MPS - Blog » Blackboard http://medieval-plants.org Portal der Pflanzen des Mittelalters Wed, 28 Jan 2015 19:03:04 +0000 de-DE hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.1 Middle High German plant names http://medieval-plants.org/blog/middle-high-german-plant-names/ http://medieval-plants.org/blog/middle-high-german-plant-names/#comments Sun, 08 May 2011 08:27:02 +0000 http://medieval-plants.org/?p=263 I have added an index of about 1400 MHG plant names. This index was derived from the Middle High German Dictionaries online.

Link: http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/WBB/woerterbuecher

]]> http://medieval-plants.org/blog/middle-high-german-plant-names/feed/ 0 About the ‘Medieval Plant Survey (MPS)’ http://medieval-plants.org/blog/about-the-medieval-plant-survey-mps/ http://medieval-plants.org/blog/about-the-medieval-plant-survey-mps/#comments Sun, 08 May 2011 08:01:06 +0000 http://medieval-plants.org/?p=246 Weiterlesen

]]> The knowledge of herbs and healing was handed down from Antiquity to the Middle Ages which accounts for the little change within the materia medica of that time. But changes do occur, for example, in the evaluation and use of plants. Some plant’s habitat is limited to the Far East area and therefore it hardly gains ground in Western Europe; others are simply substituted with similar, native plants. The image of some plant undergoes a positive reevaluation in the course of their tradition; others, though, are assessed in a totally negative way. As people of the 21st century we only have limited access to this knowledge: on the one hand, we can rely on the continuously written tradition of scientific texts, which once were limited to a small social class of users – the literati, i.e. those who could read (and write) Latin. On the other hand, we have written poetic sources in the vernacular, which were – due to their primarily oral tradition – accessed by a broader audience. Both are accompanied by illustrations and sculptures depicting plants, all of which stem from a monastic, religious background. Additionally, the understanding of all of this material is complicated by regional and temporal deviations.

With the Medieval Plant Survey we plan to unite these threads of tradition within one data-pool, to serve as research base for interestad and dedicated, international scholars of different scientific fields. At the same time the portal is designed to provide an technically up to date workspace, which relys on the amenities of, e.g. ‘social media techniques’. Finally, our goal is to provide monographs for all medieval plants. If you have further questions regarding this project, please contact us via the following e-mail address: helmut.klug@uni-graz.at.

]]> http://medieval-plants.org/blog/about-the-medieval-plant-survey-mps/feed/ 0 The Use of Spices in Middle High German Cooking Recipes http://medieval-plants.org/blog/the-use-of-spices-in-middle-high-german-cooking-recipes/ http://medieval-plants.org/blog/the-use-of-spices-in-middle-high-german-cooking-recipes/#comments Sun, 08 May 2011 07:39:35 +0000 http://medieval-plants.org/?p=236 Weiterlesen

]]> The use of spices in general and the amount of spices used in particular has been discussed comprehensively over a long period of time but the topic still holds enough potential for heated discussions. Some of the many dated conclusions – the myth that spices are used to freshen up spoiled meat, for instance – have at least been permanently rejected but there is a vast amount of open questions like: What defines a ‘spice’ in medieval times? Why are spices used? Which spices are used and are some spices used more than others or are certain spices used for particular purposes? There are a lot of general theses on their use (Baufeld, Bober, Hirschfelder, van Winter, Weiss-Adamson, Wiswe, etc.) but none of those seem to consider individual circumstances and clues on a textual level – facts that can be of great importance for an overall discussion! Most of the newer editions of MHG recipe collections (Ehlert, et al) do reflect on the cultural historical background of the specific texts and provide statistical analyses of the spices in use but these findings all turn out to be too specific to yield much potential for a more general (but still detailed) explanation model.

In my paper I want to specifically analyze the context in which spices are used and find out if my findings conform to existing theses. I base my findings on a broad corpus of recipe collections and my analysis is conducted rather on a semantic than a linguistic level!

PDF for downloading (Language = German): Helmut W. Klug: Zur Verwendung von Gewürzen in mittelalterlichen Kochrezpten

The paper will be published in 2011 in an anthology based on the PhD seminar “Binarität und Skalarität als kulturelle Ordnungsmuster – Kategorien und Typologien in den Kulturwissenschaften“ held by Wernfried Hofmeister, Bettina Rabelhofer und Klaus Rieser in the summer semester of 2010 at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz.

The paper will be published in Medium Aevum Quotidianum.

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