Arnau de Vilanova: Eschatology and Vernacularisation
Prof. Dr. Alexander Fidora
During my two months at the IKGF, I will explore the connections between eschatological, and in particular apocalyptical, thought, on the one hand, and the rise of vernacular
languages in medieval Europe on the other.
To this end, I shall study the prominent case of the well-known Catalan physician and lay theologian, Arnaldus de Villanova, who, from 1305 onwards, wrote an important theological corpus in Catalan. During the first phase of the project, the Catalan edition from 1947 will be revised philologicaly, since the four published texts contain countless errors. In the second phase, an annotated German translation oh these works will be prepared, which will form the basis of an in-depth study of the systematic relations that obtain between apocalyptic thought and vernacularization.
The translation will be published in the series "Katalanische Literatur des Mittelalters" (LIT Verlag). The in-depth study will be presented at the Deutsche katalanistentag in September 2014 in Bochum.