The volume contains papers on religious and secular drama in the Middle Ages and the early modern age presented at a symposium in Cologne and centering on plays in Latin, Middle High German, Early New German, Middle Low German, and Middle Dutch. A number of papers are devoted to forms of ritualization in pre-modern drama, others examine its relative proximity to liturgy and the (culturally and liturgically determined) sequence of the seasons, while others again engage with the staging of the plays in terms of their ambivalent attempts to appeal to the responsibility of the individual against the background of an ultimate authority, and to arouse and instrumentalize emotions. All in all, the papers discuss the proliferation of early forms of theatricality and in so doing resume a long overdue theoretical discussion initiated by Rainer Warning and centering on the genesis, function, and structure of medieval plays.

The 16 articles in this volume examine interlinkings between religious and secular diction and thought-forms in the literature of the Middle Ages and the Reformation. Though wide-ranging in their methodologies they are united in the sometimes unexpected historical and systematic commonalities they detect in texts of different genres and periods. Together they take up a familiar but hitherto inadequately clarified problem and place it in the context of ongoing debate on the appropriate understanding of medieval literature and culture.

The essays in this volume explore the full scope of Maximilian s Ruhmeswerk, which adaptively incorporated different literary and aesthetic genres. They examine the Emperor s quest to become an uomo universale, or Renaissance man, in the context of the idea of self-fashioning at the focus of recent Renaissance research. In addition, the studies consider the impact of changing media conditions as a result of the invention of the printed book."

Die mittelhochdeutsche VerserzAhlung von Helmbrecht, dem 'verlorenen Sohn' des Meiers (Bauern) Helmbrecht, der gegen den Willen des Vaters seinen Stand verlAAt, als Raubritter sein Unwesen treibt und dafA1/4r vom Richter durch VerstA1/4mmelung bestraft, vom Vater verstoAen und endlich den von Bauern aufgeknA1/4pft wird, liegt hier in neuer Auflage vor. Der Text, in Kurt Ruhs Revision der Ausgabe Friedrich Panzers als Standardausgabe dieses Werkes bewAhrt, ist bis auf wenige Stellen unverAndert, die Einleitung wurde an einigen Stellen ergAnzt, Bibliographie und Wort- und SacherklArungen wurden auf den neuesten Stand gebracht.