Productive Barriers to Communication in the Literature of the High- and Late Middle Ages

The project has three topics concerning forms of communication that confront obstacles. The objects of study are (1) the rhetoric of mystical and hagiographic texts dealing with the plants of the hereafter ? against a theoretical background that asserts the transcendent’s ineffability. Solitude as a barrier and stimulus to communication (2) is being analyzed from a cultural history point of view. The study of censorship (3) will demonstrate that enforced silence and oblivion are not successful in written tradition.