Band 7: Narrative Pattern and Genre in Hagiographic Life Writing:

Narrative Pattern and Genre in Hagiographic Life Writing: Comparative Perspectives from Asia to Europe examines so far mostly unstudied ‘non-occidental’ pre-modern hagiographic texts across disciplines with both philological and narratological approaches. Texts that recount the life of a saint have been labelled ‘hagiography’ and such works have been employed as sources for historical or literary research. However, a text-based definition of the term, not to mention a confirmation of its use on the basis of wider examinations across cultures is still wanting. Furthermore, the analysis with the methodological devices offered by narratology is only in its beginnings. This volume aims to be a step on this way: eleven contributors examine texts from Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism in the respective source languages. Works studied include the Christian hagiography of Anthony or St. Brigit of Ireland, narrative texts about Tibetan Buddhist masters such as Milarepa or the Eighth Karmapa-hierarch, Sino-Tibetan Communist ‘hagiographies’, Persian Sufi monographs, Turco-Persian hagiographies and Hasidic legends. A comprehensive introduction outlines hagiographic life writing; an outlook develops some definitions and suggests a scheme of analysis for future research.

The Editors

Jim Rheingans has studied Tibetology (as a major), along with Classical Indology and Ethnology, and received his Magister Artium 2004 in Tibetan Studies at Hamburg University. Jim completed his doctorate on “The Eighth Karmapa’s Life and his Interpretation of the Great Seal” in 2008. After a year of postdoctoral research at Hamburg, he was a post-doctorate for teaching and research in Tibetan Studies at the University of Bonn. Since 2011 he has worked for his DFG-project on the origin and transmission of a Tibetan textual corpus at Hamburg University. Among his research interests are Tibetan literary genres, history, and Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. Recent publications include “Narratives of Reincarnation” (in Lives Lived ed. L. Covill, U. Rösler and S. Shaw, Wisdom: 2010) and “Communicating the Innate” (IABU: 2012).
 
Stephan Conermann was born 1964 in Kiel/Germany. Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Bonn/Germany since 2003, he has served as Vice Dean of Research and International Relations of the Faculty of Humanities at Bonn University (2008–2010), and Speaker of the Bonn Asia Center (since 2008), the Bonn Center for Transcultural Narratology (BZTN, since 2009), and the Bonn International Graduate School of Oriental and Asian Studies (BIGS-OAS, since 2010). He studied Ancient, Early Modern, Modern and Asian History, as well as Slavic and Oriental Philology, at the University of Kiel, and took multiple language courses and study visits in Beirut/Lebanon, Damas­cus/Syria, Moscow/Russia, and Poznan/Poland. He did his doctoral studies at the Department of Oriental Studies at Kiel University from 1992 till 1996, and was afterwards a Research Assistant and Assistant Professor until 2003.