The Construction of Textual Authority in German Literature of the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

306 pp., 6 x 9, 24 halftones, notes, index

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-1504-2
Published: March 2014

University of North Carolina Studies in Germanic Languages and Literature

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Interest in the intersections of various kinds of discourse provides the basis for a closer look at diverse textual strategies of cultural legitimation. This collection presents an introductory essay and eleven studies (written in English and German) that address claims to authority associated with differing kinds of texts from such varied perspectives as political performance, popular culture, history of science, interrelations between verbal texts and other arts, and artistic professionalism. Read together, these studies illuminate historical contingencies and reveal important changes in the "technologies of authority" from the twelfth through the eighteenth centuries.

The contributors are Claire Baldwin, Thomas Cramer, Arthur Groos, Walter Haug, C. Stephen Jaeger, Jane O. Newman, James F. Poag, David Price, Rüdiger Schnell, Lynne Tatlock, Horst Wenzel, and Gerhild Scholz Williams.

About the Authors

James F. Poag is professor emeritus of German at Washington University in St. Louis.
For more information about James F. Poag, visit the Author Page.

Claire Baldwin is assistant professor of German at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.
For more information about Claire Baldwin, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"The collection of this volume, as a whole, provides a diachronic view of the complex question of the establishment of authority in a wide range of genres (including music and art) through seven centuries. The authors are ingenious in calling upon a large number of variegated approaches with appropriate examples to illustrate their arguments."—Daphnis