More than ever before do we need the critical engagement with religious tolerance. Historical perspectives allow us to gain access to the discourse on this universal, often very contested topic. Already the Middle Ages and the early modern age witnessed the emergence of significant voices addressing toleration, if not even tolerance. This anthology opens many new perspectives toward this centrally important topic, adding a cultural-historical, religious, literary, and philosophical dimensi...

The Secret in Medieval Literature: Alternative Worlds in the Middle Ages explores the many strange phenomena, both in the Middle Ages and today, that do not find any good rational explanations. Those do not pertain to magic or to religion in the traditional sense of the word; they are secrets of an epistemological kind and tend to defy human rationality, without being marginal or irrelevant. At first sight, we might believe that we face elements from fairy tales, but the medieval ...

The history of the United States has been deeply determined by Germans throughout time, but hardly anyone has noticed that this was the case in the Southwest as well, known as Arizona/Sonora today, in the eighteenth century as Pimería Alta. This was the area where the Jesuits operated all by themselves, and many of them, at least since the 1730s, originated from the Holy Roman Empire, hence were identified as Germans (including Swiss, Austrians, Bohemians, Croats, Alsatians, and Poles). Mo...

englische Haikus, die über die Welt, Natur und die Menschen reflektieren und zum Nachdenken anregen. Sie sind alle in Reaktion auf meine eigenen Fotos entstanden, die ich oftmals auf FB veröffentlicht habe.

Although courtly literature is often associated with a chivalrous and idyllic life, the fifteen original essays in this collection demonstrate that the quest for love in the world of medieval courtly literature was underpinned by violence. Lovers were rejected, mistrust ruled, rape was a rampant problem, and marriage was often characterized by brutality. Albrecht Classen brings together an outstanding group of historical, cultural, and literary scholars in this volume to investigate the co...

Every human being knows that we are walking through life following trails, whether we are aware of them or not. Medieval poets, from the anonymous composer of Beowulf to Marie de France, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Guillaume de Lorris to Petrarch and Heinrich Kaufringer, predicated their works on the notion of the trail and elaborated on its epistemological function. We can grasp here an essential concept that determines much of medieval and early modern Europe...

Despite a modern tendency to describe medieval women as suppressed and marginalized, a critical reading of relevant texts by female poets/writers demonstrates that women all over Europe in the premodern era enjoyed considerable freedom to express themselves and to contribute to the literary discourse of their time. This book brings together representative poets from Germany, England, France, Spain, Hungary, and Austria and thus develops an innovative pan-European perspective spanning from ...

Although there were a number of outstanding women writers of the late middle ages, it was not thought that women composed lyric poetry. Albrecht Classen's careful investigation of archival material, however, proves this to be a misconception, and in this volume he presents a selection of secular love songs and religious hymns composed by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century German women poets, here translated for the first time, based on his two-volume editionin the original language. Many wom...

Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval European Literature aims to examine and unearth the critical investigations of toleration and tolerance presented in literary texts of the Middle Ages. In contrast to previous approaches, this volume identifies new methods of interpreting conventional classifications of toleration and tolerance through the emergence of multi-level voices in literary, religious, and philosophical discourses of authorities in medieval literature. Accordingly, thi...

People in the Middle Ages and the early modern age more often suffered from imprisonment and enslavement than we might have assumed. Incarceration and Slavery in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age approaches these topics from a wide variety of perspectives and demonstrates collectively the great relevance of the issues involved. Both incarceration and slavery were (and continue to be) most painful experiences, and no one was guaranteed exemption from it. High-ranking nobles ...

Viele träumen von Hawai'i, dem 50. Staat der USA. In der Werbung gibt es viele beeindruckende Bilder von diesen Inseln, aber nur wenn man dort länger lebt und mit der Kamera genauer hinschaut, und dazu auch noch Lyrik in der Gattung der Haiku verfasst, kommt uns diese subtropische Welt näher. Klar, da sind die schönen Strände, aber oftmals säumen raue Basaltgesteine die Küste. Ein näherer Blick auf die Blumen, die Früchte, die Bäume oder Steine vermittelt auf einmal einen ganz anderen Eind...

The legend of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne is widespread through the literature of the European Middle Ages. This book offers a detailed and critical analysis of how this myth emerged and developed in medieval German and Dutchliteratures, bringing to light the vast array of narratives either idealizing, if not glorifying, Charlemagne as a political and religious leader, or, at times, criticizing or even ridiculing him as a pompous and ineffectual ruler. The motif is traced from its ear...