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The Daughter Zion allegory represents a particular narrative
articulation of the paradigm of bridal mysticism deriving from the
Song of Songs, the core element of which is the quest of Daughter
Zion for a worthy object of love. Examining medieval German
religious writing (verse and prose) and Dutch prose works, Annette
Volfing shows that this storyline provides an excellent springboard
for investigating key aspects of medieval religious and literary
culture. In particular, she argues, the allegory lends itself to an
exploration of the medieval sense of self; of the scope of human
agency within the mystical encounter; of the gendering of the
religious subject; of conceptions of space and enclosure; and of
fantasies of violence and aggression. Volfing suggests that
Daughter Zion adaptations increasingly tended to empower the
religious subject to seek a more immediate relationship with the
divine and to embrace a wider range of emotions: the mediating
personifications are gradually eliminated in favour of a model of
religious experience in which the human subject engages directly
with Christ. Overall, the development of the allegory from the
twelfth to the fifteenth centuries marks the striving towards a
greater sense of equality and affective reciprocity with the
divine, within the context of an erotic union.
The Daughter Zion allegory represents a particular narrative
articulation of the paradigm of bridal mysticism deriving from the
Song of Songs, the core element of which is the quest of Daughter
Zion for a worthy object of love. Examining medieval German
religious writing (verse and prose) and Dutch prose works, Annette
Volfing shows that this storyline provides an excellent springboard
for investigating key aspects of medieval religious and literary
culture. In particular, she argues, the allegory lends itself to an
exploration of the medieval sense of self; of the scope of human
agency within the mystical encounter; of the gendering of the
religious subject; of conceptions of space and enclosure; and of
fantasies of violence and aggression. Volfing suggests that
Daughter Zion adaptations increasingly tended to empower the
religious subject to seek a more immediate relationship with the
divine and to embrace a wider range of emotions: the mediating
personifications are gradually eliminated in favour of a model of
religious experience in which the human subject engages directly
with Christ. Overall, the development of the allegory from the
twelfth to the fifteenth centuries marks the striving towards a
greater sense of equality and affective reciprocity with the
divine, within the context of an erotic union.
The twin themes of punishment and penance considered through both
historical and literary medieval German texts. The supposed
brutality of medieval punishment looms large in the popular
contemporary imagination, yet this perception can obscure the
diverse and nuanced reactions of medieval society to violent or
criminal acts. This collectionaddresses the ways in which different
approaches to punishment are depicted and discussed in written
texts, focusing in particular on the often complex intersection -
semantic, theoretical and theological - between punishment
andpenitential practices, both self-imposed and imposed by others.
Often in dialogue with theoretical approaches (for example, those
of Rene Girard or Michel Foucault), individual essays explore a
range of themes: the intersection ofthe literary representation of
acts of punishment and penance with historical experience; the ways
in which acts of punishment and penance engage the wishes and
desires of those inflecting or witnessing them; legal and
theological implications; the symbolic and communicative capital of
the body. They focus on a range of texts (romance, lyric, mystical
writing, saints' lives) written in German, from the twelfth to the
sixteenth century. Sarah Bowden is Lecturer in German at King's
College London; Annette Volfing is Professor of Medieval German
Studies at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Oriel College.
Contributors: Sarah Bowden, Bjoern Buschbeck, Sebastian Coxon,
Racha Kirakosian, Andreas Krass, Henrike Manuwald, Katharina
Mertens-Fleury, Jamie Page, Aimut Suerbaum, Annette Volfing.
The focus on inner space unites two topical areas of cultural
anthropology: space as a structural paradigm, and the focal
differentiation between the categories of a oeinnera and a oeoutera
. The literature of medieval Germany, in staging such interior
space in a variety of ways, poses questions about difference,
liminality, and transgression, and thus allows abstract concepts
and processes to be articulated: in a culture otherwise dominated
by that which is present and visible, inner space conveys notions
of psychological, cosmological or textual order.
The saint and visionary author John the Evangelist becomes the focus of spiritual and literary discussion in a great range of Middle High German writings, from sermons to verse romance. Examining the extent to which ordinary Christians might imitate him, this important study contributes to both our understanding of German literature and the history of Western spirituality.
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