Uni-Tübingen

Project F03: Threat discourse in sermons and plays of the late middle ages and the early modern era

Abstract

Project F03 sets out to examine such sermons and plays as were accorded a wide reception spanning the better part of three centuries (14 -17th). These sources are assessed in terms of their status as threat discourses. Three threat scenarios are treated: 'Eternal damnation at the Last Judgment', 'Jewish conspiracies’, and ‘Expo­sure of confessional heresy.' The issue to be clarified, in light of the above, is the extent to which diverse schemata (linguistic-textual, rhetorical-theatrical, and religious-social) are discernibly at work in the construction first of a threat per se, then of strategies of mobilization designed to counter the threat.