In this thesis, a literary historic path on the development of the lyric expression of courtly love will be created. The path will take us from the Provence through Germany and Sicily, and up to the Tuscany of the thirteen's century. The poetic characteristics of the hohe Minne and dolce stil novo will be particularly highlighted in order to facilitate the comprehension of their similarities and differences. It is understood that it will not be possible to offer a complete interpretation of the two lyric expressions. Rather, this thesis wishes to offer a basis for the development of further comparative studies between the German and Italian lyric expressions that were inspired by the Provencal courtly love. As representatives of the evolution of the poetry of love in Germany and Italy, Walther von der Vogelweide and Guido Cavalcanti were chosen for the innovative character of their poetry and the artistic quality of the results they achieved.

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[Truncated abstract] The later medieval Western European economy was shaped by a marked increase in commerce and rapid urbanisation. The commercialisation of later medieval society is the background to this research, whose focus is the ways in which later medieval Italian and English literature registers and responds to the expanding marketplace and the rise of an urban mercantile class. What began as an investigation of the representation of merchants and business in a selection of this literature has become an attempt to address broader questions about the later medieval economy in relation to literary and artistic production. This study is therefore concerned not just with merchants and their activities in literature, but also the way economic developments are manifested in narrative. Issues such as the moral position and social function of the merchant are addressed, alongside bigger economic issues such as value and exchange in literature, and to some extent, the position of the writer and artist in a commercialised economy. The study is primarily literary, but it adopts a cross-disciplinary method, drawing on economic and social history, literary criticism, art history and sociology. It begins with an assessment of the broader socio-economic context, focusing on ecclesiastical and social responses to the growth of … This chapter discusses the thirteenth-century Floris and Blauncheflur (c. 1250), and the late fourteenth-century Sir Amadace, Sir Launfal, Octavian and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in relation to the commercialised economy and with reference to late medieval thought concerning value, exchange and the role and function of merchants. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1380s) is the subject of the third and final chapter, “Narrative and Economics in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales”. Chaucer treats commerce and merchants with a complexity very close to Boccaccio’s approach to commerce. Both writers are acutely aware of the corruption to which merchants are susceptible, and of the many accusations levelled at merchants and their activities, but they do not necessarily perpetuate them. Rather than discussing exclusively the tales that deal extensively with merchants and commerce, or that told by the Merchantpilgrim, this discussion of the Canterbury Tales focuses on the Knight’s Tale, the Man of Law’s Tale and the Shipman’s Tale and the way they relate to broader ideas about the exchange and the production of narrative in the Canterbury Tales as a whole.

This thesis analyses a change in the ways people composed and engaged with texts during the Warring States (481-221 BCE) period in Early China. It examines changes in the textual sphere as a result of an emergent manuscript culture, that is to say, the increased spread and reliance on manuscript texts for the communication of ideas. This shift moved away from the predominantly oral, commemorative, and ritual use of text in earlier periods, and provided key elements that would function in the text based discourse of the early empires. It influenced the way text across a variety of genres of writing was used and understood, structured and composed, and how it was collected and combined to form new arguments. I focus on texts from the Documents ?, and Odes ? genres, in addition to philosophical texts dealing with the past, and collections of sayings and arguments dealing with questions from cosmological to ethical issues. These materials form the mainstay of Warring States intellectual discourse, and exemplify the following textual developments: 1) the rise of collecting materials into compilations; 2) the emergence of genre classification; 3) the development of new authorship functions, 3) an increase in textual structuring and the integration of lore about the past, 4) the development of commentarial traditions, 5) the emergence of an explicit, self-reflexive understanding of writing and transmission, 6) advances in material structuring of manuscript-texts that interrelate form and content. The analysis is based primarily on excavated materials not edited during the early empires, and engages with comparative and interdisciplinary theory. It argues against models solely based on transmitted sources, which explained Warring States developments as a response to socio-political contexts. Instead, it posits developments in the textual culture itself as a necessary condition to explain the changes in intellectual discourse of the period.

This thesis is the first book-length study of Johannes Schiltberger's Reisebuch, the German-language account of the Bavarian crusader's approximately 30-year captivity and enforced travels in the Middle East under the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I (r. 1389-1403), the Turko-Mongolian warlord Timūr (r. 1370-1405) and his successors. It investigates the Reisebuch's representation of the Orient. My reexamination of the manuscript and print transmission from c. 1450 to 1600 has shown that there were various versions of the Reisebuch in circulation, and I base my reading of the work on this basic multiplicity and variety. This variance is pertinent for a literary interpretation of the Reisebuch because the manifest narrative and material transformations go hand in hand with differing thematic foci, narratological and representational strategies, so that one can confidently contend each version of the Reisebuch negotiates a distinct relationship with the eastern 'other'. I argue that the transmission diverges into three strands as (1) an abridged chronicle that emphasises the complexity of political and military relations in the East; (2) a proto-ethnographic account with a focus on religious diversity; and (3) six paratextual reconceptualisations of the Reisebuch as Turcica in early print. In short, my study engages with the transmission and transformation of material, on the one hand, and with the consequences of this creative process for cultural ideas, on the other: it asks what role 'rewriting' - deliberate and inventive adaptation - plays in the Reisebuch's portrayals of the East. My thesis therefore provides not only the first in-depth reading of Schiltberger's Reisebuch as a 'medieval multi-text' (a term coined by Iain Macleod Higgins to indicate the inter-textuality and intra-textuality common to the medieval travel account) but highlights its representational process as multiple, polyvocal and dynamic.

Der Forschungsbericht vermittelt einen Einblick in die vielfältige, leistungsfähige Forschungslandschaft am Institut für Arbeits-, Organisations- und Sozialpsychologie.

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This thesis is a regional history of Lesbos and the adjacent regions of Troas and Aiolis in NW Turkey during Greco-Roman antiquity. This area represents a zone of transition between the Mediterranean and inland Asia Minor, and therefore provides us with a case study of how regions which lie at the margins or beyond the theoretical framework of Horden and Purcell's The Corrupting Sea (2000) function. Rather than defining the area of study simply in terms of physical geography, I instead argue that we can identify a region which I term the coastal interface that is characterized by the overlapping and intermingling dynamics of the maritime and terrestrial worlds. This zone of transition can extend out to sea to include nearby islands which are orientated towards the mainland, for example Lesbos in the case of my thesis, or equally it can stretch inland up river valleys or along other routes of communication to places which, although out of sight of the sea, were nevertheless profoundly influenced by their connection to the maritime world. The chapters of the thesis aim to demonstrate that the concept of the coastal interface can help illuminate the social and economic history of communities living within this region, with Chapters 1-3 focusing on the Troad and Chapters 4-7 looking at Lesbos. The subjects covered include Hellenistic Ilion and the koinon of Athena Ilias (Chapter 1), Theophrastos as a source for the social and economic history of the forests of Mt. Ida (Chapter 2), large-scale state-directed horse breeding in the middle Skamander valley (Chapter 3), Mytilene's peraia in coastal Anatolia from the seventh century down to 427 (Chapter 4), Mytilene's minting of billon and electrum coinage in the fifth century (Chapter 5), the refoundation of the Lesbian koinon in the early second century BC (Chapter 6), and the Aiolian aspect of Mytilenaian identity in the first centuries BC and AD (Chapter 7).

This thesis examines the relationship between the commemorative strategies of English noblemen in the period 1485-1572 and their identity both as individuals and as a social group. In particular, it will look at the Howard dukes of Norfolk in the context of their peers. The five chapters each address a different aspect of noble identity. The first two chapters deal with the importance of kinship and of status. The importance of kinship is evident across commemorative strategies from burial locations to the heraldry displayed at funerals to the references to ancestry in elegies. Having achieved a particular status, noblemen were defensive of their rank and the dues accorded to it. Funerals were designed to reflect social status and the choice of burial location could also indicate a concern with status. However, there was not always a correlation between the scale of commemoration and status. The third chapter examines the role that service to the Crown played in noble identity. Late medieval ideals of military service and a chivalric culture survived well in to the sixteenth century and traditional commemorative forms remained popular, even amongst noblemen newly ennobled from the ranks of the Tudor administration. Chapter four addresses the importance of local power to the nobility of the period. Burial and commemoration acted as a visible reminder of the social order and were of benefit in maintaining local stability. Noblemen could also use their death as a means of demonstrating good lordship through charity and hospitality. The final chapter examines the importance of religion to a nobleman's identity during a century of turbulent religious change. Studying commemorative strategies allows us to trace noble responses to religious change, the constraints on their public show of belief, and the ways in which they could express individuality.

Historians have long struggled to conceptualise the Holy Roman Empire in the later Middle Ages. This thesis seeks to provide an interpretation of political life in the Empire which captures the structures and dynamics in evidence in the sources. It does so through a comparative study of the varied socio-political elites along the Upper Rhine between 1350 and 1500, with frequent reference to other regions of the Empire. The thesis is divided into three sections. Part I, consisting of four chapters, examines the shared and interconnective characteristics of several spheres of activity - the documentary, judicial, ritual, military, and administrative - in which various elites interacted through the same practices and conventions. Part II (five chapters) deals with the types of contractual association which emerged organically from these shared and interconnective structures and practices. It shows that these associations - leagues, alliances, judicial agreements, coinage unions, and others - were more common and more similar than typically assumed, that they regulated key judicial and military affairs, and that they reflected a shared ideology which emphasised peace-keeping and the common good within the Empire's framework. Part III of the thesis shows how the structures and dynamics explored in Parts I and II played out in specific situations by reference to three case studies in the 1370s-'80s, 1410s-'30s, and 1460s-'70s. All three demonstrate how the 'associative political culture' model can illuminate events which were previously considered to be moments of crisis or chaos, or the products of 'territorial' or 'constitutional' processes. The thesis concludes by arguing that, in light of this evidence, the Holy Roman Empire is best understood as a community of interdependent elites who interacted within a shared 'associative political culture'. This conclusion highlights the need for a new paradigm beyond those of the 'territory', the 'constitution', or the centralising 'state'.