Hospitality in Self-Narratives: Concepts of the Person and Ritualized Action in Early Modern Europe

Researcher: Dr. Gabriele Jancke

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Claudia Ulbrich

Abstract

The self-narratives of learned individuals in the 16th century will be systematically analyzed in order to study concepts of the person, expressed in the context of ritualized actions.  This section’s working hypothesis assumes that ritualized action not only played a significant role in the political and religious spheres but also influenced daily life to a great extent.  In order to test this hypothesis, the project focuses on hospitality as an arena of ritualized behavior that can be studied well on the basis of self-narratives and that has a great meaning from a comparative, transcultural perspective.  The project will attempt to enter into the close connection between personal individuality and autobiographical writing and so to work out various concepts of the person, revealed in relationship to others.  To expose the meaning and importance of hospitality in early modern self-narratives as well as to discover, among learned individuals, what concepts of the person were associated with hospitality and what ritual elementss become visible in its context are the joint goals of this project.  Focusing on scholars’ households, a study on early modern hospitality will be finished that is based to a large extent on scholars’ self-narratives.

 

Dr. Gabriele Jancke