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 activity, including communication. This interdisciplinary anthology examines the creativity of repetitive patterns of conversation in the pre-modern era. The contributions from the fields of 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 differences. The fundamental linguistic and cultural functional contexts of this interrelationship between repetition and variation will be explored: Do repetitive patterns of conversation create community or do they sharpen contrasts? 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, transformation and subversion, rhetoric and aesthetics and deals with didactic dialogues, legal texts, narrative literature and theater.

Further information on the book can be found here.