Vigilance and attentiveness. Literary dynamics of self-observation and the observation of others in medieval religious literature.
Project C01
Principal Investigators
Prof. Dr. Beate Kellner; Prof. Dr. Susanne Reichlin
Researchers
Dr. Magdalena Butz; Pia Fuschlberger
Project Description
The project investigates how Christian vigilance in the context of repentance, confession, and penance is thematised, propagated, and reflected upon in vernacular texts dating from the late Middle Ages, and how the dynamics of self-observation and the observation of others are expanded upon in the religious vernacular literature of that period. In the second phase of the project, the focus will not only be on the diversity of spiritual lyric texts, but the text corpus used will also be expanded to include catechetical texts. In keeping with the research goals set out in the application, special attention will be paid to the balance between vigilance and attentiveness.