Articulating space: Nuremberg and the evolution of landscape in early modern technical and military literature (Schedel, Maximilian I, Duerer, Sachs)

This dissertation examines the discovery of local space in the German Renaissance, particularly early-sixteenth-century Nuremberg. In the first chapter I review the current literature on Renaissance cartographic and geographic depiction and on landscape painting. The second chapter compares Latin and German city encomia, as well as Hartmann Schedel's Weltchronik and Sebastian Munster's German cosmography. The textual analysis reveals a dependence on collaboration and a focus on urban centers in descriptive works created for urban audiences. In the third chapter, I question whether the courtly romance or the classical epic provided the model for Renaissance landscape depiction. The chapter uses the text and images of the Weisskunig of Emperor Maximilian I as a test case for the viability of combining classical and romance epic forms. The fourth chapter surveys a variety of often overlooked military descriptions, including military maps and pamphlets describing the siege of Vienna. These materials are compared with Albrecht Durer's Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloss und Flecken in an examination of the mutual influence of text and image and of emerging models for viewing practices, including the spread of the panoramic view. Both this and the following chapters show that an engagement with a landscape of military conflict, rather than one of pastoral idealism or subjective experience, characterizes the literary production of Nuremberg during this time. In the fifth chapter I consider Hans Sachs's works dealing with the physical aspects of the city of Nuremberg, such as "Ein Lobspruch der Stadt Nurnberg," and with the threats to Nuremberg's security and territorial sovereignty, as in "Ein Pasquillus von dem Schloss zu Plassenburg." This final analysis argues that Sachs used an epic model for his textual descriptions of landscape panoramas and that the figures of mercenaries, besieged fortresses, and warring princes defined the local landscape for him, as well as for many Nuremberg readers and viewers.