Narrating History (A)
This cluster examines how the past is constructed and made meaningful through narrative. A01 (Conermann/Bonn) edits and analyzes Mehmed Giray’s Crimean Tatar and Ottoman chronicle (1683–1703), probing its narrative strategies and forms of historical sense-making. A02 (Friede/Bochum) develops the category of „narrative constellations“ to analyze the Old French prose Lancelot-Grail cycle. A03 (Krause/Bochum) applies a diachronic narratological approach to prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible (Amos, Ezekiel). A04 (Morenz/Bonn) studies how two major societal crises in Pharaonic Egypt generated new historiographic styles. A05 (Setzer-Mori/Bochum) investigates history-telling under censorship in early modern Japan’s commercial book market. A06 (Tilg/Freiburg) traces the origins and functions of the 17th-century roman-à-clef from John Barclay’s Latin novels.
Narrating Ideas (B)
This cluster explores how concepts and arguments are turned into narrative. B01 (Baumbach/Bochum) studies „first inventors“ in ancient literature as self-reflexive figures of poetic creation. B02 (Bezner/Freiburg) develops a poetics of integumental narrative in 12th-century Latin literature, where philosophical concepts act as characters. B03 (Gunsenheimer/Bonn) examines how indigenous authors in colonial Spanish America adopted the European concept of „nation.“ B04 (Müller/Bonn) theorizes narrative within ancient philosophical dialogue (Plato, Cicero). B05 (Rüggemeier/Bonn) reassesses the „Holy Spirit“ as an off-stage character in Mark’s Gospel through cognitive narratology. B06 (Schwermann/Bochum) analyzes allegories and exempla as arguments of governance in classical Chinese treatises.
Narrating Life (C)
This cluster focuses on character and the representation of lives. C01 (Brüggen/Bonn) studies the art of character depiction in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. C02 (von Contzen/Freiburg) develops a movement-oriented theory of character in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. C03 (Eggert/Bochum) examines narrativity in Korean funerary orations (chemun) of the 16th–18th centuries. C04 (Kollatz/Heidelberg) studies biographical compendia of the Mamluk period and their narration of careers and dependencies. C05 (Reinöhl/Freiburg) investigates repetition in the endangered Eastern Himalayan oral tradition Igu.