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Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science

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Article http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2021.07.013

Hate, Lies, and Violence: The Dark Side of Pre-Modern Literature Why Would We Care? And Yet, the Key Rests in the Past to Solve Our Issues Today. With a Focus on the Stricker (Thirteenth Century)

Albrecht Classen

Department of German Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.

*Corresponding author: Albrecht Classen

Published: December 31,2021

Abstract

Oddly, the more we turn to the past world in its literary manifestations, the more we recognize fundamental and universal aspects commonly shared across the globe by all people until today. There are virtues and vices, especially the Seven Deadly Sins. We have to observe, hermeneutically speaking, the tenuous passage through Scylla and Charybdis of idealizing and maligning the past, whereas the phenomena of hatred, envy, jealousy, dissimulation, the tendency to turn to violence, and to employ lies can certainly be observed in medieval literature as well, parallel to the glory of King Arthur’s court or the world of the Grail. Whenever basic human attitudes or approaches are concerned, we discover both evilness and goodness, always in changing relationship to each other. This paper examines these issues by way of studying of a variety of medieval voices, of a major theological treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins, and of the didactic narratives by the Middle High German poet The Stricker.

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How to cite this paper

Hate, Lies, and Violence: The Dark Side of Pre-Modern Literature Why Would We Care? And Yet, the Key Rests in the Past to Solve Our Issues Today. With a Focus on the Stricker (Thirteenth Century)

How to cite this paper: Albrecht Classen. (2021) Hate, Lies, and Violence: The Dark Side of Pre-Modern Literature Why Would We Care? And Yet, the Key Rests in the Past to Solve Our Issues Today. With a Focus on the Stricker (Thirteenth Century)Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science5(2), 281-294.

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2021.07.013