Literarische Anthropologie: Die Neuentdeckung des Menschen by Alexander Košenina

Abstract

584 Reviews Middle Ages, and tries to define its sense of humour. Humour has of course a his tory,and understanding what latemedieval Germans found funny could provide nuanced insights into this culture. Sebastian Coxon's conclusion is that, at least as regards this genre, theywere very conformist and pretty crude. There are stories here about a stingy host who offers his farts as bedding, about a promiscuous wife who dupes her husband into believing that he had caught a donkey instead of her lover, a miller who finds such pleasure in eating honey that he think this must be sex, and a ladywho tries to convince her husband she got pregnant from eating snow. But although many of these tales sound quite transgressive to us, Coxon argues that their aim was to confirm the status quo. Audiences were en couraged to laugh in derision atmarginal figures. If theywere amused by reversals of power structures, then only in the awareness that these hierarchies were only temporarily inverted: servants outwitting theirmasters or women cheating men were exceptional situations. In thoughtful explorations of the vexed issue of the modes of reception of latemedieval literature,Coxon shows how diegetic repre sentations of laughter guided audiences at recitals or private readings to laughwith the characters?or at them?in the right places: an early form of canned laughter. The narrative patterns that transport humour often aim at 'theatricality, imagining a collective reception for these stories leading to a public consensus about what is funny and what is proper. Coxon explains these tales' obscenity and interest in bodily functions verymuch inNorbert Elias's terms as part of attempts to reconcile bodily needs with the new demands forbodily restraint in civilized society. This is the fullest study of theGerman comic maere to have appeared in a long time, and isbased on an impressivelywide corpus of sources as well as background reading. There is awealth of intriguing new information here thatdeserves further exploration?how the Church's suspicion of laughter (Jesus never laughed!) was negotiated in these stories; that face and hair were themost frequently attacked body parts here; or that the best jokes were on millers and charcoal-burners. None of the stories isdiscussed as awhole; theplot elements serve instead as illustrations forwider points on laughter, narrative techniques, and body and society. Because of this segmentation of sources, this isnot an easy read even for those familiar with the genre. A longer index listing stories by title rather than only by author would have facilitated browsing, and amore sustained analysis of individual storieswould have made reading from cover to cover easier?and perhaps more fun, although there isplenty to smile about in any case. University of St Andrews Bettina Bildhauer Literarische Anthropologic: Die Neuentdeckung des Menschen. By Alexander KoSenina. (Akademie Studienbucher Literaturwissenschaft) Berlin: Akade mie Verlag. 2008. 254 pp. 19.80. ISBN 978-3-05-004419-4. The purpose of this volume, appearing within a series of Studienbucher, is to con textualize and elucidate a variety of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German literary texts grouped together under the theme of Titerary anthropology. MLR, 105.2, 2010 585 The term anthropology is interpreted by the author in the broadest possible sense, referring not to the institutionalized academic discipline that emerged at the be ginning of the twentieth century, but rather to the broader late-Enlightenment project of investigating the psychological, medical, and sociological dimensions of thatmost complex of scientific objects: the human being. While acknowledging thatKant's lectures on anthropology and Herders writings on human cultures and on the origin of language can be seen as having inaugur ated the discipline of anthropology in late eighteenth-century Germany, Alexander Koseninas focus isdirected more towards figures such as Ernst Platner, Christoph Meiners, Karl Philipp Moritz, theyoung Friedrich Schiller, and others, who sought to understand the human being not only as a rational and ethical being after the manner of Descartes and Kant, but also as a site upon which mental and bodily forces converge and influence one another. Publishing their findings in journals such as Moritz's Magazin fur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, these thinkers questioned traditional religious approaches to phenomena such as dreams, mental illness, and gender. And...