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IMC 2012: Sessions

Session 1125: Mobility of Ideas and Transmission of Texts (MITT): Vernacular Literature and Learning in the Rhineland and the Low Countries (c. 1300-1550), II

Wednesday 11 July 2012, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:'Mobility of Ideas & Transmission of Texts (MITT)', Marie Curie Initial Training Network
Organiser:Anna Dlabačová, Institute for Cultural Disciplines, Universiteit Leiden
Moderator/Chair:Henrike Lähnemann, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University
Paper 1125-aThe Beguines, Heresy, and Society in the Neunfelsenbuch (The Book of the Nine Cliffs)
(Language: English)
Claudia Lingscheid, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford
Index terms: Language and Literature - German, Lay Piety, Religious Life
Paper 1125-bThe Genre of the Dialogue as Subversive Force: The Social Criticism in the Middle Dutch Dialogue of Eckhart and the Layman within the Context of 14th-Century Lay Mysticism
(Language: English)
Yves van Damme, Institute for Cultural Disciplines, Universiteit Leiden
Index terms: Language and Literature - Dutch, Lay Piety, Religious Life
Paper 1125-cControlling the Uncontrollable: Academic and Mystical Theology between Doctrinal Normativity and Pastoral Care
(Language: English)
Luciano Micali, Philosophisches Seminar, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Index terms: Philosophy, Religious Life, Theology
Abstract

Mobility of Ideas and Transmission of Texts (MITT) studies the late medieval transmission of learning from the ecclesiastical and academic elites of the professional intellectuals to the wider readership that could be reached through the vernacular. MITT focusses on medieval dynamics of intellectual, religious and literary life in the Rhineland and the Low Countries, nowadays divided over five countries (Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) but one cultural region in the later Middle Ages. Here, the great 14th-century mystics Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Jan van Ruusbroec and their contemporaries shaped a sophisticated vernacular literature on mystical theology, introducing new lay audiences to the contemplative life. Participants in this session are invited to present views on this textual culture by looking at the readership, appropriation and circulation of literature in contemporary contexts.