Social Imagery in Middle Low German: Didactical Literature and Metaphorical Representation (1470–1517)

Description

Social imagery during the Late Middle Ages was typically considered to be dominated by the three orders - 'oratores', 'bellatores', 'laboratores' - as the most common way of describing social order, along with body metaphors and comprehensive lists of professions as known from the 'Danse macabre' tradition. None of these actually dominates within the vast genre of lay didactical literature. This book comprises the first systematic investigation of social imagery from a specific late medieval linguistic context. It methodically catalogues images of the social that were used in a particular cultural/literary sphere, and it separates late medieval efforts at catechization in print from the social and religious ruptures that are conventionally thought to have occurred after 1517. The investigation thus compliments recent scholarship on late medieval vernacular literature in Germany, most of which has concentrated on southern urban centres of production. The author fills a major lacuna in this field by concentrating for the first time on the entire extant corpus of vernacular print production in the northern region dominated by the Hanseatic cities and the Middle Low German dialect. Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 I. A Space of Its Own: Urban Literature from Cologne to Lübeck 31 I.1. Language and Cultural Space 31 I.2. Print Production in Middle Low German 1470–1517 36 I.3. Different Discourses: Modes of Distinction 54 I.4. Names and Metaphors: Establishing Authority in Different Discourses 78 II. The "real world": Social Groups in Normative and Legal Sources 92 III. Tripartitions and Their Dissolution 123 III.1. The Master Narrative: Functional and Moral Tripartitions 123 III.2. The Terminology of Moral Tripartition 143 IV. The Nine Choirs of Angels 163 V. The Good, the Bad and the Mighty: The Division of Society into Oppositions 184 V.1. Binomials as Social Imagery 184 V.2. The Good and the Evil 192 V.3. Man and Woman 195 V.4. Husband and Wife 203 V.5. Lords and Servants 218 V.6. Clergy and Laity 228 V.7. Christians and Jews 249 V.8. "Ioden unde heyden" 265 V.9. Rich and Poor, Man and Woman, Jew and Pagan: The Combination of Binomials 278 VI. 'Revues des états' 282 VII. The Mystical Body of Christ 303 VIII. Exotics: Allegories 313 VIII.1. Technological Imagery and Personification: The 'Boek van veleme Rade' 314 VIII.2. The Chess Game 329 Conclusion: A Science of (unaccomplished) Possibilities 337 Bibliography 355 Appendix: Middle Low German Incunabula and Early Imprints 383 Index 397