“Magic as a Form of Knowledge in Medieval Literature”
Speakers): Jutta Eming
Jutta Eming’s project on Magic as a Form of Knowledge comes out of a research project on ‘The Marvellous as a Configuration of Knowledge’ which she conducts within the frame of the Special Research Centre Episteme in Bewegung (‘Episteme in Motion’) at the Freie Universität Berlin. While the marvellous is commonly seen as an aesthetic category, Eming takes it as a category of knowledge as well: configurations of the marvellous in medieval and early modern literature—monsters, magicians, enchantments, healing procedures, divinations, automatons, other worlds and much more—reflect and convey knowledge, and call it into question. It is a new perspective to recognize the marvellous as a premodern episteme in its own right. Ever since Aristotle famously conceived the emotional response of "wondering" as the beginning of cognition and insight, the dominant view has been that learning presupposes wondering, and also replaces it.
Jutta Eming is a professor of Medieval German literature at the Institute for German and Dutch Philology, Freie Universität Berlin. Jutta Eming’s research interests include romances from the high to the late Middle Ages, genre theory and gender, emotionality, performativity, premodern drama, adventure narratives and hybrid temporalities. She is currently leading a project in the Freie Universität’s special research centre Episteme in Motion on “The Marvelous as a Configuration of Knowledge in Medieval Literature“ and is the director of the Freie Universität’s interdisciplinary “Forum Mittelalter – Renaissance – Frühe Neuzeit”. Among her most recent publications are the co-edited volume Magia daemoniaca, magia naturalis, zouber. Schreibweisen von Magie und Alchemie in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Wiesbaden 2015), the monograph Emotionen im ‘Tristan’. Untersuchungen zu ihrer Paradigmatik (Göttingen 2015), and the forthcoming co-edited volume Marsilio Ficino in Deutschland und Italien. Renaissance-Magie zwischen Wissenschaft und Literatur (Wiesbaden 2017). She has also recently published several articles on early modern drama, including the passion play at Oberammergau.