Thisvolume is devoted to an historical lexical and conceptual analysis of poetological expressions in German medieval literature, expressions such as schrift (a >scripta (TM), a >writinga (TM)), rede (a >speecha (TM)), buoch (a >booka (TM)), tihtaere (a >poeta (TM)), vindaere (a >purveyora (TM) [a >of wild talesa (TM)]), hA"ren (a >heara (TM)), lesen (a >reada (TM)), erniuwen (a >renewa (TM)), voltihten (a >composea (TM)), etc. Despite individual studies, these terms, which are of central importance in medieval texts, yet are only vaguely defined in them, have largely been neglected by researchers and have hardly ever been presented as a connected system. However, these terms do open the way to an understanding of central aspects of medieval views of literature and of the historical conception of works and authors. The volume presents a collection of papers by renowned medievalists on key terms and items in medieval poetics and historical semantics.

Paradisus anime intelligentis is the Latin name of one of the most important late medieval collections of German sermons, about half of which comprises sermons by Meister Eckhart. The studies deal with the theological programme of the sermons, the manuscripts, their transmission and processing, together with selected individual texts. The volume is completed by a study of a contiguous collection, the KAlner Klosterpredigten [Cologne Monastic Sermons].

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.