Open Access

Die theoretische Vorstellung von Berührung als einer Verbindung durch Trennung, wird, wie Karin Harrasser herausstellt, im Rahmen der politischen Nähe- und Distanzreglementierung der Corona-Pandemie zu einer alltäglichen Erfahrung, die dazu veranlasse, noch einmal neu über das Verhältnis von Berührung und Grenze nachzudenken. Harrassers Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit einem Denken des Halbdurchlässigen in drei Episoden aus Ovids "Metamorphosen" (Arachne, Marsyas und Niobe). Ihre Analyse, in der auch Diego Velázquez' Gemälde "Die Fabel der Arachne" und Tizians "Die Häutung des Marsyas" eine zentrale Rolle spielen, plädiert für das Denken eines "taktvollen Berührbarmachens" und einer Annäherung jenseits von harten Grenzen.

In scholarly discussions, ancient didactic poetry is sometimes considered a 'technical' form of literature. The 'technical' aspect of didactic poems would seem to concern mainly their contents, not the poems' form, which is described instead as literary. And so, didactic poetry appears to be both 'technical' and, at the same time, more than just technical. To what extent were didactic poems considered 'artistic' in our modern sense? Or should we call them simply 'technical' poems in the sense that they deal with 'techne' as a form of practical expertise? Was the 'art' of ancient didactic poems one specific domain that ancient audiences easily identified? Or was this somewhat unclear? These are some of the key questions that I am concerned with, as I wish to explore to what extent the ancient poets themselves utilize the idea of 'techne' and what is the added value that the concept of 'techne' brings to their poetic works. I will present three authors to address these questions, namely in order: Ovid, whom I take as example of a poet who grandly advertises the presence of 'ars' in his poem; then, Archestratus of Gela, the first, partly extant poet to write 'didactic poems' in Greece in the manner that will impose itself in the following centuries, and an early example of how this poetry engages with what idea(s) about 'ars'; and, lastly, Aratus of Soli, the likely most canonical author of this type of poetry in Antiquity. This selection of authors, to be sure, does not provide a full picture of didactic poetry in Antiquity, with all its peculiarities. But it does have some paradigmatic meaning for two reasons. First, Archestratus and Aratus are significant within the history of didactic poetry, as I anticipated, because the former is a pioneer in this genre and the latter is a widely popular and influential author. Thus, analysis of their poems is useful to understand also certain features of the didactic genre more in general. Ovid's "Ars Amatoria", on the other hand, while perhaps being less influential for the whole history of the genre, becomes paradigmatic in so far as one explores the issue of didactic 'art'. For, this work features the topic of 'techne' much more extensively than many other didactic poems. But before I move to these authors, I wish to make a preamble about ancient didactic poetry as genre. For one might then wonder whether these questions about didactic poetry and 'techne' would find an easy solution if one considered first the meaning and category of the 'didactic' - a name that by itself seems to evoke the idea of knowledge and the sharing of a certain form of expertise.

The present study shed some light on the socalled Türkenbüchlein (The Turks Booklet) by analyzing, in what extent, a literary work on the history, culture, and religion of the Turks a widely disseminated book in the 15th century, belonging to Georg from Hungary (also “Der Ungenannte Mühlbächer,” “Rumeser Student,” Captivus Septemcastrensis, c. 1422–3 July 1502), is still worth reading. Undoubtedly, it would be necessary to investigate what made the book so popular in the past and what could make it a bestseller today. The article reveals the story of the book`s creation and success, as well as, the multifaceted personality of the main character.

Mit Petrarcas literarischem Œuvre wird gemeinhin das Einsetzen einer spezifisch frühneuzeitlichen Konzeption selbstautorisierter Autorschaft verbunden, in der in Übereinstimmung mit Selbstaussagen einer über das Gesamtwerk hinweg konstruierten Autor-Persona ein zentrales Distinktionsmerkmal der Literatur der beginnenden Frühen Neuzeit gegenüber dem Mittelalter ausgemacht wird. Anhand des Dialogs "Secretum" versucht der Aufsatz aufzuzeigen, in welches Verhältnis sich Selbstautorisierung zu als vergangen inszenierten Denkmodellen setzt, die durch die Annahme eines zeichentheoretischen Analogismus fundiert sind, wie ihn Foucault beschreibt. Das Petrarkische Spiel mit 'auctoritas' und Zeichentheorie verdeutlicht dabei, wie sehr die vermeintlich getrennten Modelle des Vergangenen und des Neuen voneinander abhängen, um die komplexen Ermöglichungsstrukturen dargestellter Subjektivität zu gewährleisten, auf die eine klare Teleologie Mittelalter-Renaissance den Blick versperren könnte.

This essay considers the observatory in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Vita Merlini", with its seventy doors and seventy windows, as a structuring emblem of the title character's state of mind and, by extension, the poem's poetics and epistemology.