Teaching Nature – Nature’s Teaching. Aesthetic Strategies of Knowledge Transmission in a Transcultural Perspective (B07*)

• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies ; German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 405662736

The project studies two 14th-century didactic texts about nature in a transcultural perspective: al-Jildaki’s Durrat al-ghawwas and Konrad of Megenberg’s Buch der Natur. These natural encyclopaedias transform Greek, Arabic, and Latin knowledge with a didactic intent. For the first time, aesthetic strategies of knowledge transmission will be investigated which are simultaneously developed under differing conditions but follow a comparable natural philosophical approach. The study will be guided by four transcultural figures of reflection - authority and author / narrator; nature, God, and order; allegory, metaphor, personification; didactics and function.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1391: Different Aesthetics
• Applicant Institution: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
• Project Heads: Professorin Dr. Regula Forster; Dr. Jan Stellmann