Scottish Studies International

The Scottish Studies International (SSI) series produced by the Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics and Cultural Studies of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germersheim, Germany, publishes high-quality research work from across the broad and varied spectrum of Scottish Studies. Founded in 1982 by the late Professor Horst W. Drescher, the series originally focused on literature and translation studies. Current editor, Professor Klaus Peter Müller, has since extended its scope into the fields of cultural and media studies, a widening of range and perspective that is also reflected in the faculty's bi-annual Scottish Studies Newsletter. The series aims to explore both Scotland's turbulent past and its intriguing present flux in its culture, society, politics, economy, media, art, and literature. In order to evaluate their suitability for publication, all texts submitted will be peer-reviewed by the general editor as well as by members of the editorial board. Editor’s Homepage: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Klaus Peter Müller Editorial Advisory Board: Murray Baumgarten, University of California Ian Campbell, University of Edinburgh Gerard Carruthers, University of Glasgow Scott Hames, University of Stirling Silvia Mergenthal, University of Konstanz Pierre Morère, Université de Grenoble III Graeme Morton, University of Guelph Murray Pittock, University of Glasgow Barbara Schaff, University of Göttingen Chris Vanden Bossche, Notre Dame University

35 publications

The Enlightenment German and Interdisciplinary Studies

ISSN: 1043-576X

5 publications

Contemporary Critical Concepts and Pre-Enlightenment Literature

ISSN: 1074-6781

"Writers who worked before the beginning of rationalist universalism's triumphal period which may be ending now-explored issues of consciousness, ideology, and culture that recent criticism and critical theory, using various specialized vocabularies of concepts, have returned to the center of literäry and social criticism. These early modern figures often anticipated some of our clilemmas; How to manipulate an apparently quite mutable world and, at the same time, preserve belief in an immutable "centered" self? How to reconcile rationalist universalism with personal and cultural stability? Rene Descartes's postulate of man as the master and proprietor of an increasingly built world is fundamentally incompatible with his effort to underwrite man as a stable philosophical subject. Man's technical and linguistic mastery devours his "transcendent subjectivity." Students of literature are now using the ideas of what Larry Riggs calls "post-enlightenment thinkers"-Max Horkheimer, Jacques Lacan, Michael Foucault, Rene Girard, and others-to elucidate the implicit and explicit debates about rationalism that are embedded in literary works. This trend is most usefully seen as a renewal of contact with preoccupations that were quite current in medieval, Renaissance, and seventeenth-century European literature. To date, however, innovative criticism has focused an more recent literature. Some post-structuralists-most notably Jacques Lacan-have tried their hand at interpreting early works. Their ideas are interesting, but their knowledge of the periods in question is often weak. Manuscripts on Elizabethan and Restoration theater, French, Italian, and German writers of the medieval and Renaissance periods, and die seventeenth-century French dramatists and moralists are welcome. "

3 publications