Virtualizing Hell

Is hell pop? In our enlightened age (only in quotation marks, please) it certainly is: many novels and comics, even more films, and computer games in particular feature countless variations of this once-believed underworld. But the popularization of the Christian torture chamber is far older than the often tongue-in-cheek variants of our postmodern age. As early as the 12th century, the previously Latin afterlife journeys appeared in the vernacular courts, changing their audience from the monastic community to the courtly literary system. The latter had a completely different approach to literature via heroic epics and Arthurian romances: where previously the focus had been on educating through terrifying images of hell, the courtly accounts of hell now suddenly had to be entertaining. The project Virtualizing Hell takes this transitional phase as its starting point, using the example of Middle High German journeys to the afterlife. The aim is to show that the descriptions of hell require a specific form of reception, a listening that was neither believing nor unbelieving, that understood the texts neither as religious nor as fictional. Rather, the literary beyond was understood as something that is not real but nevertheless has the potential to become true. In other words, it was perceived as virtual. At the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture (IMAREAL), Krems, as part of a research focus, virtuality was defined systematically (i.e., for all cultural epochs). Virtuality means (based on Aristotle and, in postmodern cultural theory, building on Jacques Derrida) a potential or capacity (in Aristotelian Greek da, dnamis) that does not come to realization (i.e., ea, enérgeia) but nevertheless has an impact on reality. The virtual is not physically present, yet it has a tangible effect (that may be simulated but has effect nevertheless). It is not material, yet it is real and thus differs from fiction. The virtuals capacity to exert a tangible effect stems from its potential actualization and works precisely through this possibility. All of this applies perfectly to the medieval hell in its courtly form and invites application to the medieval texts. The option of describing the vernacular afterlife journeys as an experimental laboratory for virtuality reconnects medieval hell with its contemporary variants. In this way, the planned monograph should be able to show that the use of media at medieval courts was not very different from comparable mechanisms in our popular culture.