Transforming Topoi

The Exigencies and Impositions of Tradition

Andrew James Johnston, Margitta Rouse, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Andrew James Johnston, Margitta Rouse, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann

• Publisher: V&R Unipress
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783847108962
• eBook ISBN: 9783847008965
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

Traditionen leben von der Dialektik der Wiederholung, die das Gleiche stets anders inszeniert. Sie speisen sich aus den Erinnerungen; an der Grenze von bedacht und selbstverständlich getan lassen sie sich nur als selbstverständliche Überzeugungen bestimmen. Aber wie ist es dennoch möglich, Traditionen zu beeinflussen? Der vorliegende Band widmet sich der Frage, wie man mit Traditionen Symbolpolitik machen kann. Was sind die Zumutungen der Traditionen, wenn sie politisch instrumentalisiert werden? Gibt es Grenzen der Manipulation, die im Wesen der jeweiligen Traditionen liegen und sie folglich definieren? Die BeiträgerInnen geben eine Vielzahl von Antworten, indem sie sich Topoi aus Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive widmen. Traditions thrive on the dialectic of repetition. Drawing their topoi from the well of memory, they are situated on the very border between the deliberate and the habitual. Yet how is it possible to influence traditions? The present collection of essays studies the ways in which traditions are employed in the service of symbolic politics. What are the burdens and impositions of traditions, when their topoi are consciously exploited in the service of ideological purposes? Are there certain limits to manipulation that lie in the very nature of the traditions in question, a nature which therefore defines them? The contributors give a host of answers, studying topoi in medieval and early modern Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Body
• Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann: Introduction: The Exigencies and Impositions of Tradition
• Peter-André Alt: Traditions and the Dynamics of Change: Preliminary Thoughts on a Key Issue in Early Modern Studies
• Phillip H. Stump: Ideas of Reform and Tradition at the Late Medieval Reform Councils
• Margitta Rouse: (Un)‍Veiling the Veil: Trojan Temporalities, Chaucerian Ekphrasis and Literary Innovation in Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece
• Maria Muccillo: Philosophy and Orthodoxy: Valuation and Devaluation of the Platonic Tradition in the Late Renaissance
• Anna Laura Puliafito: The Platonic Tradition and its Fates: Francesco Patrizi and Giordano Bruno
• Katharina Krause: Indomptable Valeur: Le Grand Condé and the End of the Hero in Art
• Gideon Stiening: Natural Sociability? The Aristotelian Tradition as a Challenge to Modern Natural Law as Reflected in European Enlightenment Literature: Jonathan Swift – Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Johann Karl Wezel
• Stephen Gaukroger: The Enlightenment Historicization of Religion and Philosophy: Fontenelle and Hume
• Bernd Roling: From Centaur to Human: Mythological Tradition in the Works of the French Evolutionists
• Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann: The Exigencies, Constructions and Inescapabilities of Tradition: To What Extent Can Lebenswelten Be ˋInvented'?
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index