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Abstract
Rudolf Pannwitz (27 May 1881–23 March 1969) is an almost forgotten 20th century author. The Dionysian Tragedies (Dionysische Tragödien), published in 1913, refers in its title to the inspiration for the five plays: Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy (Geburt der Tragödie, 1872). Among the Dionysian tragedies, The Liberation of Oedipus. A dionysian picture (Die Befreiung des Oidipus. Ein dionysisches Bild) has the most points of contact with Nietzsche’s work. Against the background of the ancient discussion of the Dionysian and the dithyrambic and Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, the article interprets Die Befreiung des Oidipus as a dramatisation of Nietzsche’s understanding of the Dionysian.
Abstract
From the point of view of temporality, Shakespeare’s tragedy of Hamlet falls into two parts. The first sequence, leading from the ghost’s appearance to the Mousetrap, stages – in its manifold soliloquies and monologues slowly and painfully exploring the protagonist’s conscience – Hamlet’s inexorable inner search for truth so as to be able to legitimize his ‘sovereign’ right to act. This is what is read as a programmatic ‘interiorisation’ of structural violence. The second sequence, leading from Hamlet’s authorisation to act to his unfortunate and untimely death, pursues the contingent asynchronicities between the right to take revenge and the continuous (ironical) denial of an appropriate situation for its necessary perpetration. This is in turn seen as a showcased ‘precarity’ of revenge. Both sequences show a marked dependency on a new, linear conceptualization of time: in both sequentially accepting and denying the right to revenge, they aesthetically negotiate the observable early modern shift in temporality from a cyclical ‘guarantee’ of a return to the invariable (and in this sense atemporal) ‘same’, to open and at times self-contradictory linear processes of being bent on the production/realization of results and, hence, of (personally) having to ‘find out’ and act.
Abstract
Directly reported speech and thought are not only deictically and syntactically, but also prosodically less well integrated with the quotative expression than indirect reports. Though not an established result of the longstanding linguistic and philosophical scrutiny of the modes of speech and thought reporting, it was yet something Thomas Hardy noticed, revising his poem Afterwards for re-publication and struggling with some crucial wordings and with punctuation in circumstances where quotative and report had distinct illocutionary force, with the one a question and the other a statement.
Abstract
Konrad von Würzburg’s Partonopier and Meliur narrates the ‘minne’ between the French count Partonopier and the Byzantine empress Meliur. Irekel, Meliur’s sister, also has a crucial part in this love affair. While Konrad in his Tronjanerkrieg uses such potential love triangles, described by René Girard with his concept of ‘triangular desire’, to question the semantics of courtly love, Konrad pursues the opposite strategy in his Partonopier. This article argues that Konrad von Würzburg, by withdrawing any attempts of triangular desire shown in his French source, amplifies the complementarity of the two sisters and thus binds Irekel and Meliur even more closely together. This has the effect that Irekel ultimately cannot only contribute to the constitution of courtly ‘minne’ between Partonopier and Meliur, but also to the legitimisation of the couple’s claim to reign.
Abstract
The article examines the historiographical concepts of Thomas Abbt (1738–1766) in their polemical references, especially in the Berliner Literaturbriefe. By means of polemics, Abbt outlines his idea of ‘pragmatic history’ in contrast to contemporary historical attempts, namely J.C. Harenberg’s History of the Jesuits, C.F. Pauli’s Heroic Tales, a historical novel by J.G.H. v. Justi and P.E. Bertram’s Spanish History. Therefore, history must unite three claims: a pragmatic one with regard to its political utility, an epistemic one concerning an unconditional claim to objectivity and non-fictionality, and an aesthetic-stylistic one, according to which only a style schooled in classical rhetoric and ancient historiography can guarantee the utility and truth of history. Hence, Abbt’s polemic against misguided historiography is essentially articulated as a critique of style.
Abstract
This essay takes as its starting point the tension between the biblical role of Alexander the Great and his status as a non-Christian, and explores how medieval texts deal with this tension. Working outwards from selected theories of the secular that establish the term as a representative construct and describe its (modern) functions, the essay analyses the semantics of time and space in two twelfth-century Alexander romances: the German Vorauer Alexander and its manuscript transmission, and the French Roman d’Alexandre in the version of Alexandre de Paris. Through detailed analysis the essay tests the concept of ‘Heilsgeschichte’ (‘salvation history’), which emerges as both a productive yet also highly problematic critical terminology and interpretive matrix. The analysis also demonstrates that Alexander narratives (or episodes within them) defy straightforward categorisation as either religious or secular/worldly; the semantics of time and space in the texts create forms of meaning that cannot be grasped through idealised binaries of Christian and ‘worldly’ signification.
Abstract
In academic thesis prints (dissertationes) from Early Modernity, questions of the appropriate or reprehensible behaviour of scholars were sometimes discussed. The debate on envy (invidia, also invidentia), which belongs among the mortal sins, is particularly interesting. On the one hand, writings on this topic are not always about the affect of envy, but sometimes also about being envied. The perspective on the persons concerned and thus also their moral judgement can therefore differ. On the other hand, invidia can also be interpreted in a broader sense as cautious prudence (prudentia) and then evaluated positively, for example if you withhold knowledge because you fear it could be misused. Some authors even consider invidia to be synonymous with aemulatio and see ‘envy’ of others as an incentive to improve one’s own performance. The article analyses several writings on the subject. At the centre is the disputation on ‘permissible’ envy (De licita eruditorum invidentia) held in Rostock in 1718 under the presidency of Franz Albert Aepin, which triggered an exciting debate. The historical context of the disputations is also considered. Therefore texts by René Descartes, Christian Thomasius and Gottlieb Spizel are discussed.