Imagination and fantasy in the Middle Ages and early modern time : projections, dreams, monsters, and illusions / Albrecht Classen.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Classen, Albrecht, editor.

Series:

Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture ; 24

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Imagination--History--To 1500.

Imagination.

Fantasy--History--To 1500.

Fantasy.

Literature, Medieval--History and criticism.

Literature, Medieval.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (XIII, 807 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berlin, Germany ; Boston, Massachusetts : De Gruyter, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The notions of other peoples, cultures, and natural conditions have always been determined by the epistemology of imagination and fantasy, providing much freedom and creativity, and yet have also created much fear, anxiety, and horror. In this regard, the pre-modern world demonstrates striking parallels with our own insofar as the projections of alterity might be different by degrees, but they are fundamentally the same by content. Dreams, illusions, projections, concepts, hopes, utopias/dystopias, desires, and emotional attachments are as specific and impactful as the physical environment. This volume thus sheds important light on the various lenses used by people in the Middle Ages and the early modern age as to how they came to terms with their perceptions, images, and notions. Previous scholarship focused heavily on the history of mentality and history of emotions, whereas here the history of pre-modern imagination, and fantasy assumes center position. Imaginary things are taken seriously because medieval and early modern writers and artists clearly reveal their great significance in their works and their daily lives. This approach facilitates a new deep-structure analysis of pre-modern culture.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of illustrations

Imagination, Fantasy, Otherness, and Monstrosity in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern World

When Dreams Got Real: The Ontology of Dreaming in the Arabic Aristotelian Tradition

Imaginary Creatures Causing Real Diseases: Projective Etiology in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine

Political Ideals, Monstrous Counsel, and the Literary Imagination in Beowulf

Who is Grendel in Beowulf? Ambiguity, Allegory, and Meaning

Otherworldly Pilgrims: The Hell Tour and the Establishment of (Continental) Christian Territoriality on the Anglo-Saxon and Irish Peripheries

On Monstrosity in the Shāhnāmah: Philosophizing with Żaḥḥāk

The Negative Imagination: William IX’s Song Exactly About Nothing: “Farai un vers de dreit nien”

Ladies, Warriors and Genies: Imagining Gender and Power in The Book of the Tales of Ziyad Ibn Amir al-Kinani

The World of Hybrid Women in Medieval and Early Modern German Literature: Fantasy Images, Fascination, and Terror

The Myth of the Amazons in Medieval Spain

Wonders and Monsters in The Travels of John Mandeville and in Abu Hamid al-Gharnāti’s Tuhfat al-Albāb

Are Dreams Gender-Related? The Function of Dreams in Middle High German Narrative Literature

Monstra nobiscum: Medieval and Early Modern Teratology and the Confluence of Imaginatio and Scientia

Jews and Anti-Jewish Fantasies in Christian Imagination in the Middle Ages

The Life of Christ in Medieval Bestiaries: Imagining the Griffin, Lion, Unicorn, Pelican, and Phoenix

Monsters, Grotesques, and Other Marvels in the Later Medieval Imagination

Fantastic Places, Objects, and Creatures in Fourteenth-Century Czech-Language Literature: Imagination During the Reign of the Luxembourg Dynasty

The Mermaid of Edam and the Emergence of Dutch National Identity

Dream and Prophetic Projection in Andreas Gryphius’s Historical Tragedies: Traces of the Symbol

The Shadow of the Knight: Phantom Fears and their Distortions of Reality in Baroque Spanish Theater

Fantasy, Imagination, and Vision in Thomas Vaughan’s Lumen de Lumine

Biographies of the Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

3-11-069366-6