Brevitas: Issues

The abstract transgression of boundaries as a structural moment of pre-modern short fiction in particular is sometimes concretized in bad weather. The one liminal twist that often determines small-scale epic storytelling also manifests itself in the change of weather, which for the pre-modern era is fundamentally more than an arbitrary, chaotic natural phenomenon: weather – ›beautiful‹ weather, but above all ›bad‹ weather – is fundamentally a medium of communication between transcendence and immanence, between God and creation. In this context, weather is not only an ontological transgression per se, but – especially in the form of ›bad‹ weather - often goes hand in hand with existential transgressions on a creaturely level.

The contributions in this volume shed light on the connection between small epic narratives and transgressions of boundaries, particularly in the area of weather.

Researchers agree that one quality of pre-modern minor epic poetry is certainly its conciseness. What exactly is meant by this quality, however, often remains vague. Understandings of conciseness range from conspicuousness, formative potential and brevity to complexity of content, pointedness or a dimension of meaning that has yet to unfold. In this anthology, these different approaches are not artificially levelled out. Instead, different understandings of the phenomenon of ‘concise narrative’ are developed and utilised as examples for an interpretation of short fiction. The aim is to explore the interpretative potential of the concept of conciseness and to create new methodological approaches to pre-modern short fiction in particular.