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."

The essays reflect the work of a broad spectrum of disciplines in humanities and cultural studies. They present a new vision of the early modern era, which attempts to register the diverse and contradictory nature of early modern culture, transcending unambiguous notions of development such as modernization or secularization. "

Narratology from the Perspective of Medieval Studies systematically compiles research on the otherness of medieval narratives. It places a particular focus on the way that narrative forms are always linked to the meaning of narrative content. Key topics include genre, narrative patterns, connections to contemporary world knowledge, models of time and space, plot structure, andnarrator concepts.The book is primarily intended for medievalists and advanced students."

Based on the key concepts of 'pluralization' and 'authority', the series presents studies on early modern literature and culture from the 15th to the 17th century. The early modern period is increasingly recognized in cultural studies as an age whose cultural paradigms still largely depended on medieval norms and traditions but at the same time also created a set of conditions that facilitated Europe's transition to modernity. As opposed to established historical grand narratives such as modernization or secularization, the volumes in this series attempt to describe the dynamics of the period as a complex interaction of mutually competing world views, knowledge structures and behaviour patterns. The series explores these dynamics from an interdisciplinary perspective, including studies on literature, linguistics, history, philosophy, art, music and legal history.

These case studies from early modern literaturea ' mainly Germana ' are dealing with larger-scale narrative forms of the novel/romance and chronicle variety and with farcical tales. They enquire into how in the 16th century as a time of profound change in society, religion and media Germanophone literature is involved in the processes of pluralisation and authorisation of knowledge, and how the manifold changes in knowledge are reflected in literature.

The contributions of this volume discuss the usability of the concept of "pluralization" as the guiding concept for analyzing the early modern era. The first meaning of pluralization is the increase of the representations of reality which are relevant in an area of life and culture; furthermore this term expresses the emergence of "new" and/or alternative knowledge and the development of competitive partial realities. These have to be coordinated or mediated with each other. The contributions and case studies of this volume analyze this process and give important impulses for fundamental research on the early modern era. Key features: Basic methodological contributions on research on the early modern era The volume analyzes an important paradigm of the history of ideas from 1500 on Written by a team of internationally renowned experts

The subject of the book is the relationship between literary imagination and the mindscape of aristocratic culture in the high Middle Ages. The study focuses on "narrative kernels," i.e. recurrent combinations of themes and problems displaying narrative patterns characteristic of courtly and heroic vernacular epics in Germany around 1200. The narrative constellations selected for investigation (a) revolve around the relationship of individuals to their origins and to profane and/or religious communities, (b) enact play with individuals' names and their relationship to themselves, (c) rehearse the relations and demarcations between different spheres of public and/or inner life, and (d) reflect the tensions between alliance, courtly love, and passion.

The volume assembles all the studies on Minnesang published so far by Jan-Dirk MA1/4ller. Their common denominator is the combination of literary theory and the historical perspective on Minnesang, with constant reference to specific examples. The impulses emanating from New Philology prove to have a genuine bearing on Minnesang by virtue of the emphasis on the intrinsic logic of different versions. Other approaches shown to provide valuable insights on this body of literature are the social history perspective, discourse analysis, and aspects of the deconstructivist paradigm.