird in der Arbeit ediert, ebenso eine von Diogenes handelnde, von Erasmus abhängige Historia des 16. Jahrhunderts. Die Texte dokumentieren die Faszination des Kynikers vor allem als moralphilosophische Exempelgestalt des Mittelalters und als Kulturkritiker der Frühen Neuzeit. Sie machen zugleich das intertextuelle Feld faßbar, in dem der Kyniker als kultureller Typus Gestalt annimmt und in dem er in Beziehung steht zu ähnlichen Figuren (Narr, Heiliger).