From medieval contemplation to the early modern cosmopoetic imagination, to the invention of aesthetic experience, to nineteenth-century decadent literature, and to early-twentieth century essayistic forms of writing and film, Niklaus Largier shows that mystical practices have been reinvented across the centuries, generating a notion of possibility with unexpected critical potential. Arguing for a new understanding of mystical experience, Largier foregrounds the ways in which devotion builds on experimental practices of figuration in order to shape perception, emotions, and thoughts anew. Largier illuminates how devotional practices are invested in the creation of possibilities, and this investment has been a key element in a wide range of experimental engagements in literature and art from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and most recently in forms of "new materialism." Read as a history of the senses and emotions, the book argues that mystical and devotional practices have long been invested in the modulating and reconfiguring of sensation, affects, and thoughts. Read as a book about practices of figuration, it questions ordinary protocols of interpretation in the humanities, and the priority given to a hermeneutic understanding of texts and cultural artifacts.

From medieval contemplation to the early modern cosmopoetic imagination, to the invention of aesthetic experience, to nineteenth-century decadent literature, and to early-twentieth century essayistic forms of writing and film, Niklaus Largier shows that mystical practices have been reinvented across the centuries, generating a notion of possibility with unexpected critical potential. Arguing for a new understanding of mystical experience, Largier foregrounds the ways in which devotion builds on experimental practices of figuration in order to shape perception, emotions, and thoughts anew. Largier illuminates how devotional practices are invested in the creation of possibilities, and this investment has been a key element in a wide range of experimental engagements in literature and art from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and most recently in forms of "new materialism." Read as a history of the senses and emotions, the book argues that mystical and devotional practices have long been invested in the modulating and reconfiguring of sensation, affects, and thoughts. Read as a book about practices of figuration, it questions ordinary protocols of interpretation in the humanities, and the priority given to a hermeneutic understanding of texts and cultural artifacts.

The emotional and sensual, religious and erotic excitement of the whip, a crucial instrument of stimulation in devotional and sexual practices, as seen in religious, literary, and medical texts and images. In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal is a new history of voluntary flagellation in Europe, from its invention in medieval religious devotion to its use in the modern pornographic imagination. Working with a wide range of religious, literary, and medical texts and images, Niklaus Largier explores the emotional and sensual, religious and erotic excitement of the whip, a crucial instrument of stimulation in devotional and sexual practices. From early modern pornography to the Marquis de Sade and the fantasies of Swinburne and Joyce, the erotic and devotional imagination drew on the whip. Largier explores how the Reformation and Counter-Reformation problematized the medieval culture of arousal. The stimulating qualities of medieval visual displays, especially flagellant practices, processions, and spectacles, were subjected to a criticism that sought to control the imagination. In modern bourgeois life the practice, effects, and imagery of flagellation became a central site of investigation into concerns and anxieties about exercising emotional self-control and censoring fantasy. Modern references to flagellant practice in the works of Swinburne, Proust, and Joyce testified not only to a "decadent" fascination with "medieval" cultures or "perverse sexuality," but also to a fascination that nineteenth-century censorship, informed by psychopathological discourses, had obliterated. Such evocations of flagellation, Largier explains, were attempts to recover a culture of stimulation and imagination-both erotic and devotional-that transcended the modern boundaries of sexuality.

The figure of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes is not only a source of recurrent fascination for authors of classical Antiquity and modernism, but also - and especially - for the Middle Ages and the early modern era. Here the philosopher figures as a critical spirit inspiring a large number of apocryphal stories and above all a whole series of exempla. The various narrative forms taken by these latter and the poetological status of the exemplum genre are the central focus of the volume. It delineates and analyzes the various reception traditions by which the Diogenes narratives have come down to us and also functions as an edition of these narratives as a collection of sources. A further concern of the study is to understand the significance of Diogenes as an 'exemplary' figure for authors ranging from Erasmus to Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin and Foucault, the main focus here being on his role in the modernist context.

Wie redet man uber Liebe und vor allem - wie redet man uber das Reden uber Liebe? Diese Fragen stellen sich zwei narrative Grossformen des 14. Jahrhunderts: Hadamars von Laber 'Jagd' und die anonym uberlieferte 'Minneburg'. Sie entwerfen in der komplexen Konstellation der zeitgenoessischen, liebesthematischen Dichtung zwei jeweils unterschiedliche Antworten darauf, die ihnen selbst einen Sonderstatus zukommen lassen. Ihre Positionen innerhalb des poetologischen Diskurses stehen zueinander in direkter Konkurrenz. Insbesondere mithilfe verschiedener Schreibweisen, die von (Klang-)Rhetorik, Intertextualitat und Metaisierung gepragt sind, arbeiten sie an einer eigenen Metasprache, die gleichzeitig verschiedene Diskurse und Genera miteinander verschrankt. Sie verhandeln damit nicht mehr nur allegorische Modelle fur das Lieben, sondern sie ziehen eine zusatzliche Metaebene in ihre Texte ein und beteiligen sich am poetologischen Diskurs ihrer Zeit uber das angemessene, affektgetreue und affektgesteigerte Sprechen uber die Liebe. Damit kommunizieren sie ihre jeweils eigene Poetologie im Spannungsfeld von Inhalt und Form, von Tradition und Innovation.

Dinge bewegen die Welt fruhneuzeitlicher Prosaromane. Sie werden getauscht, verschenkt, gehen verloren und werden gefunden. In der Melusine wird eine tafel mit der ganzen Familiengeschichte gefunden, Fortuna schenkt Fortunatus im gleichnamigen Roman einen glucksseckel, in der schoenen Magelona werden ringe genutzt, um die adlige Herkunft zu beglaubigen, und im Gabriotto und Reinhart dienen rosen Liebenden als heimliches Liebeszeichen. Werden diese Dinge in die Lekture und Analyse der fruhen Prosaromane einbezogen, so zeigt sich, dass ihr Aufbau keineswegs simpel und alleine vom Ende her bestimmt ist, wie ihnen oft vorgeworfen wird, sondern dass diese fruhen Romane ganz einfach mit einem anderen Koharenzsystem arbeiten als mit jenem, welches uns von den hoch artifiziellen hoefischen Romanen der hochmittelalterlichen Blutezeit oder von modernen Romanen vertraut ist. In der Auseinandersetzung mit der Melusine, dem Fortunatus, der schoenen Magelona und dem Gabriotto und Reinhart zeigt sich, dass jeder dieser Romane auf seine ganz eigene Art und Weise Dinge nutzt, um verschiedene Handlungswelten zu verbinden und Koharenz herzustellen.