Introduction

Classen, Albrecht

doi:10.1515/9783110361643.1

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Johannes von Tepl's Der Ackermann aus Böhmen (in its German title), a highly popular dialogue poem from ca. 1400, composed by a German-speaking poet from Saaz, northwest of Prague, today Žatec in the Czech Republic (Classen, 2014), is predicated on a man's recent loss of his wife who had died in her young age, leaving behind her children and her husband. He is deeply upset about her sudden passing away and finds himself in a debate situation, conceived in allegorical terms, accusing Death of being unfair, cruel, unjust, brutal, and miserable overall (Johannes von Saaz, 1969; see now the new edition, Johannes de Tepl Civia Zacensis, 1994; for the English trans., see Haldane, online at: http://www.michaelhaldane.com/Husbandman%20and%20Death.pdf; for critical studies, see Classen, 1991;Kiening, 1998;Popović & Ivan Pfeifer, ed., 2016).…”

Section: Johannes Von Tepl: the Late Medieval Voicementioning

confidence: 99%

Engagement with Death Through Literature: Johannes von Tepl’s Plowman (ca. 1400) and Werner Bergengruen’s Death in Reval (1941)

Classen¹

2021

JHASS

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Literature assumes a huge role in all of human existence, especially with regard to some of the fundamental concerns in life: love, the quest for God, death, and the meaning of all existence. Through the literary lens, those issues have been addressed already throughout the centuries across the world, which strikingly confirms the critical importance of literature per se. This paper discusses the famous literary debate The Plowman by the Czech-German writer Johannes von Tepl (ca. 1400) and the short stories The Death in Reval by Werner Bergengruen (1941) in order to illustrate how much the fictional discourse contributes in a central fashion to the universal efforts to come to terms with such an evanescent phenomenon as death. The paper does not try to carry out a comparative analysis but presents these two works as major contributors to the literary discourse on death. As we can observe, humans have always responded to death with deep emotions, and those are difficult to cope with. Through the literary lens, however, the readers can gain a sensitive distance and learn how to come terms with this phenomenon. We also realize how much medieval literature can actually contribute powerfully to our contemporary concerns, despite a different cultural-mental framework and a remote language.

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Section: Johannes Von Tepl: the Late Medieval Voicementioning

confidence: 99%

Engagement with Death Through Literature: Johannes von Tepl’s Plowman (ca. 1400) and Werner Bergengruen’s Death in Reval (1941)

Classen¹

2021

JHASS

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“…There are countless experiences in human life that do not find easy, if any, answers to death, love, God, and joy, but by means of the literary works, among many other media, we can approximate them and find an expression for the ineffable, or apophatic-in the mystical context, above all-which certainly has a deep impact on us people all over the world and throughout time. Medicine and the humanities have much in common [24][25][26][27], as do magic/alchemy and literature [28]. By the same token, environmental humanities and literature now go hand in hand [29].…”

Section: Introduction: the Relevance Of Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Meaning of Literature and Literature as Meaning—A Productive Challenge of Modern Times from the Middle Ages

Classen

2016

Humanities

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Abstract:The marriage of literature and science might not be possible strictly speaking, but a marriage of humanities with philosophy, psychology, religion, ethics, ecology, and social studies, for instance, might well work, as a close analysis of some medieval narratives will illustrate. This paper intends to demonstrate once again what the humanities could truly mean, insofar as the discussion will not only lay bare textual elements or philological concerns, but it will also indicate how much relevant literature helps us to address crucial questions of religious, ethical, social, moral, and philosophical kinds, building powerful bridges between the past and the present. In order to test this premise even in extreme situations, here a number of medieval texts will be introduced and analyzed as to their timeless message and hence their extremely important function of creating meaning for readers/listeners both from the Middle Ages and today.

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Introduction

Cited by 2 publications

References 2 publications

Engagement with Death Through Literature: Johannes von Tepl’s Plowman (ca. 1400) and Werner Bergengruen’s Death in Reval (1941)

Engagement with Death Through Literature: Johannes von Tepl’s Plowman (ca. 1400) and Werner Bergengruen’s Death in Reval (1941)

The Meaning of Literature and Literature as Meaning—A Productive Challenge of Modern Times from the Middle Ages

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