Forms of Individuality and Literacy in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods ed. by Franz-Josef Arlinghaus

Abstract

Reviewed by: Forms of Individuality and Literacy in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods ed. by Franz-Josef Arlinghaus Melissa Raine Arlinghaus, Franz-Josef, ed., Forms of Individuality and Literacy in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 31), Turnhout, Brepols, 2015; hardback; pp. viii, 317; 2 b/w, 13 colour illustrations; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503552200. This collection began as a conference on the utility of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory for understanding premodern individuality, but the essays provide stimulating interdisciplinary discussions about individuality and premodern (mainly German-speaking) Europe independently of this framework. Three essays together offer a useful introduction to Luhmann's principles. Franz-Josef Arlinghaus applies the distinction he made between socially inclusive individuality—distinctive to medieval and early modern societies—and 'modern' individuality—grounded in its distance from society—to autobiography. Accordingly, premodern autobiography is characterized by a drive to be 'better' within the parameters of one's social affiliation (exemplified by the works of [End Page 142] Thietmar of Merseburg and Augsburg merchant Lucas Rem), as opposed to an emphasis on 'difference' in modern autobiography. David Gary Shaw rejects Luhmann's separation of 'the social and the psychic', arguing that, for a historian, the integration of these spheres through the concept of self is preferable (p. 125). Shaw is more positive about Luhmann's thinking around the individual and social structure, and pushes Luhmann's transition to the modern period back to the fifteenth century through considering 'self-expression' in sumptuary law, Thomas Hoccleve, and the almost unyieldingly 'impersonal' prose of William Worcester, all of which demonstrate 'the pressure coming from individual people to place themselves into the social world in ways that seem unpredictable sometimes, but always personal' (p. 147). When Gregor Rohmann argues that medieval inclusion identity was staged largely at the level of semantics, as shifting social structures did not offer a stable basis for identity, he inverts one of Luhmann's key oppositions. Changing medieval kinship structures and the transcendental focus of Christianity are central to this reconfiguration, which Rohrmann explores through the recollections of Hieronymus Koehler and the relationship of the 'I' to authority over a household in the writing-self of sixteenth-century house books: 'there is no "autobiographical pact" in house books, but the reciprocity of collective remembrance' (p. 227). In the 'ego documents' produced by Princess Elisabeth Charlotte, sister-in-law to Louis XIV, Marieke Böth finds that gender, nationality, and status are interwoven with health, virtue, and physical location in the maintenance of her self-identity. Brigitte Bedos-Rezak engages with the relationship of theory to historical context before turning to 'long twelfth-century' expressions of individuality, culminating in a consideration of the 'non-human' expression of individuality in the form of seals. Eva Kormann examines women's self-representation (with reference to lower-class masculine textual self-representation) c. 1800, when 'the genre of "autobiography" demands an autonomous self conception, but the contemporary gender order knows of no autonomous model for women' (p. 118), generically reflected in the frequent choice of letter format to write about their lives (a communicative medium, rather than the solipsistic genres used by men). Through the autobiography of Konrad Pellikan, Gabrielle Jancke critiques the spatial conceptualization of autobiography as 'interior' (private) for relegating other social, 'public' aspects of the individual self to a secondary exteriority. The more neutral 'person' is preferred to 'individuality' for opening up 'a complex field of entangled relations, actions, and flows of resources, i.e. considering them people busily involved in performative processes of "doing person" in relational and participative ways' (p. 174). Matthias Meyer deals explicitly with narratology's treatment of the individual (in which he finds little use for Luhmann's work). Of the three fifteenth-century texts he considers, the most truly 'autobiographical' is the non-narrative, predominantly account-keeping marginal notes of physician Johannes Tichtel— [End Page 143] 'an inventory of the self of a real-life individual' (p. 195)—,whereas the narrative characteristics of the others produce individuality as an organizing principle of the text itself. Christof Rolker examines names as practices of representation that contribute to individual and social identity. He considers...