Punishment and Penitential Practices in Medieval German Writing

The supposed brutality of medieval punishment looms large in the popular contemporary imagination, yet this perception can obscure the diverse and nuanced reactions of medieval society to violent or criminal acts. This collectionaddresses the ways in which different approaches to punishment are depicted and discussed in written texts, focusing in particular on the often complex intersection - semantic, theoretical and theological - between punishment andpenitential practices, both self-imposed and imposed by others. Often in dialogue with theoretical approaches (for example, those of Rene Girard or Michel Foucault), individual essays explore a range of themes: the intersection ofthe literary representation of acts of punishment and penance with historical experience; the ways in which acts of punishment and penance engage the wishes and desires of those inflecting or witnessing them; legal and theological implications; the symbolic and communicative capital of the body. They focus on a range of texts (romance, lyric, mystical writing, saints’ lives) written in German, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century.

Sarah Bowden is Lecturer in German at King’s College London; Annette Volfing is Professor of Medieval German Studies at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Oriel College.

Contributors: Sarah Bowden, Bjoern Buschbeck, Sebastian Coxon, Racha Kirakosian, Andreas Krass, Henrike Manuwald, Katharina Mertens-Fleury, Jamie Page, Aimut Suerbaum, Annette Volfing.