Döll, Alexander
Congratulations on passing the viva voce examination
on 18 October 2016.
Dissertation topic: "'With feeling hands and seeing eyes'. Sensualism and Enlightenment in Lohenstein's Arminius novel."
Doctoral scholarship
of the Cusanus-Werk (1 May 2012 - 31 October 2014).
Contact address at the University of Würzburg:
Institute for the History of Medicine
Oberer Neubergweg 10a
D-97074 Würzburg
Tel. 0931-31-83093
First supervisor: Prof Dr Roland Borgards
Second supervisor:
Prof Dr Stephan Kraft
Class in the graduate school: "Philosophy, Languages, Arts"
Doctorate in the Graduate School from SS 2011.
Abstract:
The project "Baroque Theriotopias. Über die Tiere in Lohensteins Arminiusroman" examines the animals in the Arminiusroman by the Baroque poet Daniel Casper von Lohenstein (1635-83) from a cultural-historical and symbol-theoretical perspective. This opulent work is the pinnacle of Baroque novelistic art and was written on the threshold between the Baroque and the Enlightenment. Lohenstein considerably expands on the animal narratives already found in ancient novels and relates them to Baroque state theory, anthropology and contemporary concepts of the cosmos. The omnipresence of animals in the text points to a specifically baroque animal-human relationship, which was only gradually replaced by naturalistic views during the Enlightenment. The concept of "theriotopia" is suitable for the analytical description of this relationship because it allows us to grasp its complexity and historical conditionality. Theriotopias are not to be understood as topoi associated with animals, but as configurations that are established through the opposition or interrelation between humans and animals.
In the linguistic and literary criticism of the Enlightenment, the Baroque style of poetry, which makes use of a pronounced animal metaphor, was generally dismissed as "gay". However, this criticism should be understood as an effect of an epistemic change that went beyond the purely literary and linguistic and concerned the coexistence of humans and animals. Within a few years, Baroque literature was perceived as a relic from distant times, because thinking in analogies (for example to animals) was replaced by thinking in categories.
In order to adequately assess this decisive literary, epistemic and social upheaval, this project will therefore analyse writings on political theory as well as contemporary zoological, natural philosophical and hermetic-magical literature. For research on Lohenstein and the Baroque courtly novel, this means, on the one hand, a more comprehensive cultural-historical contextualisation of the novel, which has so far been examined primarily in terms of historical aspects, and, on the other hand, a critical reinterpretation of one of the most important works of Baroque novel literature, which integrates narratological and cultural-semiotic findings of recent years into the analysis.
