An Unabridged Translation Of Simplicius Simplicissimus

Shifting the focus from the medical use of spas to their cultural and social functions, this study shows that eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German spas served a vital role as spaces where new ways of perceiving the natural environment and conceptualizing society were disseminated. Although spas continued to be places of health and healing, their function and perception in central Europe changed fundamentally around the middle of the eighteenth century. This transformation of the role of the spa occurred in two ways. First, the spa popularized a new perception of the landscape with a preference for mountains and the seacoast, forming the basis for the cultural assumptions underlying modern tourism. Second, contemporaries perceived spas as meeting places comparable to institutions of Enlightenment sociability like coffeehouses, salons, and Masonic lodges. Spas were conceived as spaces where the nobility and the bourgeoisie could interact on an equal footing, thereby overcoming the constraints of early modern social boundaries. These changes were negotiated through both personal interactions at spas and an increasingly sophisticated published spa discourse. The late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German spa thus helped to bring about social and cultural modernity.

This book uncovers the tremendous importance of water for European medieval literature, focusing on a large number of writers and poets. Water proves to be highly meaningful in religious, literary, and factual narratives insofar as it emerges as a central catalyst to bring about epiphany and epistemological and spiritual illumination.

A broad-ranging survey of violence in western Europe from the Reformation to the French Revolution. Julius Ruff summarises a huge body of research and provides readers with a clear, accessible, and engaging introduction to the topic of violence in early modern Europe. His book, enriched with fascinating illustrations, underlines the fact that modern preoccupations with the problem of violence are not unique, and that late medieval and early modern European societies produced levels of violence that may have exceeded those in the most violent modern inner-city neighbourhoods. Julius Ruff examines the role of the emerging state in controlling violence; the roots and forms of the period's widespread interpersonal violence; violence and its impact on women; infanticide; and rioting. This book, in the successful textbook series New Approaches to European History, will be of great value to students of European history, criminal justice sciences, and anthropology.

Paper is older than the printing press, and even in its unprinted state it was the great network medium behind the emergence of modern civilization. In the shape of bills, banknotes and accounting books it was indispensible to the economy. As forms and files it was essential to bureaucracy. As letters it became the setting for the invention of the modern soul, and as newsprint it became a stage for politics. In this brilliant new book Lothar Müller describes how paper made its way from China through the Arab world to Europe, where it permeated everyday life in a variety of formats from the thirteenth century onwards, and how the paper technology revolution of the nineteenth century paved the way for the creation of the modern daily press. His key witnesses are the works of Rabelais and Grimmelshausen, Balzac and Herman Melville, James Joyce and Paul Valéry. Müller writes not only about books, however: he also writes about pamphlets, playing cards, papercutting and legal pads. We think we understand the ?Gutenberg era?, but we can understand it better when we explore the world that underpinned it: the paper age. Today, with the proliferation of digital devices, paper may seem to be a residue of the past, but Müller shows that the humble technology of paper is in many ways the most fundamental medium of the modern world.

Publication of Lost Worlds introduces to English-speaking readers one of the most original and engaging historians in Germany today. Known for his work in historical demography, Arthur E. Imhof here branches out into folklore, religion, anthropology, psychology, and the history of art. Imhof begins by reconstructing the world and worldview of Johannes Hooss, a farmer in a remote Hessian village. The everyday life of such a man was particular to his region; he spoke a local dialect and shared a regional culture. By exploring the various systems that made sense out of this circumscribed existence - astrology, the folklore of the seasons, and Christian interpretations of birth, confirmation, marriage, and death - Imhof expands the book into a speculation on why life in the late twentieth century can seem meaningless and difficult. Rooted in Imhof's belief that we need stability and values that transcend the individual, Lost Worlds inspires us to examine our own ways of seeing the world.