B7: Teaching Nature – Nature’s Teaching. Aesthetic Strategies of Knowledge Transmission in a Transcultural Perspective

Project B7 has two research foci: one in Arabic and one in German studies. At the centre of our attention are two fourteenth-century didactic texts about nature which we examine in a transcultural perspective: al-Jildakī’s Durrat al-ghawwāṣ (‘The Pearl of the Diver’) and Konrad of Megenberg’s Buch der Natur / Buch von den natürlichen Dingen (‘Book of Nature’ / ‘Book of Natural Things’). Both of these natural encyclopaedias adapt Greek, Arabic, and Latin knowledge to serve didactic aims. They thereby demonstrate the extraordinary fascination and epistemic dynamics of philosophical approaches to nature. The project explores, for the first time, which aesthetic strategies are developed in differing conditions during the same period. Four transcultural figures of reflection – authority and author/narrator; nature, God, and order; allegory, metaphor, personification; didactics and function – guide the study.

B7 introduces two fields of study into the CRC which are not yet sufficiently represented: the transmission (as dynamic transformation) of knowledge about the beautiful, ordered nature. The CRC’s approach allows us to correlate the aesthetic strategies of the two natural encyclopaedias which oscillate between form and didactics, between autological and heterological dimension.

al-Ǧildakī: Durrat al-ġawwāṣ, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Landberg 157 (datiert 1763), fol. 1v (Beginn des Vorworts).

Konrad von Megenberg: Buch der Natur, Frankfurt a. M., Universitätsbibliothek, Ms. Carm. 1 (Lauber-Werkstatt; um 1440), fol. 3r (Beginn des Prologs).

Team

principal investigator:

Prof. Dr. Regula Forster
Dr. Jan Stellmann

researcher:

Bastian Böttcher
Seyed Muhammad Husein Muhammadi Demneh

Hilfskräfte:

Susanna Bartmann
Jasmin Schels
Sophia Smolinski

Contact:

b7spam prevention@sfb1391.uni-tuebingen.de

Activities

Events

2023

Lecture: Stellmann, J.: Ästhetische Strategien der Wissensvermittlung bei Konrad von Megenberg, Hauptseminar: „Wissen und (dt.) Wissensliteratur der Vormoderne“ (Prof. Dr. Bernd Bastert / Prof. Dr. Christina Lechtermann), Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 15.06.2023.

Lecture: Forster, R.: Kosmos, Sprache, Wissen. Die Naturenzyklopädie des mamlukischen Alchemisten al-Ǧildakī (14. Jh.), Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 14.06.2023.

Lecture: Forster, R.: Von Tieren, Steinen und Alphabeten. Die Naturenzyklopädie des ägyptischen Alchemisten Aydamir al-Ǧildakī (14. Jh.), Akademievorhaben „Bibliotheca Arabica“, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 08.05.2023.

2022

Lecture: Forster, R. / Stellmann, J.: Natur/lehren. Ästhetik der Naturdidaktik in transkultureller Perspektive, Mediävistisches Oberseminar, Universität Tübingen, 06.07.2022.

Publications

2023

Stellmann, J.: Präliminarien einer Ästhetik der Übertragung. Der Prolog zum Buch von den natürlichen Dingen Konrads von Megenberg zwischen Sprachreflexion, Metaphorik und Bibelhermeneutik, in: Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 64 (2023), S. 47–88.

Teaching

WiSe 2023/24

Forster, R. / Huang, Fei: The History and Concept of the Body and Nature: A Comparison between Chinese and Islamic Civilizations (Hauptseminar, Di 10–12).

Stellmann, J.: Naturlyrik im Mittelalter (Proseminar II, Do 16–18).

SoSe 2023

Forster, R. / Demiri, Lejla: Religion and Nature: Environment in Arabic Sources (Hauptseminar, Do 10–12).

WiSe 2022/23

Forster, R. / Stellmann, J.: Natur/lehren. Ästhetik der Naturdidaktik in transkultureller Perspektive / Teaching Nature – Nature’s Teaching. Aesthetics and Didactics of Nature in Transcultural Perspective (Hauptseminar, Do 14–16).