Research Projects

  • (C-2-1) Creating Christian concepts of space

    Besides the investigation of the formation and usage of spatial metaphors in the text corpus of the early Christian authors, this project also examined the significance of deixis and the meaning of several prepositional phrases, e.g. “in Christ”, “to be in Christ”, “to be in the Lord”, “to be in the Spirit”, “to be under the Law”, “to be under Grace (charis)” and “to be in Grace” as a mixture of spatial and non-spatial entities.

  • (C-2-3) Grounded in space? Diachronic and cognitive approaches to spatial metaphors in written Egyptian

    The goal of this project was to conduct a detailed empirical study of Egyptian textual material in order to investigate what has been described as the cognitive foundations of metaphor usage. In particular, the group focused on determining to what extent spatial expressions constitute a basal element of metaphorical speaking, and henced whether they represent the fundamental and historically primary constituents of metaphorical thinking.

  • (C-2-4) The soul as economy – ancient metaphores of space and subjectivity in early modern texts

    The project’s focus lied on the functions of self-reflexive metaphors in literary and philosophical texts. The project has traced ways in which metaphors of economy and householding travelled via stoicism, neoplatonism and late antique Christianity into the early modern period and explored their functions in Renaissance literary texts.

  • (C-2-5) The ancient symposion as space of knowledge and experience and as medium of metaphorizing processes

    This project pursued various research approaches to investigate the use and formation of metaphors in the cultural and religious realm of the Greek symposion, mainly in the archaic and classical periods.

     

Dissertations

  • (C-2-1-1) Zwei-Wege-Metaphorik in der urchristlichen Literatur

    The focus of this Ph.D. project is on spatial metaphors in ancient texts, in particular on the metaphorical use of “Two-Ways” in Early Christian Literature.

  • (C-2-1-2) Contested body: Metaphors of dominion in Romans 5-8

    The focus of this Ph.D. project was the concept of dominion with reference to the dominated and its space. The letter Apostel Paul wrote to the Romans in the first century AD was being approached with a historical critical method, i.e. every word was analysed with the methods of traditional historical philology, focusing on lexical units and looking at syntactical links. Also, the Metaphor Identification Procedure was applied.

  • (C-2-1-3) Soteriological perspective of spatiality in the Gospel according to John

    The spatiality of John is conceived as a concept of narrative, and forms the structure of the gospel in connection with the important theological statements. This Ph.D. project analyzes to which extent the narrative in the Gospel of John implicitly contains spatiality and against which background it is to be interpreted. The central issue addressed here is the relationship between soteriology and spatial aspects of metaphors in John and whether this is an overarching strategy in his writing.

  • (C-2-1-4) Being 'in Christ' in the Pauline Letters

    The research project focuses on the apostle Paul’s phrase “being ‘in Christ’”, more specifically it’s meaning, usage, and how it functions as a metaphor.

  • (C-2-4-1) Visio amoris et veneris – T(r)opische Imaginationen von der Liebe im italienischen Spätmittelalter

    Based on the comparative analysis of two exemplary texts (La elegia di madonna Fiammetta, 1343/44 and Il ninfale fiesolano, 1344/46), this Ph.D. thesis dealed with the literary strategies and narrative devices employed to depict love, sexuality and desire. The roles, functions and transformations of the antique love deities received special consideration.