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IMC 2022: Sessions

Session 639: How to Talk to God, How to Talk about God: Late Medieval Sermons on the Boundary of Spiritual Experience, Orality, and Literacy

Tuesday 5 July 2022, 11.15-12.45

Organiser:Isabell Väth, Graduiertenkolleg 1662 'Religiöses Wissen im vormodernen Europa (800–1800)', Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Moderator/Chair:Jonathan Reinert, Institut für Spätmittelalter und Reformation, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Paper 639-aHow to Talk about God?: Meister Eckhart's Speaking of God in His Vernacular Sermons
(Language: English)
Anja Bork, Sonderforschungsbereich 1391 'Andere Ästhetik', Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
Index terms: Language and Literature - German, Sermons and Preaching, Theology
Paper 639-bPreaching as Aesthetic Practice: Aesthetic and Rhetorical Strategies in Vernacular Sermons of the Late Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Isabell Väth, Graduiertenkolleg 1662 'Religiöses Wissen im vormodernen Europa (800–1800)', Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Index terms: Language and Literature - German, Rhetoric, Sermons and Preaching
Paper 639-cHow to Talk to God: Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg's Sermons on the Lord's Prayer on the Boundary of Catechetical Dialogue, Pious Tutorial, and Homiletic Manual
(Language: English)
Sven Gröger, Graduiertenkolleg 1662 'Religiöses Wissen im vormodernen Europa (800–1800)', Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Index terms: Education, Literacy and Orality, Sermons and Preaching, Theology
Paper 639-dSpeaking while Writing about God: Printed Sermons on the Boundary of Orality and Literacy
(Language: English)
Michael Lebzelter, DFG-Editionsprojekt 'Narrative Vermittlung religiösen Wissens', Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
Index terms: Language and Literature - German, Literacy and Orality, Rhetoric, Sermons and Preaching
Abstract

Speaking about God invariably leads up to the boundaries of the utterable. In that respect, sermons are an especially interesting medium since they are meant to be conveying God via speech. Thus, on the one hand, they are claimed to enable immediate spiritual experience of the transcendent deity, on the other hand, they are concerned with linguistic precision due to their authoritative nature. In any case, speaking about God as such is bound to forms of communication, be they oral or literary. The papers from different perspectives deal with the possibilities and limitations of speaking about, for and with God, and the intellectual reflection thereupon.