Timo Felber (University of Kiel)

Fear in German Literature of the Middle Ages. Embodiment and Coping Strategies

Please join us for our first Lunchtime workshop of the year. Timo Felber (University of Kiel) will present on “Fear in German Literature of the Middle Ages. Embodiment and Coping Strategies,” with responses from Sarah Prodan and Vesta Pitts. Please note this will be a pre-circulated paper.

Below is an abstract for Professor Felber’s talk.

Fear in German Literature of the Middle Ages. Embodiment and Coping Strategies 

Fear and its cultural functions - doubly bound to reality as well as to the literary field with its own conventions of representation - are closely observed in German-language literature of the Middle Ages. Using the example of three romances from the 12th and 13th centuries, the representation of fear, its embodiment by the protagonists, and mechanisms of coping with it are analyzed. Emotions become visible through the description of human bodily reactions, whereby we have to assume that there is an interaction between body and psyche, i.e. emotions can be expressed as bodily reactions, but bodily states and attitudes can also influence mental processes in the individual person and affect emotions. This seems to be adequately described by the term ‚embodiment‘. The last part of the article deals with social fears of the foreign, which arise in the selected texts through cultural contact with the Orient. In „Parzival“ and other texts a message of tolerance and acceptance appears, which has unfortunately long since lost its self-evidence for many fearful people in our in our so seemingly enlightened modern age. History can be seen as a laboratory in which the dynamics of fear and anxiety as well as the coping mechanisms of societies and (fictitious) individuals can be paradigmatically observed and profitably applied to current challenges of an anxiety culture.