Description of the German geomantic and astologic multiple text manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Broxbourne 84.3 from 1469.

Marco Heiles, geomancia hais ich. Die geomantisch-astrologische Sammelhandschrift Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Broxbourne 84.3, in: Mittelalter. Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Rezeptionsgeschichte 1 (2018),…[Read more]

Edition and commentary of an German chiromantic text from about 1464 in the manuscript Linz, Landesbibliothek, Hs. 139, fol. 1r-5r.

Marco Heiles, Eine bisher unbeachtete deutsche Chiromantie in der Landesbibliothek Linz, in: Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 145 (2016), S. 70-81.

German abstract of:
Marco Heiles, Das Losbuch. Manuskriptologie einer Textsorte des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts, Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau 2018, ISBN 978341251292.

The ghost story typically presents an interaction of the past with the present, often in the form of ‘stone tape’ type repeats of an event from the past. The 2016 BBC series The Living and the Dead went beyond this to show the merging of multiple time streams, so people made choices in the ‘present’ because of influences from past and future,…[Read more]

The ghost story typically presents an interaction of the past with the present, often in the form of ‘stone tape’ type repeats of an event from the past. The 2016 BBC series The Living and the Dead went beyond this to show the merging of multiple time streams, so people made choices in the ‘present’ because of influences from past and future,…[Read more]

When rock star Bono told Oprah Winfrey that America is an ideal that is supposed to be contagious, the talk show host was moved to tears. Such an imagined America, rather than the nation-state USA, is the topic of Fabricating the Absolute Fake. Pop and politics become intertwined, as Hollywood, television, and celebrities spread the American Dream…[Read more]

This paper articulates a model for examining medieval vernacular multi-text codices which
is based on the dynamics we see in the contemporary use of social media, particularly
personal blogs. Both media democratise the use of an existing specialised technology,
accelerate the development of this technology, and serve as vehicles for the…[Read more]

This paper discusses the literary, emotional and monastic relationship of Peter of Poitiers and Abbot Peter the Venerable, in particular looking at Peter of Poitier’s verse Panegyric in praise of his abbot, and Peter the Venerable’s subsequent verse Defence of his monk’s writings. The paper concludes that the Panegyric and its defence were part of…[Read more]

Anhand der Science-Fiction Animes “Captain Future”, “Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs” und “Cowboy Bebop” wird eine bestimmtes Narrativ innerhalb des Genres des Science-Fiction Anime stichprobenartig über drei Jahrzehnte hinweg betrachtet und die vorzufindenden Geschlechterkonstruktionen beleuchtet: Jede dieser Erzählungen handelt von den A…[Read more]

Transcription of a tract on the plague from a German manuscript from ca 1463, Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. germ. 1, fol. 51ra-rb.

The Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics by the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) has been treated by commentators as wide-ranging as Borges, Renan, and Kilito as an exemplary case of the failure of translation. Critics who presume Ibn Rushd’s failure often concentrate on his rendering of Aristotle’s tragedy and comedy by praise…[Read more]

Beginning with television’s popularization and mass availability in the 1950s, TV has extensively been employed to transport and mediate history. From the early televisual experiments of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek to more recent examples such as Quantum Leap, The X-Files and Continuum, Science Fiction television and its subgenre of A…[Read more]

This dissertation considers how Peter the Venerable, the abbot of Cluny from 1122 to 1156, implemented reform through a textual program. Peter’s abbacy witnessed a period of fundamental reconstruction, in which not only the practices of Cluniac monasticism, but also its mentality and institutional ethos underwent dramatic change. This period e…[Read more]

This is a preprint draft of the chapter appearing in the De Gruyter volume, Friendship in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age.

Clark Ashton Smith—unlike the more famous H.P. Lovecraft—engaged with the medieval as a setting for his fiction. Lovecraft admired classical Roman civilization and the eighteenth century, but had little time for medieval themes. As Brantley Bryant has related, Lovecraft wrote contemptuously that the Middle Ages was a period that “snivel[ed] along…[Read more]

Clark Ashton Smith—unlike the more famous H.P. Lovecraft—engaged with the medieval as a setting for his fiction. Lovecraft admired classical Roman civilization and the eighteenth century, but had little time for medieval themes. As Brantley Bryant has related, Lovecraft wrote contemptuously that the Middle Ages was a period that “snivel[ed] along…[Read more]

This article examines the panegyric across the literary traditions of West, South, and East Asia, concentrating on Arabo-Persian qaṣīda, the Sanskrit praśasti, and the Chinese fu. In radically different albeit analogous ways, each genre elaborated a political aesthetics of literary form. The West, South, and East Asian genres each cultivated a met…[Read more]

One of Rod Serling’s favourite topics of exploration in The Twilight Zone (1959–64) is nostalgia, which pervaded many of the episodes of the series. Although Serling himself often looked back upon the past wishing to regain it, he did, however, understand that we often see things looking back that were not there and that the past is often ide…[Read more]

This discussion of Innovations and Turning Points: Toward a History of Kāvya Literature (2014), a magisterial contribution to South Asian literature edited by Yigal Bronner, David Shulman, and Gary Tubb, situates this work within broader trends within the discipline of comparative literature and cross-cultural poetics. I consider how this volume…[Read more]

This course covers autobiographical writings in Persian from premodern times to contemporary Iran. It reflects the emergence of autobiographical writing in the first days of Islam and an evolving sense of self, identity, and cultural cohesion, and then records transitions within the political/economic power structures in the geographical region.…[Read more]