Roßbach, Nikola/Schrott, Angela (eds.): Wiederholung und Variation im Gespräch des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit.

Repetition is a basic cultural activity that occurs in all areas of human life and action, including communication. This interdisciplinary anthology inquires into the creativity of repetitive patterns of conversation in pre-modern times. The contributions from history, linguistics, and literature analyze German, Spanish, French, and English textual evidence from the Middle Ages and early modern period and examine the tension between the apparent identity of repetition and its potential to creatively generate difference. The fundamental linguistic and cultural functional contexts of this interrelationship of repetition and variation are explored: do repetitive conversational patterns create community or do they sharpen opposites? Is repetition an orienting principle of composition, or does it have a destabilizing effect on speech constellations through variation? Does it stand for continuity and consolidation of linguistic forms of expression or for the possibility of creative renewal?
This volume explores repetition and variation under the aspects of structure and function, of transformation and subversion, of rhetoric and aesthetics, and deals with instructional dialogues, legal texts, narrative literature, and theater.

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