In recent decades the conceptualization of space and place as social constructs, rather than static settings has received significant attention and has been re-evaluated with an emphasis on the cultural, social and political practice. This shift moves away from regarding space as fixed, unchanging container towards a realization that space is always inextricably linked with social practice and cultural signification. Thus, the study of spatial practices interrogates human action in different spaces, human agency in the production of space, and space in its capacity to prompt human action. By focusing on human action in manipulating and subverting space, and thereby creating multiple coexisting and overlapping spatialities, the interest also shifts from semiotic correlations in cultural expressions to events, practices, material and medial embodiment of culture.This collection of essays approaches the study of space and place from a historically inclusive perspective; it gives new insights into historical shifts and changes in the construction and perception of space as well as historical developments and diachonicity of literary, social, and architectural sites and places. It aims to gather a number of case studies in order to collect historically concrete evidence of such spatial practices as reflected in literature and art as well as in sources pertaining to the social and political life of premodern, early modern, and modern era.

The study examines textual representations of women’s laughter and smiling and their imagined connection to female virtue in a wide variety of discourses and contexts of the German Middle Ages, including medieval epic, ecclesiastical texts, conduct literature, lyric, and sculpture. By engaging with the competing, and at times contradictory, views of female laughter, it reaffirms a disputatious nature of medieval culture, in which multiple views of femininity, sexuality, and virtue stood in a conflicting, yet productive, dialogue with one another. The society that emerges when one looks at medieval German texts is always ambivalent: it thrives on and enjoys talking about sensuality and eroticism, while being constrained by the conventions of polite behavior and the fear of sin; it relies on the ritual use of laughter, while marking it as a sign of lust and perdition. Women’s laughter thus offers an important way into understanding medieval views of gender because it combines physicality with shifting and conflicting cultural norms.

This volume challenges traditional views of women’s engagement with text in late-medieval convents, moving beyond the idea of passive reception to highlight their active and creative use of writing. It explores diverse literary activities, such as reading aloud, singing, redacting, translating, and authoring. Through detailed case studies, the contributions investigate how factors like historical developments, social shifts, communal life, and personal networks influenced women’s access to and interaction with text. The studies emphasise the fluidity of textual transmission and adaptation within convents, demonstrating that women’s text use was highly contextualized and dynamic. Ultimately, the volume seeks to diversify our understanding of readership by examining specific social and literary contexts, and questioning the essentialising of gender differences in reading practices.

Medieval medicine could do little to aid the seriously ill. Popular attitudes toward the ›arzet‹, as reflected in the vernacular literature of the age, ran the gamut from admiration to skepticism to mockery to rejection, across a range of genres from chivalric epics to mystical texts. The university-trained doctor, schooled in the Galenic system, strove to set himself above the many other competing healers and outright charlatans offering their services to the ill. The task was made all the more difficult given the impossibility often to distinguish medicine from magic. Surprisingly, the critique of the medical profession never quite reached the level of contempt that would, centuries later, be directed at doctors in the age of COVID, when medicine had advanced so far and achieved so much.

In recent decades the conceptualization of space and place as social constructs, rather than static settings has received significant attention and has been re-evaluated with an emphasis on the cultural, social and political practice. This shift moves away from regarding space as fixed, unchanging container towards a realization that space is always inextricably linked with social practice and cultural signification. Thus, the study of spatial practices interrogates human action in different spaces, human agency in the production of space, and space in its capacity to prompt human action. By focusing on human action in manipulating and subverting space, and thereby creating multiple coexisting and overlapping spatialities, the interest also shifts from semiotic correlations in cultural expressions to events, practices, material and medial embodiment of culture.This collection of essays approaches the study of space and place from a historically inclusive perspective; it gives new insights into historical shifts and changes in the construction and perception of space as well as historical developments and diachonicity of literary, social, and architectural sites and places. It aims to gather a number of case studies in order to collect historically concrete evidence of such spatial practices as reflected in literature and art as well as in sources pertaining to the social and political life of premodern, early modern, and modern era.

The study examines textual representations of women’s laughter and smiling and their imagined connection to female virtue in a wide variety of discourses and contexts of the German Middle Ages, including medieval epic, ecclesiastical texts, conduct literature, lyric, and sculpture. By engaging with the competing, and at times contradictory, views of female laughter, it reaffirms a disputatious nature of medieval culture, in which multiple views of femininity, sexuality, and virtue stood in a conflicting, yet productive, dialogue with one another. The society that emerges when one looks at medieval German texts is always ambivalent: it thrives on and enjoys talking about sensuality and eroticism, while being constrained by the conventions of polite behavior and the fear of sin; it relies on the ritual use of laughter, while marking it as a sign of lust and perdition. Women’s laughter thus offers an important way into understanding medieval views of gender because it combines physicality with shifting and conflicting cultural norms.

This volume challenges traditional views of women’s engagement with text in late-medieval convents, moving beyond the idea of passive reception to highlight their active and creative use of writing. It explores diverse literary activities, such as reading aloud, singing, redacting, translating, and authoring. Through detailed case studies, the contributions investigate how factors like historical developments, social shifts, communal life, and personal networks influenced women’s access to and interaction with text. The studies emphasise the fluidity of textual transmission and adaptation within convents, demonstrating that women’s text use was highly contextualized and dynamic. Ultimately, the volume seeks to diversify our understanding of readership by examining specific social and literary contexts, and questioning the essentialising of gender differences in reading practices.

Medieval medicine could do little to aid the seriously ill. Popular attitudes toward the ›arzet‹, as reflected in the vernacular literature of the age, ran the gamut from admiration to skepticism to mockery to rejection, across a range of genres from chivalric epics to mystical texts. The university-trained doctor, schooled in the Galenic system, strove to set himself above the many other competing healers and outright charlatans offering their services to the ill. The task was made all the more difficult given the impossibility often to distinguish medicine from magic. Surprisingly, the critique of the medical profession never quite reached the level of contempt that would, centuries later, be directed at doctors in the age of COVID, when medicine had advanced so far and achieved so much.