Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval European Literature

Albrecht Classen is University Distinguished Professor of German Studies at the University of Arizona where he teaches and research medieval and early modern German and European literature and culture. In his by now ninety scholarly books he has examined many different aspects, most recently water (2017), the forest (2016), death (2016), multilingualism (2016), love, marriage, and sexuality (in several books over the last two decades), friendship, urban and rural space, crime and punishment, women’s voices, etc. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1986. He has received major grants and awards for teaching, research, and service.

Table of Contents: History of Toleration and Tolerance:



I: Toleration and Tolerance: An Introduction



Historical, Religious, and Literary Reflections



II: History and Theory of Toleration and Tolerance:



Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern Ages:



Early Voices, Quiet and yet of Great Strength



III: Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Encounters with the Others



Emergence of Toleration and Tolerance in



the Early Thirteenth Century?



IV: A Brief Moment of Truce and Welcome:



Friendship Between the Muslim and the Christian



in Rudolf von Ems’s Der guote Gêrhart



V: Reaching out to the Other Side in Fourteenth-Century



Italian Literature: Literary Efforts to Establish Friendship



and Tolerant Relationships in Boccaccio’s Decameron



VI: The Foreign World and the Foreign Religion in Medieval Literature



Experiments in and Strategies with Toleration



A Pan-European Perspective on the ‘Good Heathen’



VII: Philosophical and Religious Outreaches to the Other Faiths



from the High to the Late Middle Ages: Peter Abelard,



Ramon Llull, and Nicholas of Cusa,



VIII: Tolerance in the Age of the Protestant Reformation



The Quest for Spiritual Truth Beyond the Church



Sebastian Franck and Valentin Weigel



IX: Epilogue



Bibliography



Index