Barlaam and Josaphat in the Europ. Med. Literature

The project will focus on one of the most popular legends of the Middle Ages: the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, a christianised version of the life of Buddha, which engendered an incredibly broad reception from the 12th century onward, both in the East and West. A short introduction gives a summary on the history of the study of legends: science of religion, history, literary studies and recent interdisciplinary approaches illustrate the way scholars have been dealing with this topic since the 19th century. A special focus will be given to the question of genre or subgenre "legend romance" within the current scholarly discussion. A second part of the project centers on the reception of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat: We will present and discuss European Barlaam texts dating from the 13th to the 15th century. This overall view will be accompanied by a research review. The text corpus includes texts from Spain, Portugal, France, England, Italy, Scandinavia, and Germany. A selection of "legend romances" from Germany, Spain, and France is the basis to a more profound analysis in the third part of the project. The main focus of these interpretations will be (1) the making of a saint and (2) the functionalisation of legend. For this part the corpus will include only works derived from the Vulgata.