EMISCX11

In the year 2007, the Raimundus-Lullus-Institut at the University of Freiburg celebrated its 50th anniversary. To mark this occasion, an international congress was held on 25–28 November 2007, titled Vision of God and Contemplation of the World. Interpretations of Ramon Lull’s »Liber contemplationis«. The congress papers assembled in the present volume offer an informative survey of the Liber contemplationis in Deum (Catalan: Llibre de contemplació en Déu), the most comprehensive and probably most significant work of Lull’s. The Liber contemplationis comprises 366 chapters: one chapter for each day of the year, including one for the additional day of the leap year. The contents of the work have often been described as ‘encyclopaedic’. Its aim, however, is not to offer a comprehensive account of all that is known about reality, but rather to recognise and describe reality in the context of contemplating God, knowing the articles of faith as well as attaining a virtuous life agreeable to God.

The volume contains introductory studies of the Latin tradition of the text as well as detailed commentaries on individual chapters.

Im Jahr 2007 konnte das Raimundus-Lullus-Institut der Universität Freiburg sein 50-jähriges Bestehen feiern. Aus diesem Anlass fand vom 25.–28. November 2007 ein internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongress unter dem Titel Gottes Schau und Weltbetrachtung. Interpretationen zum »Liber contemplationis« des Raimundus Lullus statt. Die 20 Referentinnen und Referenten wurden bewusst nicht nur aus dem Kreis namhafter Lull-Spezialisten gewählt, sondern repräsentieren ein breites Spektrum internationaler mediävistischer Forschung. Mit ihren Tagungsbeiträgen, die in diesem Band gesammelt vorliegen, bieten sie eine informative Tour d’Horizon durch Ramon Lulls umfangreichstes und wohl bedeutendstes Werk, den Liber contemplationis in Deum (katalanisch: Llibre de contemplació en Déu).

Der Liber contemplationis umfasst 366 Kapitel: ein Kapitel für jeden Tag des Jahres und eines für den zusätzlichen Tag im Schaltjahr. Der Inhalt des Werkes ist oft als ‚enzyklopädisch‘ bezeichnet worden. Sein Ziel besteht jedoch nicht in einer umfassenden Darstellung des Wissens über die gesamte Wirklichkeit, sondern in der Bestimmung und Beschreibung der Wirklichkeit in Bezug auf die Betrachtung Gottes, die Erkenntnis der Glaubensartikel sowie die Erlangung eines tugendhaften, gottgefälligen Lebens.

Der vorliegende Band umfasst neben einführenden Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Textüberlieferung und zur Struktur des Werkes sowohl detaillierte Kommentare zu ausgewählten Kapiteln als auch Diskussionen von Einzelfragen vor dem Hintergrund von Lulls Gesamtwerk in seinem historischen Kontext.

It goes without saying that agriculture is a form of colonisation of nature by society. In the course of history the articulation of natural and societal features gave rise to a wide variety of agrosystems within the boundaries of Europe which were embedded in supra-regional political and economic contexts at least from the High Middle Ages onwards. By following an integrative approach, this volume defines agrosystems as production systems based on the ecological and socioeconomic relations involved in the reproduction of rural societies at multiple levels. The authors explore the articulation of natural and societal factors through the prism of labour relations. The structural and practical organization of labour is seen as the crucial link between rural production and reproduction. Accordingly, the contributions focus on the rural household as the basic unit of production and reproduction in different temporal and spatial contexts. Therefore, the question arises if the changes in ecosystems and social systems have so fundamentally altered European agriculture up to now that peasant family farming will disappear (if it is no longer sustained by state intervention).

The thirteen essays collected in ‘This Earthly Stage’ explore intersections between the world as stage and the stage as world in late medieval and early modern England. The volume features studies of stages both familiar and unfamiliar, and worlds old and new - from the ritual performance of funerals for the fifteenth-century London elite to the electronic recreation of Shakespeare on the Internet. The essays engage with a variety of scholarly fields, including art and iconography, cultural and social history, digital humanities, literature, myth, philology, and philosophy. Most studies examine performative elements of Shakespeare’s works in relation to a representative selection of other plays from the dramatic genres in which he wrote, while they also analyse broader topics which traverse a number of plays, such as kingship and rites of civic performance in relation to stage drama. All of the essays consider the overarching issue of representation in late medieval and early modern English drama and culture through a range of theoretical approaches. This volume offers a valuable contribution to contemporary medieval and early modern scholarship, with a particular interest for those researching and teaching early modern English drama and culture.