The concepts of genre and ritual are central for the overall occupation with the relationship between the History of the Arts and the History of Christianity in Western Culture.

In particular, these two concepts have important bearings for the research carried out at the Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals (www.teol.ku.dk/kulturarv) which has been established at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen through funding from The Danish National Research Foundation.

The first of the annual conferences of the Centre was dedicated to the question of ritual and genre. The present volume was planned on the basis of this conference: a collection of 15 essays with a wide range of topics both in terms of chronology and subject matter. The individual essays have been written partly by scholars at the Centre, partly by colleagues from universities in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the USA with which the Centre collaborates. The aim has been to publish a volume which in a facetted way sheds light on the complex relationship between the two broad and difficult terms, genre and ritual, within the cultural history of Europe.

Eyolf Østrem is Post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Church History, Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals, University of Copenhagen.

Mette Birkedal Bruun is Post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Church History, Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals, University of Copenhagen.

Nils Holger Petersen, Associate professor, is Centre Leader at the Department of Church History, Centre for Christianity and Art, Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals, University of Copehangen.

Jens Fleischer is Associate professor at the Department of Art History, University of Copenhagen.

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Table of contents
Foreword

Nils Holger Petersen
Introduction

Claus Clüver
On Genres: Their Construction, Function, Transformation, and Transposition

1. Ritual and Culture
Jesper Sørensen
Ritual as Action and Symbolic Expression

Katia Gvozdeva
Hobbyhorse Performances: A Ritual Attribute of Carnivalesque Traditions and its Literary Appropiation in Sottie Theatre

Christof L. Diedrichs
Desire of Viewing: A ‘Deluge of Images’ in the Middle Ages

Henrik v. Achen
‘The Passion Clock’ – a Lutheran ‘Way of the Cross’: Reflections on a Popular Motif in Early Eighteenth-Century Scandinavian Religious Imagery

2. Narrative, Genre, and Ritual
Richard Utz
Remembering Ritual Murder: The Anti-Semitic Blood Accusation Narrative in Medieval and Contemporary Cultural Memory

Biörn Tjällén
Ericus Olai’s Chronica regni Gothorum: A Discourse on Dominance

Siglind Bruhn
Rituals and Genres in a Twentieth-Century Operatic Portrayal of a Medieval Saint

Jørgen Bruhn
‘Useful if Treated with Caution’: Carnevalization in Don Quijote

3. Musical Genres
Heinrich W. Schwab
The Phenomenon of Concert Applause: Interactions between Institution, Ritual, and Musical Genre

Lars Berglund
The Aria, the Stylus Melismaticus, and the Holy Communion

Magnar Breivik
Weill and Brecht’s Das Berliner Requiem: A Secular Work in a Sacred Tradition

4. Secular Ritual
Eyolf Østrem
‘Going Through All These Things Twice’: The Ritual of a Bob Dylan Concert

Nils Holger Petersen
Music Practices around Bob Dylan, Medieval Rituals, and Modernity

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