Description
Book SynopsisThis interdisciplinary collection of essays about early modern Germany addresses the tensions, both fruitful and destructive, between normative systems of order on the one hand, and a growing diversity of practices on the other. Individual essays address crucial struggles over religious orthodoxy after the Reformation, the transformation of political loyalties through propaganda and literature, and efforts to redefine both canonical forms and new challenges to them in literature, music, and the arts. Bringing together the most exciting papers from the 2005 conference of Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär, an international research and conference group, the collection offers fresh comparative insights into the terrifying as well as exhilarating predicaments that the people of the Holy Roman Empire faced between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Contributors include: Claudia Benthien, Robert von Friedeburg, Markus Friedrich, Claire Gantet, Susan Lewis Hammond, Thomas Kaufmann, Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, Benjamin Marschke, Nathan Baruch Rein, and Ashley West.
Trade Review"Covering topics such as religious tolerance, historical paintings, the myths of Swiss identity, understanding of fatherland, and even silence, the (...) essays in this work takes the range of what comprises knowledge and orthodoxy seriously and with fascinating results. The book itself is beautifully presented (... and) brings together the work of European and North American scholars and includes essays from senior German-speaking scholars whose work have rarely appeared in English." Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, Renaissance Quarterly (2008) 589-590. "It is difficult to single out particular essays for special praise since they are all very good." Amy Nelson Burnett, Sixteenth Century Journal 40:4 (2009) 1208-1209.
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Contributors INTRODUCTION 1. Orthodoxies and heterodoxies in the early modern German experience, Randolph C. Head & Daniel Christensen PART I. EPISTEMOLOGIES 2. From the history of religions to the history of 'religion': the late Reformation and the challenge to sui generis religion, Nathan Baruch Rein 3. Orthodoxy and variation: The role of adiaphorism in early modern Protestantism, Markus Friedrich 4. Dreams, standards of knowledge and orthodoxy in Germany in the sixteenth century, Claire Gantet PART II. PRACTICES 5. Religious, confessional and cultural conflicts among neighbors: Observations on the sixteenth- and seventeenth Centuries, Thomas Kaufmann 6. Editing Italian music for Lutheran Germany, Susan Lewis Hammond 7. God's plan for the Swiss Confederation: Heinrich Bullinger, Jakob Ruf and their uses of historical myth in Reformation Zurich, Hildegard Elisabeth Keller 8. Why did seventeenth-century estates address the jurisdictions of their princes as fatherlands? War, territorial absolutism and duties to the fatherland in seventeenth-century German political discourse, Robert von Friedeburg PART III. LIMITATIONS 9. The exemplary painting of Hans Burgkmair the Elder: History at the Munich court of Wilhelm IV, Ashley West 10. 'Von dem am Königl. Preußischen Hofe abgeschafften Ceremoniel': Monarchical representation and court ceremony in Frederick William I's Prussia, Benjamin Marschke 11. Ambiguities of silence: The provocation of the void for Baroque culture, Claudia Benthien Index
