Kulturelle Identitaeten. Studien zur Entwicklung der europaeischen Kulturen der Neuzeit / Cultural Identities. Studies in Early Modern and Modern European Cultures – serie

Harry Potter’s global triumph is without precedent. Economically it is the most successful children’s book ever published and at the same time it has become the most widely discussed text for young adults. Why is this so? What does the text offer to its readers? Muggles, Monsters and Magicians deals with these issues and answers these questions. On the basis of a carefully conducted text-based analysis of the whole series it argues that, from a purely literary point of view, Pottermania is not entirely comprehensible. It identifies Rowling’s narrative techniques, explains the world view underlying this series and links it to the literary genres of children’s and fantastic literature.

This volume assembles critical essays on the relationship between historiography and fiction from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century and beyond. The contributions stem from distinguished scholars, junior faculty and Ph.D.-students, and thus represent a wide range of critical approaches and interests. All of the essays in the book, however, reflect recent debates about the tenacity of postmodernist epistemologies and the attendant revaluation of positivistic methodologies.

This book investigates the contemporary conceptions of the Jewish figure on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. Taking on what has been said about Shakespeare’s Shylock and Marlowe’s Barabas in the last centuries, the author analyses seven other, largely ignored plays to enhance the image we have today of the early modern stage-Jew. In tracing the image of Jewish figures in medieval literature and in early modern travel reports, the foundation of the Elizabethan idea of ‘Jewishness’ is laid out. Further, the author challenges some arguments which have become axiomatic over time, such as the notion of the red-haired, hook-nosed comical villain. The book also contains a first edition of the Latin university play «Machiavellus» by Nathaniel Wiburne, accomplished by Michael Becker and Saskia Zinsser-Krys.