IMC 2025: Sessions

Session 1237: No Pain, No Gain: What We Learn When We Study Mathematical Texts, I

Wednesday 9 July 2025, 14:15-15:45

Organiser:	Michaela Wiesinger, Institut für Germanistik, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
Moderator/Chair:	Julia Bruch, Philsophische Fakultät, Universität Mannheim / Historisches Institut, Universität zu Köln
Paper 1237-a	Every Number Tells a Story: Narratological Structures and Storytelling in Late Medieval and Early Modern Reckoning Books (Language: English) Franziska Putz, Institut für Germanistik, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck Index terms: Education, Language and Literature - German, Teaching the Middle Ages
Paper 1237-b	Picture This!: On the Interplay of Text and Image in Reckoning Books of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (Language: English) Michaela Wiesinger, Institut für Germanistik, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck Index terms: Daily Life, Education, Language and Literature - German, Science
Paper 1237-c	'Put from you!': Comparing Vernacular and Latin Idioms for Arithmetical Instructions from the Early to the Late Medieval Period (Language: English) Bernhard Bauer, Institut für Digitale Geisteswissenschaften, Universität Graz Index terms: Education, Language and Literature - Celtic, Language and Literature - German
Abstract	Mathematical texts do not only teach us about how to do math. That is of course a big part of these didactic texts but moreover we learn about the owners, the users, and the environments in which those texts are produced, treasured, and utilized. In the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period instructive texts on mathematics pop up everywhere and pose questions on what we can learn from the way they are structured, the language they use, the connection of text and image, and the collections they are held in. In addition we can ask how these didactic texts were actually taught when we consider the environment(s) (reckoning school, monastery, private ownership) in which these books were read. Lastly, it is important to mention that these texts - may they be handwritten and/or printed - can only be made available and finally useable for research on a larger scale when we allow for methods from the realm of the Digital Humanities to help us understand and decipher these ubiquitously transmitted texts. This is session 1 of 2 on this topic.