An introduction: Theoretical, methodological, and interdisciplinary reflections -- Water, literature, symbolism, and epistemology in the pre-modern age: a pan-European perspective -- Water and voyages in the Goliardic epic poem of Herzog Ernst: transformation and maturation through travel into the mysterious Orient -- The experience with water in The Voyage of St. Brendan: spiritual epistemology in the western seas -- Water worlds in the Lais by Marie de France: the search for happiness in a fluid world -- Hartmann von Aue's Gregorius: the religious transformation through water -- Water symbolism in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival: the material and the spiritual dimension of water in a Middle High German grail romance -- Mechthild of Magdeburg's mystical The flowing Light of the Godhead: spirituality, liquidity, and epistemology in medieval mysticism -- The water worlds in Boccaccio's Decameron (ca. 1351): narrative explorations of tears, water in fountains, wells, and in the Mediterranean -- Water as markers of identity, space, and time in the Icelandic saga Njál's Saga: travel, war, and water in the world of old Norse literature -- Water creatures, wells, the other life, hybridity, and the aquatic dimension: the myth of Melusine in the prose romance by Jean d'Arras -- Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron and other problems with water: flooding, voyaging, sexual violence, and refuge. |