BGHS

Michael Zozmann

The Semantic Construction of the Political in the Late Middle Ages

The main focus of our research project is the question of transformation of political languages in the late middle ages. The analysis will concentrate on two different layers of political languages: On the one hand we will analyse the classical texts of political philosophy and jurisprudence. Therefore these texts will be digitalised and thus be available for computer-aided lexicometric analysis. In this way we hope to be able to redefine the semantic fields of the key concepts within the political languages. Further we will ask how traditional political semantics influence the new receptions of ancient concepts and how the leading semantics of politics change in the long run. The second focus of our research will be the latin and vernacular literary production of the learned and literate actors in the cities. The question is if these actors make use of their academic political knowledge to describe and understand politics in their own cities or if they prefer to follow the local vernacular traditions of writing and talking about politics.